The Energy Blog

Aquaflow Algae

Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation (ABC), Melbourne, New Zealand, states on its website: The world is expected to move from the cultivation of corn and sugar cane for energy purposes to the cultivation of marine algae.  Aquaflow has set itself the objective to be the first company in the world to economically produce biofuel from wild algae harvested from open-air environments, to market it, and meet the challenge of increasing demand.

They are trying to simplify the algae to biooil process used by most others in the field by collecting wild algae growing in open-air sludge ponds and waste streams.

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, and Aquaflow have signed a memorandum of understanding to convert wild algae into fuel products using UOP’s processes and to develop a carbon dioxide sequestration storage model for Aquaflow’s algal oil production facilities.

The companies will also study the feasibility of sequestering carbon dioxide from a refinery or power plant and adding it to wastewater streams in an effort to boost the productivity of the wild algae population.

Aquaflow currently sources its wild algae from oxidation ponds in Marlborough, New Zealand. It doesn’t add carbon dioxide to the wastewater.

FYI: Petrosun to Start Commercial Operation of 4.4 MGY Algae Oil Plant

PetroSun, Inc (PINK: PSUD) announced that their Rio Hondo, Texas algae farm will commence operations on April 1, 2008 as PetroSun's initial commercial algae-to-biofuels facility. The current algae farm consists of 1,100 acres of saltwater ponds that the company projects will produce a minimum of 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass on an annual basis. The company has dedicated 20 acres of ponds for a proposed algae derived JP8 jet fuel research and development program.

The Rio Hondo algae farm will be expanded in the future to provide the feedstock required by present or proposed company owned or joint ventured biodiesel and ethanol refineries. The Company plans to construct or acquire additional plants in the Gulf Coast region that are reachable via barge up the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The previously announced Bridgeport, Alabama refinery will receive algal oil feedstock from this distribution program.

"Our business model has been focused on proving the commercial feasibility of the firms' algae-to-biofuels technology during the past eighteen months Whether we have arrived at this point in time by a superior technological approach, sheer luck or a redneck can-do attitude, the fact remains that microalgae can outperform the current feedstocks utilized for conversion to biodiesel and ethanol, yet do not impact the consumable food markets or fresh water resources."

-- Gordon LeBlanc, Jr., CEO of Petrosun

Petrosun plans to establish algae farms and algal oil extraction plants in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mexico, Brazil and Australia during 2008. The algal oil product will be marketed as feedstock to existing biodiesel refiners and planned company owned refineries.

I don't think any other algae producing firms have reached this milestone. The production of algae oil is the critical step in producing biofuels from algae.  Algae has the potential to produce all the petroleum needs for transportation on 2% of the land area of the US, which could be located on desert or semi-arable land. (see previous post)

9MWe CHP Jatropha Bio-oil Plant Being Developed in Belgium

Thenergo, a Belgian developer and operator of decentralized sustainable energy projects using biomass, biogas, bio-oil and cogeneration has announced that it has commenced development of a 9MWe, 6MWth CHP bio-oil to energy plant in Merksplas (Belgium).

The project, named Greenpower, representing a total investment of €11 million will run on bio-oil extracted from the seeds of the jatropha plant (previous post). The jatropha seeds are a non-edible, high energy fruit grown on semi-arid or waste land in South East Asia.

”The Greenpower bio-oil project is a prime example of Thenergo’s multifuel approach to the production of sustainable energy. Our strategy to diversify our feedstock base,namely biogas, natural gas, bio-oil, woody biomass and secondary fuels, ensures long term procurement security, better management of fuel costs, while allowing us to be more reactive to market driven opportunities”.

-- Kurt Alen, Thenergo CEO

This is one of a few projects that I have seen using jatropha bio-oil as a feedstock. CHP plants are much more efficient than pure electricity or motor fuel projects.  Because jatropha can be grown on semi-arid or waste land it can use land that is not suitable for growing food seeds  This advantage is claimed to be being abused because the jatropha seeds bring in more cash than food seeds in some cases and land that formerly was used for growing food crops is already being used to grow jatropha.  It seems that biofuel projects can become controversial wherever the feedstock comes from.  Eventually market forces will sort out how much land is used for food and how much is used for growing biofuel feedstocks.  The continued high price of oil favors more use of biofuels. The development of cellulose based biofuels will lessen this problem somewhat and the development of electrically powered vehicles that can get most of their energy from renewable energy will eventually mitigate this problem to a great degree, but not for a long time. 

