Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Video: Up Close and Personal with Stirling Energy's CSP. RenewableEnergyWorld.com
The Maricopa Solar project puts Stirling Energy Systems' SunCatcher to the test.
by Graham Jesmer, Video Producer
Published: June 21, 2010
Arizona, United States -- Just outside Phoenix, Arizona, sits a field of dishes reflecting the hot desert sun. Pulling up to the humming devices, installed by Stirling Energy Systems (SES) and Tessera Solar, the cars passing by on an adjacent road are dwarfed by their size.
This is the Maricopa Solar project, a 1.5-megawatt (MW) array of SunCatcher Systems (also known as the Stirling Dish Engine). In January NTR plc, which owns both SES and Tessera Solar, opened the plant after breaking ground just four months earlier.
Maricopa Solar is the first commercial project for the SunCatcher concentrating solar power (CSP) technology, which was designed and manufactured by SES. The SES SunCatcher is a 25-kilowatt solar power system that uses a 38-foot high, mirrored parabolic dish combined with an automatic tracking system to collect and focus the sun’s energy onto a Stirling engine to convert the solar thermal energy into grid quality electricity.
Read Full Story and Watch Video:
by Graham Jesmer, Video Producer
Published: June 21, 2010
Arizona, United States -- Just outside Phoenix, Arizona, sits a field of dishes reflecting the hot desert sun. Pulling up to the humming devices, installed by Stirling Energy Systems (SES) and Tessera Solar, the cars passing by on an adjacent road are dwarfed by their size.
This is the Maricopa Solar project, a 1.5-megawatt (MW) array of SunCatcher Systems (also known as the Stirling Dish Engine). In January NTR plc, which owns both SES and Tessera Solar, opened the plant after breaking ground just four months earlier.
Maricopa Solar is the first commercial project for the SunCatcher concentrating solar power (CSP) technology, which was designed and manufactured by SES. The SES SunCatcher is a 25-kilowatt solar power system that uses a 38-foot high, mirrored parabolic dish combined with an automatic tracking system to collect and focus the sun’s energy onto a Stirling engine to convert the solar thermal energy into grid quality electricity.
Read Full Story and Watch Video:
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
New Yeast Strain is Step Closer to Cellulosic Ethanol. Tonic.com
By David Bois | Tuesday, June 8, 2010 5:57 PM ET
Breakthrough yeast strain offers a move forward for efforts to make biofuels from a greater variety of non-food crops.
The promise of biofuels is genuine and sincere. Rather than taking carbon that's been fossilized for untold millions of years and sending it into our atmosphere the second we burn it, the manufacture and use of biofuels takes us much closer to greenhouse gas neutrality. Sure, the combustion of biofuels does produce carbon dioxide, but the plants from which the fuels are made remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere as they grow. Additionally, ethanol just so happens to burn cleaner as compared to petroleum based hydrocarbons.
Still, I know that I'm hardly alone in finding it more than a little perverse to divert perfectly good crops away from the food supply toward the manufacturing of ethanol. Corn and sugar cane are currently prized for the making of ethanol, as their sugars are easily accessible for conversion to fuel. Our best long term hopes are in the realm of cellulosic ethanol, made from more fibrous plant matter such as the stalks of the corn as well as such woodier, non-food plants as switchgrass. Switchgrass is particularly appealing due to it being a relatively low-effort crop which grows easily in a range of conditions, as well as to its high potential energy value.
So far, the challenges to cellulosic ethanol really taking off hinge on the effort (and by extension, the cost) required to get at the sugars that they contain. The additional effort required to make ethanol from fibrous plant material as compared to making it from corn pretty much doubles the cost. It's a stated goal of the federal government to make cellulosic ethanol much more cost-competitive, and ongoing research and development breakthroughs continue to bring these production costs down. And a just-announced finding by researchers at Indiana's Purdue University will no doubt help things along this path.
As PhysOrg has reported, an agricultural and bioengineering research team at Purdue has successfully genetically engineered a strain of yeast that is capable of converting the sugars contained in woodier plant materials such as corn stalks and switchgrass. An added and beneficial characteristic of the new strain of yeast is its resistance to acetic acid. Acetic acid is a common component of plant life and is given off along with the sugars, but it can hinder the fermentation activity that the yeast provides, slowing the conversion process and ultimately decreasing the yield of ethanol.
