Displaying items by tag: Biofuel

US: Geocycle has planted its first crop of perennial native grasses at its Dorchester, South Carolina site. The supplier says that it is trialling the crop as an alternative fuel and future biofuel for the US Southeast region. It sowed giant reed, miscane, miscanthus and switchgrass, which it praised for their ‘low establishment and upkeep costs’ and demonstrated yields of between 12t/acre and 20t/acre.

The company said, “The team is committed to actively participating in the communities’ and state’s bioenergy projects, which aim at developing the circular economy and help achieve net zero future.”

Poland: Sweden’s NextFuel AB plans to launch NextFuel, a briquette fuel made from elephant grass, at the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) taking place in Katowice. The company says that its product is cheaper than and oil and coal in most markets and could be used to replace some or all of the coal normally used by a cement plant, coal plant or a steel plant. Its first operational plant is based in Austria.

The first NextFuel project is expected to reduce the CO₂ footprint of a cement factory in East Africa by 105% compared to the coal it is using at present. The cement plant also expects to cut its energy costs in half by using NextFuel instead of coal imported from South Africa. It will be able to grow Elephant Grass, the source of the fuel, next to the plant to reduce its fuel transportation costs.

Elephant Grass is a perennial tropical plant that can produce several crops in a year. Once the grass has been harvested, NextFuel says its technology requires ‘very little’ energy to produce a briquette. The company asserts that due to a quick carbon cycle and the storage of carbon, less CO₂ is released into the atmosphere when the fuel is burned than was captured from the atmosphere a few months earlier when the grass was growing. NextFuel says that annually the carbon cycle becomes negative.

After the grass is harvested, it is dried and fed into a patented reactor. This is a rotary drum, indirectly heated and operated with a low oxygen atmosphere. While inside that drum, volatile elements are separated from the grass, and the physical properties together with the energy content are transformed in less than 30 minutes. The reactor also drives out the off-gases from the grass. They are used as surplus energy to produce heat or electricity to power the facility. After the reactor is finished, the fuel is densified and turned into briquettes that are cooled. These briquettes are ready to use directly as a CO₂ negative fossil fuel substitute both in industrial and electricity production.

NextFuel plans to scale by licensing its technology to companies all around the world.

South Korea: Researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have created a waterless toilet system that can convert human waste into biofuels. The system is part of a new outdoor creative laboratory, called Science Walden Pavillion, that opened to the public on 25 May 2016.

"Our ultimate goal is not only for the new toilet system to save water and operational costs for wastewater treatment plants, but for us to establish an ecosystem that supports technology innovation and drives economic diversification where human waste literally has a financial value," said Professor Jaeweon Cho, Director of Science Walden Pavillion.

The waterless toilet system uses a biological process to break down human waste into a dehydrated odourless compost-like material. It is then transferred to a digestion tank, containing thousands of different microbes. The microbes inside the tank biodegrade the powdered human manure to generate carbon dioxide and methane. Using high pressure and a membrane system, carbon dioxide is extracted to culture green algae for biofuel while methane is stored for later use as a heating fuel.

The project aims to reduce urbanisation's negative footprint on ecosystems by safely converting human waste into viable renewable energy, possibly with a monetary value.

If this experiment succeeds, the team plans to expand its use of the waterless toilet system and microbial energy production system in real life. This project has been carried out in collaboration with YATOO, Art Center Nabi, Paju Typography Institute and Hankuk Engineering Consultants in South Korea.

Paraguay: Industria Nacional del Cemento (INC) is looking to diversify its fuels mixture to include other types of oils and possibly biofuels. The company has signed an agreement with the engineering faculty at Asuncion National University (FIUNA) to certify the use of biofuels. INC's president Jorge Mendez believes that, from 2016, INC may start using a variety of fuels, following a US$50m investment in its furnace. This could save US$22m/yr, but it will not necessarily mean that biofuel will be used.