Bio-crude Turns Cheap Waste into Valuable Fuel

CSIRO and Monash University announced that they have developed a chemical process that turns green waste into a stable bio-crude oil.

Bio-crude works in much the same way as crude oil, making it economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central biorefinery for further processing, rather than transporting bulky green waste to the refinery.

The bio-crude oil can be used to produce high value chemicals and biofuels, including both petrol and diesel replacement fuels.

“By making changes to the chemical process, we’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world,”

-- Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences.

The process uses low value waste such as forest thinnings, crop residues, waste paper and garden waste, significant amounts of which are currently dumped in landfill or burned.

According to Biopact bio-crude oil is a next-generation biofuel obtained from the fast pyrolysis of any type of biomass including waste. Fast pyrolysis is a process in which the organic materials are rapidly heated to 450 - 600 °C at atmospheric pressure in the absence of air. Under these conditions, organic vapours, pyrolysis gases and charcoal are produced. The vapours are condensed to bio-oil. Typically, 70-75 wt.% of the feedstock is converted into oil.

This process is similar to the process used by Dynamotive.

Khosla Ventures, BIOeCON Form KiOR for Catalytic Production of Biooil

BIOeCON press release:

Khosla Ventures and BIOeCON have announced the formation of their joint venture KiOR Inc., which will use BIOeCON's ‘Biomass Catalytic Cracking Process' (BCC) technology to converts lignocellulosic biomass, found in grass, wood, and various agricultural and forestry wastes, into a bio-oil product that can be further upgraded to transportation fuels.  The conversion of cellulosic biomass to bio-oil represents a significant commercial opportunity that also offers important benefits, including using post-harvesting waste rather than competing with food crops; promoting environmental sustainability; reducing reliance on fossil fuels such as crude oil; and enabling economic development and job creation in rural areas.

Khosla Ventures, will provide the Series A funding, whereas BIOeCON will bring its knowledge and intellectual property for the ‘Biomass Catalytic Cracking Process' (BCC). KiOR Inc. will focus on the further development and commercialization of the BCC technology as well as prepare for raising significantly more capital in the next two to three years.

"The key technical problem in the conversion of cellulosic biomass into usable fuels is how to open up the inaccessible solid fibrous 'woody' material, so that it can be effectively transformed. Most of the existing processes to unlock the woody structures are quite costly and intensive of energy or chemicals," says Paul O'Connor, founder and president of BIOeCON.  "BIOeCON has developed a simple non-energy intensive way to make the woody biomass accessible to catalysts and convert to a bio-oil product with significantly improved product properties compared to other thermal-chemical processes.

Oil from Algae Could Ease Energy Woes

Algae-Based Fuels Set to Bloom 

Kevin Bullis, MIT Technology Review, Feb. 5, 2007

Relatively high oil prices, advances in technology, and the Bush administration's increased emphasis on renewable fuels are attracting new interest in a potentially rich source of biofuels: algae. ...

Kathe Andrews-Cramer, ... at Sandia National Laboratories [says] ... "We could replace certainly all of our diesel fuel with algal-derived oils, and possibly replace a lot more than that."

Raw algae can be processed to make biocrude ... at existing oil refineries to make just about anything that can be made from crude oil. ...

The use of algae for liquid fuels has been studied extensively in the past, including ... a program at ...NREL that ran for nearly a decade. At the time, the results were not encouraging. ...  enough has changed that NREL researchers expect to restart the program within the next six months to a year.

The cheapest way to grow algae is in open ponds. But open ponds full of nutrients invite other species to take over, competing with the algae and cutting down production. LiveFuels ... hopes to create algal ecosystems that resist such invaders by ensuring that all the nutrients are converted to forms the algae can easily use.

GreenFuel's John Lewnard, ...  says the company thinks it can reach competitive prices without carbon taxes.

