Green Tech

A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas that was made from harvesting the naturally occurring gas produced from the decomposition of organic trash.

(Credit: The Linde Group)

Trash collection giant Waste Management and the Linde Group petroleum engineering firm have partnered to create a plant that makes liquefied natural gas (LNG) from landfill gas, both companies announced this week.

Linde designed and operates the plant which is located close to Waste Management's Altamont Landfill near Livermore, Calif.

"The opening of the world's largest landfill-gas-to-LNG plant right here in California is a milestone and a testament to our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Now that the technology has been proven, we look forward to seeing its adoption spread so more vehicles can run on garbage," Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement.

Contrary to what might be inferred from Adams' enthusiastic sound bite, the project is not the utopistic dream of incinerating any old trash in a DeLorean for fuel, nor has either company claimed this. What the project does show is an idea that reduces pollution in two ways. The renewable source for fuel is also a naturally occurring gas that would have otherwise released itself into the atmosphere.

Waste Management collects the gas that is produced from the naturally occurring decomposition of organic trash in its Livermore landfill. The Linde plant then purifies and processes that gas into LNG. The LNG is then used to fuel some of Waste Management's fleet for collecting trash and recycling. Those vehicles, of course, having been slightly modified so that they can run on LNG.

While the plant has only produced about 200,000 gallons since it started operating in September, it has the capacity to eventually produce 13,000 gallons a day or 4 million gallons a year. That would be enough to cover the fuel needs of 300 Waste Management vehicles used for garbage and recycling collection, and save about 30,000 tons of emissions per year, according to company statistics.

This is not the municipal collection giant's first foray into trash-to-energy tech. Waste Management has been distributing solar-powered trash compactors and investing in various projects geared at converting waste in usable energy in several different forms.

GET's 5W-30 G-Oil.

(Credit: Green Earth Technologies)

Green Earth Technologies (GET) announced Wednesday that its environmentally friendly motor oil for cars will soon be available on shelves across the U.S.

The manufacturer of the biodegradable, carbon neutral motor oil made in part from the animal fat of beef slaughter byproducts has been waiting on certification from the American Petroleum Institute before selling its G-Oil to the public.

G-Oil has received API starburst certification, a symbol put on a product's packaging to signify it meets specific standards and is recommended for use by leading vehicle manufacturers. GET's car oil was additionally granted the API service symbol donut, a seal signifying an oil product has "energy-conserving properties in a standard test in comparison to a reference oil."

Until recently, GET has only been selling a 2-cycle G-Oil and a 4-cycle 10W-30 G-Oil for use in small-motor things like lawn mowers and tractors.

Now that the API approval has come, GET, which will be showcasing new products at the AAPEX show in Las Vegas next week, says consumers will begin to see its G-Oil motor oil for cars and trucks at leading national chains. It already began selling its product at National Auto Stores, a Pennsylvania-based chain, as of October 1.

The announcement is not just good news for a company. If the majority of the general public starts buying motor oil that biodegrades rather than taints groundwater, it could have a meaningful impact on the environment. Used motor oil from a single oil change that is dumped into the ground can contaminate about 1 million gallons of fresh water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But, of course, the motor oil has to work well with your car.

While the International Motor Sports Association's American Le Mans Series has adopted G-Oil as its official motor oil of choice, the real test will be whether or not the American driving public and car enthusiasts like how it performs in their cars.

While no formal announcement has been made, it's likely a deal is in the works with the retailers already carrying G-Oil for small motors. This would include chains like Amazon.com, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and True Value, among others.

Research on nuclear energy and hydrogen has yielded what backers say is a technology that could replace U.S. oil imports with biofuels made from agricultural by-products.

Scientists at Idaho National Laboratory have been working for the past year and a half on a process to convert biomass, such straw or crop residue, into liquid fuels at a far higher efficiency than existing cellulosic ethanol technologies.

A scarce resource for fuel?

(Credit: Idaho National Laboratory)

Rather than one single development, the technology--named bio-syntrolysis--ties together multiple processes, but it has electrolysis, or splitting water to make hydrogen, at is starting point. When combined with a carbon-free electricity source, the approach could deliver a carbon-neutral biofuel, according to models done at INL which has done research for decades in nuclear energy.

