The US Air Force is ready to switch to biofuels to help power its warplanes but the price of alternative fuels remains too high, military officials said.
Anxious to reduce its reliance on oil, the Air Force has approved the use of synthetic fuels for nearly all its aircraft and expects to get the green light for biofuels by the end of 2012, Undersecretary Erin Conaton said.
�The big thing we�re trying to do is to send a clear message to industry that the Air Force wants to be in a position to purchase biofuels and to use that operationally for our fleet,� Conaton said.
�But in order to do that,we need industry to be able to produce in the quantities we need at a cost-competitive price.�
Biofuels cost a prohibitive $35 a gallon (3.8l), about 10 times the price of conventional jet fuel, or JP-8.
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�The biofuels that are available now are just nowhere near the cost of what we can buy JP-8 for,� Conaton said.
With the biofuels industry still in need of more private investment, the US military has joined forces with commercial airlines �to try to send the right message�to the alternative fuels industry, she said.
�We�re ready whenever they�re ready to produce it.�
Tests have shown fighter aircraft and cargo planes can fly on a blend of biofuels and traditional jet fuel with no sacrifice in speed or performance, she said.
Conaton spoke as biofuels industry representatives and military officials gathered for an energy conference on Tuesday in Washington where alternative fuels will feature high on the agenda.
US officials see the country�s dependence on foreign oil as a national security risk and an increasing financial burden.
To promote energy �security�, the Air Force has set a goal to have half of its domestic fuel needs drawn from alternative sources by 2016.
The biofuels tested on military aircraft, known as hydro processed renewable jet fuel, are derived from the camelina plant, animal fat and various waste oils.
The military and commercial airlines are also testing �alcohol-to-jet�fuel produced from cellulosic feedstock,including switch grass,grains and sugar.
Conaton said the Air Force had plans to test the ATJ fuel on A-10 ground attack aircraft.
Following the Air Force�s lead, the Navy and Army are also working to promote the use of alternative fuels in ships, ground vehicles and bases, with Navy Secretary Ray Mabus arguing that the military can help generate enough demand to lower the price of biofuels.
Mabus told NPR earlier this month that �if we establish the market, the price is going to begin to come down�.
The Air Force�s consumption of fuel is equivalent to a major commercial airline, or about 10 billion litres a year.
Source : http://www.eco-h2o.co.za/2011/07/20/biofuel-for-the-us-air-force/
A method developed at Aalto University in Finland makes it possible to use microbes to produce butanol suitable for biofuel and other industrial chemicals from wood biomass.
Butanol is particularly suited as a transport fuel because it is not water soluble and has higher energy content than ethanol.
Most commonly used raw materials in butanol production have so far been starch and cane sugar. In contrast to this, the starting point in the Aalto University study was to use only lignocellulose, otherwise known as wood biomass, which does not compete with food production.
Another new breakthrough in the study is to successfully combine modern pulp -- and biotechnology. Finland's advanced forest industry provides particularly good opportunities to develop this type of bioprocesses.
Wood biomass is made up of three primary substances: cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Of these three, cellulose and hemicellulose can be used as a source of nutrition for microbes in bioprocesses. Along with cellulose, the Kraft process that is currently used in pulping produces black liquor, which can already be used as a source of energy. It is not, however, suitable for microbes. In the study, the pulping process was altered so that, in addition to cellulose, the other sugars remain unharmed and can therefore be used as raw material for microbes.
When wood biomass is boiled in a mixture of water, alcohol and sulphur dioxide, all parts of the wood -- cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin -- are separated into clean fractions. The cellulose can be used to make paper, nanocellulose or other products, while the hemicellulose is efficient microbe raw material for chemical production. Thus, the advantage of this new process is that no parts of the wood sugar are wasted.
In accordance with EU requirements, all fuel must contain 10 per cent biofuel by 2020. A clear benefit of butanol is that a significantly large percentage -- more than 20 per cent of butanol, can be added to fuel without having to make any changes to existing combustion engines. The nitrogen and carbon emissions from a fuel mix including more than 20 per cent butanol are significantly lower than with fossil fuels. For example, the incomplete combustion of ethanol in an engine produces volatile compounds that increase odour nuisances in the environment. Estimates indicate that combining a butanol and pulp plant into a modern biorefinery would provide significant synergy benefits in terms of energy use and biofuel production.
The project run by Aalto University is part of the Tekes' BioRefine programme. Tekes is the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.
The Biorefine programme is developing new competence based on national strengths and related to the refining of biomass. The overall aim of the project is to increase the refining value of forest residues that cannot be utilised in, for example, the pulp process. The research has been developed by Professor Aadrian van Heiningen and Tom Granstr�m and a group of researchers at Aalto University.
