Greenfuel Update

After not revealing much about its activities for some time, Greenfuel (previous posts here and here) released the following press release announcing to a new field study.

NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NRG) has formed a joint initiative with GreenFuel Technologies Corporation (GreenFuel) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to study carbon dioxide (CO2) recycling. The technology takes the flue gas of a power plant and utilizes GreenFuel's innovative, algae-bioreactor technology to effectively recycle CO2 into commercially viable byproducts. NRG's Dunkirk facility, a coal-fueled power plant located in western New York State, will serve as the host site for the study. ....

In field tests to be conducted at Dunkirk, GreenFuel will utilize a mini-bioreactor system to assess the technical and economic feasibility of its Emissions-to-Biofuel(TM) process that harnesses the photosynthetic processes of algae to consume waste gases and heat from a power plant's air emissions stream, ultimately producing a high energy biomass. This means that in the presence of light, the single-celled algae take up CO2 to produce the energy that fuels plant life--with a general rule of thumb being that two tons of algae remove one ton of CO2. Once the algae are harvested, they can be converted to generate commercially viable byproducts such as ethanol or biodiesel.

... Once commercialized, GreenFuel's bioreactors can be retrofitted to existing sources with minimal impact on existing generation operations. The NYSERDA-funded study will run until year end.

In April Greenfuel Technologies Corp. received an additional $7 million in Series B funding from Polaris Venture Partners. The company received $11 million in a B round last August from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Access Private Equity LLC.

There are several unanswered questions about this technology, the two main ones being whether the technology is really economically scalable to serve a full sized power plant and whether the method of harvesting the algae is reliable enough for a commercial facility. I don't know whether these questions have been answered in previous tests or will be answered in this test, given the limited time frame of the test. A white paper which I recently noticed on their website gives a good explanation of their process and philosophy.  My original post on their technology gives more details about their technology than they currently have on their website, although I can't be sure they are still using this exact configuration. The company has always defended their position that plenty of land is available for their plants.  Tyler of Clean Break had a fairly recent article in the Toronto Star giving some details about this argument.

Comments

[Bde2200]

What happened to the facility they announced they were building in the "Southwest"?

[American Biodieselist]

In answer to the question about the "Southwest," Google on "arizona greenfuel." They're currently scaling up to 15,000 sq.ft. pilot plants, at the natural-gas-fired Redhawk facility of the Arizona Public Service Co., subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital [PNW].

I'm training myself to Google on "greenfuel" and "isaac berzin."

Replacement energy better than replacement limbs.

[willbonds]

Seems like an algae-biodiesel plant and a power plant would be synergetic. The diesel plant would take flue gases and produce fuel for the power plant. That would make for a high recycling percentage of thermal energy and CO2.