Bio-syntrolysis is one of a dizzying number of technologies being developed with the hopes of replacing gasoline, although none have successfully been done at scale. Researchers at INL recognize there remain technical barriers, but its recent computer models show that the technique has better potential than today's biofuel processes.

The key advantage is that bio-syntrolysis would extract far more energy from available biomass than existing methods, said research engineer Grant Hawkes. Using traditional ethanol-making techniques, about 35 percent of the carbon from wood chips or agricultural residue ends up in the liquid fuel. By contrast, the bio-syntrolysis method would convert more than 90 percent of that carbon into a fuel, he said.

"That means if you gather up a kilogram of biomass from a field, you're going to get two and half times the liquid fuel from bio-syntrolysis than you would from cellulosic ethanol. If biomass is a precious commodity, this way you'll get more out of it," Hawkes said.

An often-quoted Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy study (click for PDF) estimated that the U.S. produces enough biomass to meet 30 percent of the country's liquid fuel. INL researchers say the higher productivity of its technology would cover more like 60 percent, nearly as much as the oil that the U.S. imports.

"This is the only process available that will give us all the liquid fuel we currently need that's carbon neutral with the all the biomass that's available," he said.

Although it's a compelling vision, there are a number of technical hurdles to making bio-syntrolysis commercially viable and environmentally beneficial.

To reduce carbon emissions significantly over other biomass-to-liquid processes, the INL technology requires a lot of carbon-free electricity--1,000 megawatts of electricity would yield enough 25,000 barrels of fuel a day, enough for almost one million people, according to INL models. A full-size nuclear reactor could produce 1,000 megawatts, but even large-scale wind farms or solar plants are substantially smaller.

The approach also relies on tying together different technologies, some of which are relatively immature in terms of commercial deployment. Making familiar biofuel processes cost effective is hard enough: after years of research and pilot projects, ethanol from wood chips or grasses still isn't produced at commercial scale.

Innovation in integration
Hawkes coined the term bio-syntrolysis to represent the combination of technologies researchers have been working with. To make a liquid fuel, they are using biomass to make a synthetic fuel via electrolysis of water.

Here's how it would work: a high-temperature electrolyzer would split steam into oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen would be fed to a biomass gasifier, a machine that heats agriculture waste at high temperatures to produce synthesis gas, a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. That synthesis gas, along with the hydrogen from the electrolyzer, would be fed to a refiner to make liquid fuels that could replace gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.

A schematic of how carbon-neutral biofuel can be produced using a combination of existing technologies.

(Credit: Idaho National Laboratory)

The biggest technology breakthrough in this design is the high-temperature electrolysis, which originally came from a program to study how nuclear reactors could be used to make hydrogen. But hydrogen-powered vehicles face a number of obstacles, including on-board storage and the infrastructure to cleanly produce and to distribute hydrogen.

By contrast, if the hydrogen was used to make hydrocarbon fuels, they could be distributed through the existing channels and be used with existing autos, including hybrid-electric vehicles.

The jump from hydrogen research to biofuels happened when Hawkes thought to make biomass the heat source for INL's high-temperature electrolysis, rather than the heat from a nuclear reactor. By making that switch, the electrolyzer can operate on biomass and electricity alone, rather than rely on a nuclear reactor.

"We feel each that each one of these technologies is individually proven but nobody has ever taken them and hooked them together to make one process," said Hawkes.

There are some commercially available biomass gasifiers and a few facilities turning synthesis gas into liquid fuel using coal as a feedstock. But coal-to-liquids has a high carbon footprint, even compared with gasoline, said Hawkes. If a renewable or carbon-free source, such as hydro power, can be used through bio-syntrolysis, the resulting fuel would have very low emissions, he said.

Storing hydrogen on plants
So far, INL researchers have done experiments using available commercial products and they have modeled the overall efficiency on computer. To build a high-temperature electrolyzer, they have purchased commercial fuels cells and modified them to work in reverse, so they produce hydrogen and oxygen from electricity.