Results of findings have been published in scientific journals such as Bioresource Technology. The developed technology has been patented.
Source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/
Malaysia has urged its private sector to work with its counterpart in Brazil in developing biofuel as an alternative source of energy.
Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim said with the abundant natural resources in Mercosur member states which comprised Brazil, Argentina, Uruguary, Paraguay and Venezuela, Asean countries could work with their counterpart to develop these resources.
He said the proposed joint ventures would also work towards enhancing the prosperity of stakeholders in agriculture and commodity based industries of both groups through stable and remunerative prices.
Rais made the proposal at the Asean-Mercosur inaugural meeting Monday in Brasilia, Brazil, which was attended by ministers of member states of Asean and Mercosur.
In a statement which was faxed here Tuesday, Rais said the proposal was also in line with Malaysia�s National Biofuel Policy, which envisioned the use of environmentally friendly, sustainable and viable sources of energy in order to reduce dependency on depleting fossil fuel.
He also reiterated the need for immediate steps to be taken by the world body to curtail the rising crime of piracy and armed robbery at sea.
On the global food crisis, Rais said Asean-Mercosur needed to analyse all levels of the complex inter-relationship between climate change, increased use of biofuel and increasing price of agricultural products that were affecting today�s food supply.
The meeting also adopted a proposal by Rais for senior officials of Asean-Mercosur to meet in Kuala Lumpur in March next year to discuss issues of mutual interest.
Malaysia has raised its 2008 biodiesel export forecast to 200,000 tonnes, more than double that of last year�s 95,013 tonnes.
The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) said Malaysia exported 128,527 tonnes of biofuel in the first nine months of this year.
Malaysia has expressed its interest in biofuel cooperation among D-8 member countries in the Working Group for Energy this year in Cairo, Egypt.
Source : http://www.developing8.org/2008/11/28/malaysia-to-increase-cooperation-in-biofuel/
A biofuel is tricky to define because the usual fossil fuel we use, is in a way biofuel too. But we can safely say that most of the biofuels don�t add up their quota of carbon dioxide to the environment. The biofuels are therefore considered to be �CO2 neutral.� Researchers from the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco leaves. So that oil in tobacco leaves can be utilized as biofuels in future. Their paper was published in Plant Biotechnology Journal which is an online journal.
Vyacheslav Andrianov is a Ph.D. and assistant professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. According to him tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than other agricultural crops. But there is a hitch. When we try to extract oil, most of it is available in tobacco seeds. Statistics say that tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil per dry weight. Another snag is tobacco plants don�t produce seeds in copious amounts. It is about 600 kg of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues aim to find ways so that the tobacco leaves produce more oil.
A usual tobacco plant leave has 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil per dry weight. The researchers modified two genes of the plant. They are the diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The plants were engineered to over express one of the two genes. The alteration of DGAT gene resulted in about 5.8 percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves. It is around twice the amount of oil produced by and large. When the researcher went for the LEC2 gene modification it yielded around 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.
According to Dr. Andrianov, �Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren�t used in food production. We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves.�
Dr. Andrianov opines, �Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising �energy plant� platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production.�
Source : http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/biofuels-engineered-tobacco-plants/
It is not easy to make biofuels from food crops, mainly because it is controversial and it can raise the cost of corn and grain. This can influence the global food prices. On the other hand, making the alternative fuel from non-food crops or making it from waste wood is rather expensive. Next to that the process is chemical- and energy-intensive.
Now, a start-up company called Renmatix has the answer: use water to extract the sugars.
The process, which involves supercritical water, isn�t that exotic. In fact, it�s already used to decaffeinate coffee and extract hops to make beer. Supercritical water is basically water heated beyond its boiling point under high pressure. At that point, the water becomes something between a liquid and a gas.
The company puts wood chips in a chamber with the supercritical water. This breaks off some of the sugars, the ones with five carbon atoms. The wood is then sent to another chamber to release the remaining sugars. What�s left is lignin, a component of wood, which can be burned to provide energy for the whole process.
Once the sugars are extracted you can transform them into biofuels, which are largely ethanol. Ethanol can be mixed with gasoline which can power our cars. Ethanol is widely used in Brazil. There, Ethanol is made from sugar cane.
But that�s the problem: it�s a lot easier to get sugars from food, such as corn. Producing biofuels without stressing food supplies or putting more land under cultivation will be a tall order: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that the country produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, 16 billion gallons of which has to be cellulosic biofuel. The Renewable Fuels Association says the current production is about 13 billion gallons. That�s why companies such as Renmatix are looking for plant material which we don�t eat.
Source : http://www.tomorrowisgreener.com/water-converts-wood-to-biofuel/
The US Air Force is ready to switch to biofuels to help power its warplanes but the price of alternative fuels remains too high, military officials said.