Dynamotive Headed for China, Expands West Lorne Facility

Dynamotive (OTCBB: DYMTF),  disclosed that China's National Development and Reform Commission (‘NDRC’)  recommended, after a year long review, the promotion of Dynamotive’s fast pyrolysis BioOil technology as a means to increasing energy security and independence.

The report concluded that: “There is strong potential for using (Dynamotive’s) BioOil to substitute (for) fuel oil. Analysis shows that if one-third of China’s agricultural and forestry waste could be used to produce BioOil, 15 million tons of fuel oil could be substituted, and half of imported fuel oil by China could be theoretically displaced.”

Arundo donax for electricity

Florida-based Biomass Investment Group (BIG), is embarking on a project using Arundo donax as an energy crop that will be grown on 20,000 acres (8000ha). The biomass will be converted into bio-oil, a heavy fuel oil, via a fast-pyrolysis process (for more on this process see previous post). This carbon-neutral oil will then be used in a power plant that will provide electricity to some 80,000 Floridian households.

The following points summarize the project:

Dynamotive Breaks Ground for MegaCity Plant

Dynamotive broke ground on October 7^th for the MegaCity Recycling, 200 tonnes per day BioOil plant on a 22 acre site in Guelph, Ontario.  The plant is expected to be producing BioOil in Q1 2007 as it ramps up through its commissioning process.

Dynamotive President and CEO, Andrew Kingston, said that equipment deliveries to the site are expected early in November with all major components to be on site by year end. The plant will incorporate important technological advances we gained through operating the West Lorne plant.

Dynamotive's carbon/greenhouse gas neutral fast pyrolysis technology uses medium temperatures and oxygen-less conditions to turn dry waste biomass and energy crops into BioOil for power and heat generation. BioOil can be further converted into vehicle fuels and chemicals. The fast pyrolysis process takes less than two seconds to produce BioOil, char, and non-condensable gases. There is zero waste as the BioOil and char have significant commercial application and value and the non-condensable gases are recycled and produce approximately 75% of the energy required for the pyrolysis process. 

Dynamotive Sells Plants in Ukraine

DynaMotive Energy Systems Corporation (OTCBB: DYMTF.OB) announced that it has licensed a 200 tpd pyrolysis plant with an option for two further plants of similar size to Rika Ltd, Latvia.

The pants will use patented technology that can convert forest and agricultural wastes such as bark, sawdust and sugar cane bagasse into a liquid fuel. Unlike fossil fuels, BioOil is renewable, clean burning, low in emissions and is greenhouse gas neutral. It can be used as a clean fuel for power generation in gas turbines, diesel engines and boilers. The West Lorne Facility, the first BioOil cogeneration plant that was built has provided the demonstration platform for the commercialization of the technology.

The plant will be located at one of Rika’s farm operations in the Ukraine which covers 8,700 hectares of land. The farm would be capable of supporting the three plants envisaged under the licensing agreement. Under the Agreement, Rika has the option to order two further plants and will be guaranteed fabrication slots in 2007 if such option is exercised within 12 months of the signature date.

More Information about Dynamotive and its process can be found here.

Technorati tags: biofuels, pyrolysis, bio-oil, energy, technology

The Energy Blog: Dynamotive Sells Plants in Ukraine

Dynamotive Reaches Marketing Understanding

DynaMotive Energy Systems Corporation (OTCBB:DYMTF) announced today that the Company and Mitsubishi Canada Ltd., have entered  into a  wide-ranging Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") which expresses their mutual intentions to develop definitive agreements for marketing and distribution of DynaMotive's patented technology in Canada and internationally. 

Mitsubishi Canada Ltd. and DynaMotive agreed to explore collaboration in the
following areas of interest:

• International trade, market development, logistics and sales and
  distribution of DynaMotive's technology and products
• Financial services including, but not limited to, development of
  financial models, financial resources and risk management capabilities
• Equipment fabrication, distribution and leasing
• Corporate investment in DynaMotive Energy Systems Corp.(potential
  interest).

DynaMotive is an energy systems company focused on the development of innovative
energy solutions based on its patented fast pyrolysis system, previous post.

