Sustainable Design Update

Termite + Cellulose = Biofuels!

Biofuel startup ZeaChem has begun building a biofuel pilot plant that will turn cellulosic feedstocks such as switch grass and wood chips into ethanol via a novel biomimetic process that uses microbes found in the guts of termites. It makes perfect sense to use the termite model to turn hard to digest cellulosic materials into simple sugars.  Termintes have been happily munching wood millions of years.  They have a proven process.

The company says the ethanol yields from the sugars of its cellulosic feedstocks are significantly higher than the yields from other biofuel production processes. ZeaChem says its process also has the potential to produce a plastic feedstock.

From Technology Review:

Bugging out: A pilot scale cellulose to ethanol plant is under construction by ZeaChem and partner Hazen Research in Golden, CO. The plant will soon pump out 250,000 gallons of fuel per year.

ZeaChem employs a hybrid approach that uses a combination of thermochemical and biological processes. It first uses acid to break the cellulose into sugars. Then, instead of fermenting the sugars into ethanol with yeast, as is typically done, the company feeds the sugars to an acetogen bacteria found in the guts of termites and other insects. The bacteria converts the sugar into acetic acid, which is then combined with hydrogen to form ethanol.

“It’s a little more complicated than a conventional process. It’s not the obvious, direct route, but there is a high yield potential,” says Jim McMillan of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.

In more conventional biofuel processes, much of the carbon content locked up in the sugars is lost to the formation of carbon dioxide when the sugars are fermented into ethanol. Converting the sugars into acetic acid and then ethanol, however, yields no carbon dioxide. As a result, this method has the potential to raise biofuel yields by as much as 50 percent, according to ZeaChem.

Via: Technology Review

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Carbon Capture DNA/Crystal Structure

UCLA chemists have created crystals that can capture carbon dioxide.  The crystals have a synthetic DNA like ability to encode information which is believed to be the key for carbon capture. This discovery could result in a new way to capture greenhouse gas emissions and could lead to cleaner energy and a host of new products – for example the structure could be used to create materials that convert carbon dioxide into new fuel!

From Green Design and Manufacturing:

“We created three-dimensional, synthetic DNA-like crystals,” said UCLA chemistry and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi. “We have taken organic and inorganic units and combined them into a synthetic crystal which codes information in a DNA-like manner. It is by no means as sophisticated as DNA, but it is certainly new in chemistry and materials science.”

“What we think this will be important for is potentially getting to a viable carbon dioxide-capture material with ultra-high selectivity,” said Yaghi. “Potentially, we could create a material that can convert carbon dioxide into a fuel, or a material that can separate carbon dioxide with greater efficiency.”

Yaghi worked with Hexiang “DJ” Deng, a UCLA graduate student of chemistry and biochemistry.

“DNA is a beautiful molecule that has a way to code for information,” Yaghi said. “How do you code information in a crystal in the same way that DNA does? DJ and I figured out a way to do this. The sequence of organic functionalities that decorates the pores of the crystals is most certainly a unique code. DJ has illustrated that one member of a series of materials he has made has 400 percent better performance in carbon dioxide capture than one that does not have the same code.”

More at:  Green Design and Manufacturing

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Photo: carbon-capture-crystals-cnsi.ucla

Jatropha & Jatropha Seeds

In Cambodia the Jatropha plant is a native species.  It can grow without pesticides and fertilizers and it is drought tolerant.

Jacam Energy Co., a joint venture between Cambodia and Japan, will begin proof of concept scale production of jatropha oil in October, raising production to an expected 5,000 liters per day for local consumption.

Jatropha can be used to make biodiesel and could be used to meet demands in rural electricity, river ferries and agricultural and construction machinery, said Chheuy Sophors, president of NCT Jacam.

The company began operations in August, with an investment of $400,000 in a factory in Kampong Speu province, following three years of experimentation. However, the company does not have its own jatropha plantation and would require 5,000 tons of the plant per year. Some 3 kilograms to 4 kilograms of jatropha are required for 1 liter of jatropha oil.

The oil can be bought for less than $1, per liter, equal to the current price of petroleum, but it lasts longer. It can be used by any machinery that uses petroleum. Cambodia already produces bio-ethanol from cassava, which can be mixed with gasoline.

“If we can produce [jatropha oil], especially to supply rural areas, first of all, our people will have employment and our country won’t need to import oil from outside,” said Sath Samy, secretary of state for the Ministry of Mines and Energy. “Or at least we can reduce imports, as we produce [oil] from jatropha.”

Jatropha is grown in many Asian countries, supplying markets in Europe and the US, where it has become popular as a green product helping reduce global warming.

However, in Cambodia, it is not grown in massive amounts and is generally only found growing along fences outside people’s homes.

More:  Khmer News

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New Source of BioDiesel

The Next Fuel Source

We have followed this development in biofuels for years. The MixAlco process we identified in 2006 as less expensive than corn ethanol plus it doesn’t compete with food because it is not agriculturally based.

The new energy company Terrabon uses the MixAlco process to convert garbage collected by their partner Waste Managment and converts it to a mix of alcohols that have the same power density as gasoline.

Ordinary bacteria found in salt marshes quickly and economically break down waste streams as diverse as municipal solid waste, farm residue and timber waste to form carboxylic acids. What good are carboxylic acids you ask? Well, these acids which include acetic acid (vinegar) can be easily converted into ketones and alcohols. The final products include high power density fuels that pack more punch than ethanol. Better yet, the fuel generated can interface with existing refineries and pipelines without modification.

From Technology Review:

Amid a profusion of new biofuels technologies, this one stands out because it will be relatively easy to scale up for producing millions of gallons of fuel, says James McMillan, the biochemical process R&D group manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO.

Most biofuels companies fall into one of two categories. Some use enzymes to break down biomass into simple sugars and a single organism to convert sugars into fuel, such as yeast. Others use high temperatures and pressure to break biomass down into basic chemical building blocks–carbon monoxide and hydrogen–which are then chemically processed into fuels. Terrabon has developed a process that combines the two. It uses a naturally occurring mixture of organisms to convert biomass, not into fuels, but into carboxylic acids. These can be converted into fuel and other chemicals using well-known chemical processes. Gary Luce, the company’s CEO, says Terrabon’s fuels can compete with petroleum-based fuels if prices are above $75 a barrel. (The price of oil is currently about $70 a barrel.)

The approach has an advantage over single-organism-based methods because the mixture of organisms used, collected from salt marshes, are adapted to survive in the wild. They don’t require the special sterile environments needed to prevent single-organism cultures from being contaminated, which brings down the cost of equipment.

More at TR

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