The Purdue team's research, currently published in the journal Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, is supported by funding from the US Department of Energy and will reportedly pursue even more improvements to the yeast's efficiency and resistance to chemical agents that slow the sugar-to-ethanol conversion process.
Read at-source:
Breakthrough yeast strain offers a move forward for efforts to make biofuels from a greater variety of non-food crops.
The promise of biofuels is genuine and sincere. Rather than taking carbon that's been fossilized for untold millions of years and sending it into our atmosphere the second we burn it, the manufacture and use of biofuels takes us much closer to greenhouse gas neutrality. Sure, the combustion of biofuels does produce carbon dioxide, but the plants from which the fuels are made remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere as they grow. Additionally, ethanol just so happens to burn cleaner as compared to petroleum based hydrocarbons.
Still, I know that I'm hardly alone in finding it more than a little perverse to divert perfectly good crops away from the food supply toward the manufacturing of ethanol. Corn and sugar cane are currently prized for the making of ethanol, as their sugars are easily accessible for conversion to fuel. Our best long term hopes are in the realm of cellulosic ethanol, made from more fibrous plant matter such as the stalks of the corn as well as such woodier, non-food plants as switchgrass. Switchgrass is particularly appealing due to it being a relatively low-effort crop which grows easily in a range of conditions, as well as to its high potential energy value.
So far, the challenges to cellulosic ethanol really taking off hinge on the effort (and by extension, the cost) required to get at the sugars that they contain. The additional effort required to make ethanol from fibrous plant material as compared to making it from corn pretty much doubles the cost. It's a stated goal of the federal government to make cellulosic ethanol much more cost-competitive, and ongoing research and development breakthroughs continue to bring these production costs down. And a just-announced finding by researchers at Indiana's Purdue University will no doubt help things along this path.
As PhysOrg has reported, an agricultural and bioengineering research team at Purdue has successfully genetically engineered a strain of yeast that is capable of converting the sugars contained in woodier plant materials such as corn stalks and switchgrass. An added and beneficial characteristic of the new strain of yeast is its resistance to acetic acid. Acetic acid is a common component of plant life and is given off along with the sugars, but it can hinder the fermentation activity that the yeast provides, slowing the conversion process and ultimately decreasing the yield of ethanol.
The Purdue team's research, currently published in the journal Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, is supported by funding from the US Department of Energy and will reportedly pursue even more improvements to the yeast's efficiency and resistance to chemical agents that slow the sugar-to-ethanol conversion process.
Read at-source:
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Giant Inflatable Airship Powered by Algae. AlternativeEnergy
June 1st, 2010
This summer, piloted by Captain Allan Judd, Bullet 580 will usher in the return of inflatable giant airships. The 235 ft long and 65ft diameter ship is covered with a type of Kevlar, a material 10 times-stronger than steel but only one sixteenth of an inch thick. An E-green design special costing £5.5million, this giant runs on algae – latest bio-fuel that can be developed from brackish and waste water.
Read Full Story
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sugar-hungry Yeast to Boost Biofuel Production. TheBioenergySite.com
Monday, March 29, 2010
UK - Engineering yeast to transform sugars more efficiently into alcohols could be an economically and environmentally sound way to replace fossil fuels, say scientists presenting at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh.
Dr Christian Weber and Professor Eckhard Boles from Frankfurt University, Germany, have worked out how to modify yeast cells so that they successfully convert a wider range of sugars from plant waste such as wheat and rice straw into alcohol that can be used as biofuel.
Bioalcohols produced by microbial fermentations are an example of second generation biofuels that use raw materials not used in food production.
Plant waste is available in large amounts and contains a mixture of complex sugars including hexoses and pentoses that can be fermented to alcohol.
"As these feedstocks represent the biggest portion of processing costs, we need rapid and efficient conversion of all sugars present. At the moment there is a lack of microbes that will efficiently convert both hexoses and pentoses into ethanol," said Dr Weber.
Bakers' yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is already used in the beverage industry to efficiently convert hexose sugars, such as glucose, into ethanol. By transferring genes from bacteria that naturally break down pentose, Dr Weber's team have engineered S. cerevisiae to successfully ferment pentose and hexose sugars.
"As pentoses represent a substantial part of the feedstock, the engineered yeast gives a much higher yield of ethanol for the same amount of feedstock," he said.