"There is no need for any great discovery but there is a need for development of materials and electrolyzers and just the will the put all the different sources together," said Steve Herring, a research fellow at Idaho National Labs.

The projected cost of the fuel would be $2.50 a gallon to produce, which is not cheaper than today's gasoline. But the primary advantage is the fuel is domestically sourced, low-carbon, and available at a predictable price, Herring said. One of the rationales for the technology is that biomass to make fuel will become a scarce commodity, making techniques that can squeeze more energy from existing crops more compelling.

INL researchers imagine that a single location to collect biomass, run the gasifier and the electrolyzer. Fuel could be refined on site or shipped to existing facilities. The ash from the gasifier would contain many soil nutrients, such as potassium, that could be redistributed onto the fields that the biomass was collected from.

Why not simply use the hydrogen from the electrolyzer in fuel-cell vehicles? Hawkes and Herring said that the technical limits on hydrogen right now make this an approach that could be deployed without having to wait for technical breakthroughs in hydrogen vehicles.

"It's our observation that the best way to store hydrogen is to hook it onto a carbon atom from biomass now and make it a hydrocarbon fuel," said Hawkes.

(Credit: Invest Maldives/Republic of Maldives)

The Republic of Maldives has signed a partnership with a tech company to develop biochar for its soils, both parties announced this week.

Biochar, a method of carbon capture and storage, is typically produced by heating biomass in a kiln until it turns into a manmade charcoal. That biochar can then be buried to enrich soil for agriculture. In some cases, biochar can be used as fuel.

The deal with U.K.-based Carbon Gold is part of the Maldives' plans to be carbon-neutral by 2020.

With the help of Carbon Gold, the Maldives will manufacture biochar from woody biomass, including coconut shells, for use in its own soil. As part of the deal, Carbon Gold will also launch an informational campaign directed at Maldivians on the benefits of using biochar rather than imported fertilizers to enhance soil quality for agriculture.

"The Maldives is already adversely affected by climate change so I warmly welcome this relationship with Carbon Gold. Biochar has a crucial role in helping us achieve carbon neutral status as well as providing an economic and environmental boost to our people," Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed said in a statement.

Though not a very powerful player on the global carbon stage, the Republic of Maldives is significant for being at the front line of climate change. If the Earth warms and seas rise as predicted, scientists believe the Indian Ocean archipelago country will be the first to go under water.

(Credit: Royal Society)

Geoengineering is not a last resort, but the next necessary step to recalibrate the Earth's climate unless carbon emissions are significantly reduced in the near future, the Royal Society, the U.K.'s national academy of sciences, announced Tuesday.

"It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases," John Shepherd, chair of the Royal Society's geoengineering study and a professor of Earth system science at the University of Southampton, said on behalf of the group.

The report "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty" (PDF) urged carbon emissions reduction as the primary means of halting climate change. But it looked at geoengineering--engineering the environment on a large scale to purposely manipulate the world's climate--very seriously.

In past years, geoengineering has been thought of an as option of last resort, but the Royal Society asserted that some of the safer geoengineering techniques, like aggressively planting forests, could be implemented currently in conjunction with carbon reduction efforts.

Since geoengineering has the potential to affect people on a global scale, the group further recommended that an international organization like the U.N. Commission for Sustainable Development begin developing policies and a means for resolving anticipated geoengineering political conflicts.

"Assuming that acceptable standards for effectiveness, safety, public acceptance and cost were established, why should appropriate geoengineering options not be added to the portfolio of options that society will need and may wish to use to combat the challenges posed by climate change?" said the report.

With that in mind the group evaluated the safety, expense, effectiveness, and quickness of deployment for projects falling under two main classes of geoengineering: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar-radiation management (SRM).

CDR, efforts to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, included things like afforestation, encouraging plankton growth, and carbon capture and storage in the form of burying carbon-rich biomass or using biochar for fuel.

The SRM suggestions for manipulating the Earth so that it absorbs less solar radiation included more seemingly far-out options like painting all roofs white to reflect sunlight, placing thousands of space mirrors in near-Earth orbits to reflect sunlight, and spraying aerosols into the stratosphere.