DynaMotive Announces MOU with Mitsubishi Canada Limited for Marketing and Distribution of
Dynamotives Fast Pyrolysis Technology, Press release, December 20, 2005

Dynamotive, Vancover, BC, CA

More blogs about biofuels, bio-oil, energy, technology

Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently redesigned its Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network (BFIN), dramatically increasing ease of access to feedstock related data and analysis. The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Information Network (BIN), housed at ORNL, had become a central location for information related to biomass and in particular feedstocks. Information available at the site includes:

* Reports  * Fact sheets  * Databases  * Presentations  * Images  * Links
* News  * Events  * Contacts

Biomass feedstock types with information featured on the site includes:

• Agricultural residue
• Forestry residue
• Herbaceous crops
• Municipal/Urban residues
• Oil crops
• Short-rotation woody crops

The new website, renamed Bioenergy Feedstock Information Network (BFIN), is now available publicly at http://bioenergy.ornl.gov

The site's overall design and structure is predicated on primarily two publications: The 2003 Roadmap for Agricultural Biomass Feedstock Supply in the United States and the 2005 Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply. The industry segments, outlined in the Roadmap, help to partially structure the site's content into five distinct supply system processes; harvesting, storage, preprocessing, transportation and system integration. The Billion-Ton study provided the structure by which feedstock types were categorized. The study also drives many of the numbers and projections that form the basis for information on the site.

More blogs about biofuels, biomass, energy, technology

Dynamotive Developing 500 tpd Plant

DynaMotive Energy Systems Corporation (OTCBB: DYMTF), Vancouver, B.C. and E & R Langille Contracting Ltd. of Nova Scotia announced today that they have signed an Interim Project Development Agreement for a potential 500 tonne per day BioOil production facility.

The proposed plant is expected to be completed in two stages, comprised of an initial 200tpd facility with a further module to be added subsequently. The plant is expected to be located near the port of Pictou in Nova Scotia and will utilize wood chips and other biomass sources in the area. The parties have confirmed access to 500 tonnes per day of biomass for the proposed plant. Initial technical and economic studies have been completed successfully and that the project site has been secured. The progress on the project comes shortly after DynaMotive announced its first commercial shipment of BioOil from the West Lorne facility, its first commercial scale facility.

Dynamotive Receives First Commercial Order for its BioOil

DynaMotive Energy Systems Corporation (OTCBB: DYMTF ) announced today that it has signed its first commercial supply agreement for BioOil produced from the West Lorne BioOil production facility.  The BioOil will be shipped to a U.S. based company and will be utilized for the development of specialty products.

The contract will last for 5 years and calls for monthly deliveries of BioOil from West Lorne starting at 20 tonnes per month and increasing to 250 tonnes per month at its peak (3000 tonnes per annum). The total value of BioOil to be shipped during the 5 year term is estimated at U.S. $5,300,000 and at its peak delivery would represent 15% of the plant’s annual production of BioOil.

Promising Future for Biofuels

Science News Online has a great article reviewing the emerging technologies in the biofuels area which inspired me to write a similar post adding some of the technologies from The Energy Blog.  Many of them have been subjects of previous posts in The Energy Blog, but putting them all together puts a fresh perspective on the future of biofuels.  Despite the excesses that make up much of the Energy Act of 2005, advocates of biofuels should be fairly happy with provisions of the act that directly promote their agenda.  With the rising prices of oil products biofuels are about the only answer to augmenting our liquid fuels supplies, not to diminish the importance of the conservation benefits of more fuel efficient vehicles, plug in hybrids, electric vehicles and mass transportation.  Neither conservation efforts or biofuels alone can totally mitigate increasing prices, but without extreme efforts on both fronts supply and demand can do nothing but increase the price of fossil fuels. 

The Energy Act of 2005:

• Requires gasoline to contain 7.5 billion gallons/yr of renewable fuel by 2012, this is almost double the 4 billion gallons produced in 2004.
• Provides incentives for the production of renewable fuels from non-traditional sources;  plants, grasses, agricultural residues and waste products with greater credits for ethanol produced from cellulosic biomass or waste.
• Establishes loan guarantees and grants for the construction of facilities to convert municipal solid waste and cellulosic biomass to fuel ethanol and other commercial byproducts.
• Allows tax credits for alternative fuel vehicles
• A grant program is established for rural and remote communities to use biomass, landfill gas, and livestock methane,
• Provides for grants to those owning/operating a facility using forest biomass as raw material to produce electric energy, transportation fuels, or other petroleum-based substitutes.
• Calls for projects which address the production of hydrogen from biomass and biofuels.