To enhance their biofuel potential even more, the yeast is being further modified to produce another bioalcohol - butanol instead of ethanol.
"Compared to ethanol, butanol shows superior properties as a potential biofuel."
It has a lower vapour pressure, ignites at a higher temperature and is less corrosive. Butanol could replace fossil fuels up to 100 per cent without modifying existing engines," said Professor Boles.
BUTALCO is a company started by Professor Boles together with chemist Dr Gunter Festel that is developing a special technology to modify the yeast for pentose use and butanol production. The company is currently finalising the technology to use both pentoses and hexoses for bioethanol manufacture. Eventually a whole process chain will be developed covering all the steps of bioalcohol production from engineering through to downstream processing.
TheBioenergySite News Desk
UK - Engineering yeast to transform sugars more efficiently into alcohols could be an economically and environmentally sound way to replace fossil fuels, say scientists presenting at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh.
Dr Christian Weber and Professor Eckhard Boles from Frankfurt University, Germany, have worked out how to modify yeast cells so that they successfully convert a wider range of sugars from plant waste such as wheat and rice straw into alcohol that can be used as biofuel.
Bioalcohols produced by microbial fermentations are an example of second generation biofuels that use raw materials not used in food production.
Plant waste is available in large amounts and contains a mixture of complex sugars including hexoses and pentoses that can be fermented to alcohol.
"As these feedstocks represent the biggest portion of processing costs, we need rapid and efficient conversion of all sugars present. At the moment there is a lack of microbes that will efficiently convert both hexoses and pentoses into ethanol," said Dr Weber.
Bakers' yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is already used in the beverage industry to efficiently convert hexose sugars, such as glucose, into ethanol. By transferring genes from bacteria that naturally break down pentose, Dr Weber's team have engineered S. cerevisiae to successfully ferment pentose and hexose sugars.
"As pentoses represent a substantial part of the feedstock, the engineered yeast gives a much higher yield of ethanol for the same amount of feedstock," he said.
To enhance their biofuel potential even more, the yeast is being further modified to produce another bioalcohol - butanol instead of ethanol.
"Compared to ethanol, butanol shows superior properties as a potential biofuel."
It has a lower vapour pressure, ignites at a higher temperature and is less corrosive. Butanol could replace fossil fuels up to 100 per cent without modifying existing engines," said Professor Boles.
BUTALCO is a company started by Professor Boles together with chemist Dr Gunter Festel that is developing a special technology to modify the yeast for pentose use and butanol production. The company is currently finalising the technology to use both pentoses and hexoses for bioethanol manufacture. Eventually a whole process chain will be developed covering all the steps of bioalcohol production from engineering through to downstream processing.
TheBioenergySite News Desk
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Masdar: Abu Dhabi's carbon-neutral city. BBC News
By Tom Heap
Presenter, Radio 4's Costing The Earth
The world's first zero-carbon city is being built in Abu Dhabi and is designed to be not only free of cars and skyscrapers but also powered by the sun.
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is the last place you would expect to learn lessons on low-carbon living, but the emerging eco-city of Masdar could teach the world.
Read Full Story:
Presenter, Radio 4's Costing The Earth
The world's first zero-carbon city is being built in Abu Dhabi and is designed to be not only free of cars and skyscrapers but also powered by the sun.
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is the last place you would expect to learn lessons on low-carbon living, but the emerging eco-city of Masdar could teach the world.
Read Full Story:
Monday, March 15, 2010
Biggie Smalls: Microbes and micro-crops shine at biofuels’ Big Dance. BiofuelsDigest.com
Today marks the beginning of biofuels’ three-day “Big Dance” – properly known as World Biofuels Markets - and 1400 delegates are gathering in Amsterdam to talk about big breakthroughs, big bucks and big scale. But the key to thinking big in biofuels, 2010 style, is thinking very, very small.Though the stakes could not be bigger, the pop stars that will be gliding across biofuels’ Red Carpet this week are so incredibly tiny it can take an electron microcrope to see them, as the latest designer e.coli, yeast and enzyme strains take a turn down the runway.
The microbes divide into three main camps – those that are used to capture sugars and oils for extraction and fuel conversion (a.g. microalgae, lemon); catalysts such as the enzymes produced by Genencor and Novozymes, and microbes that consume a feedstock and secrete a fuel (not completely unlike the cow, who consumes hay and emits methane, but in a far more elemental and fungible way than simple rumination). LS9, Amyris, Qteros and Joule Biotechnologie are among those who have such a “magic bug,” – by far, Joule’s is the most mysterious to date – but it is the only one who can make a fuel from carbon oxide and water, rather than a simple sugar.
