A pair of videos that show how to make Biodiesel
Thursday, April 5, 2007
On Location: Jatropha Biodiesel in India
On Location: Jatropha Biodiesel in India is a very interesting introduction to biodiesel in transportation. The presentation is centered on the problems of transportation in India, and relies on video clips of Indian traffic.
Of especial interest is the Jatropha plant which is a prodigious oil producing plant. One of the states of India has embarked on a plan to introduce massive plantings of Jatropha so they can harvest the seeds and create a home grown biodiesel industry.
Philippines President Pushes Jatropha Planting for Biodiesel
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
The Biopact
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Description:
The Biopact is a Brussels-based connective of European and African citizens who strive towards the establishment of a mutually beneficial 'energy relationship' based on biofuels and bioenergy (see our goals). For the time being, Biopact is an entirely volunteer effort, but the young organisation is working towards formalisation under a non-profit structure because of growing interest in its activities and its vision.
The group's main activities currently consist of building a web presence, delivering basic consulting services to the media and to bioenergy projects in the South, and of networking with other organisations.
Biopact unites specialists in several disciplines related to bioenergy seen in the broader context of development and trade: an economic anthropologist, a bio-engineer, a professor in chemistry, a tropical agronomist, a sociologist with expertise on Central-Africa, and a development economist.
Getting the price right for solar
The photovoltaic panel industry is looking to decrease the price of the products. So long as their price is uncompetitive related to the entrenched technologies solar power will remain a niche business. If solar power is to fulfill its destiny in helping us clean our environment and have a clean earth, the price must become competitive.
"We have to cut the cost in half of where we are today, and we can do that with a lot of the technologies and solutions available to us today," said Charlie Gay, vice president and general manager of Applied Material's solar business group, while speaking at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy 2.0 conference last month.
...Many solar manufacturers make their products out of silicon and use machines similar to those used in the chip industry, but solar panel makers won't be benefiting from Moore's Law, a phenomenon in the chip industry where power increases as cost go down.
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U.S. cities hot for hydrogen
This article starts with a demonstration hydrogen plant in Las Vegas built by Air Products. Apparently the plant is becoming a popular spot for visitors who they hope will see the hydrogen economy in operation and bring their excitement home with them.
The article discusses that the most common use for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles today is evaluation by municipal departments. This is like the evaluation programs conducted for electric vehicles over the last couple decades.
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Full steam ahead for Nevada solar project
The Nevada Solar One power plant is essentially a tea kettle, just one that happens to take up 300 acres and can provide enough power for 15,000 homes. The plant, which will start to generate electricity for nearby Las Vegas in April, consists of approximately 184,000 mirrors arranged in long, parabolic arrays that focus the sun's energy on a receiver--a metal tube filled with oil that's encased in specialized glass--from German conglomerate Schott.
...The power generated by the plant, minus any subsidies, may not get to parity with electricity generated from conventional plants until around 2020, added Nikolaus Benz, a development manager for Schott.
...Schott, for example, has come up with a new coating for the glass tube on the receiver that lets 96 percent of the solar radiation through to the oil-filled metal tube sealed inside the glass.
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With Cellulosic Ethanol, There Is No Food Vs. Fuel Debate According To MSU Scientist
A criticism of most methods to produce biofuels like Ethanol and Biodiesel is that the typical source material is some kind of food crop. In the U.S. the typical ethanol producer starts with corn. Yup, corn, the stuff we'd be eating if it weren't being made into ethanol. Apparently the ethanol demand has caused a huge growth in planting corn this year. And it has caused food riots in Mexico because the price of corn has risen so high the people can no longer afford tortillas.
Bruce Dale, an MSU chemical engineering and materials science professor, has used life cycle analysis tools, which include agricultural data and computer modeling, to study the sustainability of producing biofuels - fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel that are made from renewable resources.
...Having studied ethanol for more than 30 years, Dale said that as the country moves toward large-scale cellulosic ethanol production, the yield of so-called energy crops - grasses and woody materials grown for their energy content - also will increase dramatically.
..."The evidence indicates that large-scale biofuel production will increase, not decrease, world food supplies by making animal feed production much more efficient," Dale said.
The core reasoning is that there are ways of producing ethanol and biodiesel from sources other than food crops.
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