ORNL published a report early this year that projected that we could get 30% of our liquid fuels from biomass without displacing any land used for crop production or grazing.  Government funding as provided in the Energy Act will be of great assistance in assuring that some of the technologies outlined below get developed and brought to the commercial market to allow attaining this goal.

Biorefineries Overview

A biorefinery is a plant that converts biomass into useful products such as fuels, chemicals and power.  Three types of refineries are being used and developed:

1. Sugar platform biorefineries, as exemplified by ethanol plants, are in widespread use, are based on the fermentation of sugars.
2. Close coupled systems that primarily produce fuel that can be used to produce power or heat from either syngas or pyrolysis oil.
3. Thermochemical refineries that are more analogous to petroleum refineries which can produce an array of products in addition to fuel and power.

The sugar platform refineries refineries are in common use, producing  3.41 billion gallons of ethanol, in the U.S., in 2004.  These have been developed significantly since they were first used.  In the 1980's they were rather simple facilities that fermented corn to produce ethanol.  The process has developed rapidly and today they are highly integrated facilities that are much larger, use much less energy, less manpower and produce byproducts as well as ethanol; thus reducing the production costs significantly.  However the cost of the feedstock, the largest single cost, has not gone down significantly and the quantity available will be limited by land availability at some time in the future if only corn is used as the feedstock.  New pretreatment techniques are now starting to be used that permit recovering the sugar from the cellulose in the corn residues that were formally wasted, thus increasing the supply of feedstock greatly.  In the next few years it is anticipated that the industry will be able to process any cellulosic material, such as grasses, willows, municipal solid waste and forest residues; increasing the availability of feedstock by orders of magnitude.

Close coupled pyrolysis systems are available commercially and are used to produce fuel for engines or gas turbines or to supply heat for boilers for either heating or generating electricity.  These systems are relatively small, but fill a need for generating energy in relatively remote locations.  These systems are more widely used in Europe where energy prices are higher than in the U.S.  It is expected that they will be more widely used in the U.S. as more conventional energy prices escalate.

Thermochemical refineries, also known as Bio-Gas Fischer-Tropsch refineries (BG-FT), are still in the early developmental stage with only a few small commercial units in operation.  They offer the advantage that almost any fuel or petroleum like product can be produced using this method.  This is the only way that diesel fuel can be produced in large quantities using biomass as the feedstock supply. The supply of biodiesel will eventually be limited by available land unless a more efficient feedstock, such as algae, is able to be used. Their are some technical problems to be solved in the BG-FT process, but suppliers are finding some niche markets where these problems have been overcome. 

About Biomass Liquefaction via Pyrolysis

Pyrolysis and Gasification are similar processes of heating with limited oxygen.  Pyrolysis for liquefaction usually uses no oxygen while gasification uses a small, controlled amount.  Pyrolysis oil can be used directly as a fuel or as an intermediate for production of chemicals.

Fast pyrolysis is a thermal decomposition process operating at moderate temperatures (450-600 C) with high heat transfer rates to the biomass particles and a short residence time.  Under these conditions, organic vapors, pyrolysis gases and charcoal are produced.  A short residence time is required to obtain the maximum yield of the liquid. The vapors are condensed to produce pyrolysis oil (often referred to as bio-oil). Yields of liquid products as high as 79% of the initial dry weight of the biomass can be achieved.  The process produces no waste and either the pyrolysis gas or charcoal is used to heat the reactor and the other can be used to supplement the other in heating, dry the feedstock, the charcoal can be sold as a byproduct or the pyrolysis gas can be used to fuel a gas engine.  Pyrolysis oil is greenhouse gas neutral, does not produce SOx (sulfur dioxide) produces approximately half of the NOx (nitrogen oxide) emissions compared to fossil fuels. It is now being used for the production of chemicals and is being developed for producing liquid fuels.

EERE has a web site with a little more about pyrolysis and links to other sites.