Read Full Story
Friday, March 5, 2010
India Announces Coal Tax To Fund Renewable Energy Projects. ScientificAmerican
March 4, 2010
In a landmark announcement the Indian Finance Minister, in his annual Budget speech, put forward the proposal of setting of National Clean Energy Fund which would be constituted through tax lieved on coal usage in the country.
By: Mridul Chadha
In a landmark announcement the Indian Finance Minister, in his annual Budget speech, put forward the proposal of setting of National Clean Energy Fund which would be constituted through tax lieved on coal usage in the country. The quantum of tax would be INR 50 per ton of coal used, which would generate an annual revenue of around $600 million.
The announcement is extremely important and a major step in India’s endeavor to promote renewable energy infrastructure. India is heavily dependent on coal for power generation with 75% of the power generated coming from coal-fired power plants.
The National Clean Energy Fund would provide finance for the National Solar Mission through which India plans to install 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022. If implemented the project would potentially make India the largest producer of solar energy worldwide. The finances for such an enormous project has aways been a major hurdle. Ever since its announcement the government has been looking at various options to finance the project.
Read Full Story:
In a landmark announcement the Indian Finance Minister, in his annual Budget speech, put forward the proposal of setting of National Clean Energy Fund which would be constituted through tax lieved on coal usage in the country.
By: Mridul Chadha
In a landmark announcement the Indian Finance Minister, in his annual Budget speech, put forward the proposal of setting of National Clean Energy Fund which would be constituted through tax lieved on coal usage in the country. The quantum of tax would be INR 50 per ton of coal used, which would generate an annual revenue of around $600 million.
The announcement is extremely important and a major step in India’s endeavor to promote renewable energy infrastructure. India is heavily dependent on coal for power generation with 75% of the power generated coming from coal-fired power plants.
The National Clean Energy Fund would provide finance for the National Solar Mission through which India plans to install 20,000 MW of solar energy by 2022. If implemented the project would potentially make India the largest producer of solar energy worldwide. The finances for such an enormous project has aways been a major hurdle. Ever since its announcement the government has been looking at various options to finance the project.
Read Full Story:
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Norwegian Company Develops World’s Largest Wind Turbine. AlternativeEnergy
March 1st, 2010
As fossil fuels continue to diminish and climate change poses an ever-increasing threat, scientists around the world are searching for new and more efficient methods of generating energy. Wind energy is one of the more promising alternative energy sources and Norwegian scientists are currently in the development stages of what promises to be the world’s largest wind turbine. As if creating the biggest wind turbine in the world was not enough, it also floats. Current plans for the world’s largest wind turbine have the machine standing 533 feet tall.
The proposed rotor diameter of this machine is 475 feet. Obviously, these gargantuan dimensions make it difficult to imagine many places able to accommodate such a device. Fortunately, the floating design makes the turbine suitable for open ocean use.
In addition to being the world’s largest wind turbine, the proposed machine (which is to be built by the Norwegian company Sway), will also be the most powerful. A single floating turbine will be able to generate 10-megawatts to power more than 2,000 homes. These figures make this proposed new design at least three times more powerful than the existing wind turbines in use today.
Read Full Story
As fossil fuels continue to diminish and climate change poses an ever-increasing threat, scientists around the world are searching for new and more efficient methods of generating energy. Wind energy is one of the more promising alternative energy sources and Norwegian scientists are currently in the development stages of what promises to be the world’s largest wind turbine. As if creating the biggest wind turbine in the world was not enough, it also floats. Current plans for the world’s largest wind turbine have the machine standing 533 feet tall.
The proposed rotor diameter of this machine is 475 feet. Obviously, these gargantuan dimensions make it difficult to imagine many places able to accommodate such a device. Fortunately, the floating design makes the turbine suitable for open ocean use.
In addition to being the world’s largest wind turbine, the proposed machine (which is to be built by the Norwegian company Sway), will also be the most powerful. A single floating turbine will be able to generate 10-megawatts to power more than 2,000 homes. These figures make this proposed new design at least three times more powerful than the existing wind turbines in use today.
Read Full Story
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