The group said it generally favored CDR projects over SRM because they involved processes closer to natural occurrences, while the side effects of SRM projects are unknown and therefore more dangerous.

When it comes to converting plants into usable energy, biofuels garner the bulk of attention and dollars. But there's a growing number of people using biomass for heating.

One company that's betting on continued growth is New Hampshire-based WoodPellets.com, which on Monday plans to disclose that it has raised $11 million to expand its online home wood pellet delivery service.

Click on this image for a photo gallery of assorted green home retrofits, including a pellet stove.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)

With the money, the 3-year-old e-commerce company plans to expand its distribution network to more places in the U.S. (right now, it works mainly in the Northeast) and to develop ways to do bulk shipments of pellets. Investors are venture capital firm 406 Ventures and private equity company Monitor Clipper Partners.

Pellets are made by compressing sawdust into small pellets that look a little bit like pet food for rabbits or guinea pigs. The appeal of heating by burning pellets is that it can be cheaper than heating with oil, it's a domestic fuel source, and it's less polluting, say proponents. There are currently 800,000 Americans that heat all or partially with pellet stoves, according to the Pellet Fuels Institute.

The fuel can be up to half as expensive as heating with oil and the payback on a stove, with small ones starting at about $2,000, can be two to five years, according to WoodPellets.com. (Disclosure: I am a customer.)

On the environmental front, pellet stoves are typically more efficient and burn more cleanly than older wood-burning stoves. The Pellet Fuels Institute claims that burning biomass in efficient stoves or boilers is carbon neutral since the growth of trees will absorb the carbon dioxide emissions from burning the wood.

The environmental picture isn't perfect, though. The level of particulate matter from burning pellets is higher than burning natural gas and oil. But particulars per million BTUs is lower than an EPA-certified wood stove and dramatically lower than burning wood in a fireplace or an uncertified wood stove, according to the EPA.

The source of wood is typically lumber mills, which sell sawdust for different wood products. Although there are well-documented cases of deforestation around the world, Strimling said forests in the U.S. are generally well managed, as landowners and forest management services have an interest in sustainable growth.

On the policy side, biomass heating this year received a significant policy boost--buyers are able to get a 30 percent tax credit on the purchase of stoves.

WoodPellets.com expects it can grow quickly simply by serving existing customers, many of whom buy pellets from big-box retail stores or from stove vendors. To buy pellets online at WoodPellets.com, consumers put their ZIP code in and get options for buying different types of pellets and for scheduling delivery.

The company developed the logistics software to track the availability of pellets for consumers in different regions from several different suppliers and different storage locations--which is "not an easy math problem," said Strimling.

Right now, pellets are delivered in plastic bags--a stove could burn through a bag a day. WoodPellets.com is looking to develop a system where pellets are delivered in bulk from a truck and stored in a hopper in a basement or garage.

Another issue that has choked growth of biomass heating--and spiked the price of pellets--in the past is availability of fuel, but a number of new mills have come online in the past few years. According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study, 1.1 million metric tons of pellets were produced in 2003, 4.2 million tons in 2008, and as much as 6.2 million tons in 2009.

An ancient technique to fertilize soil by creating charcoal from plant waste is being revived to tackle some of today's environmental problems.

The latest company to pursue manmade charcoal, called biochar, is Biochar Systems, which has developed a biochar-making machine that can be pulled by a pickup truck. Two customers--a North Carolina farm and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management--will be begin testing the units this fall.

The unit, called the Biochar 1000, is designed to convert woody biomass, such as agricultural or forestry waste, into biochar, a black, porous, and fine-grained charcoal that can be used as a fertilizer. It uses pyrolysis--slowly burning biomass in a low-oxygen chamber--to treat 1,000 pounds of biomass per hour, yielding 250 pounds of biochar.

The Biochar 1000 converts agricultural wastes to charcoal, which is then added to soil, a process that enriches soil and removes carbon from air.

(Credit: EcoTechnologies Group)

There still isn't a well established market for selling biochar, but there's growing interest among researchers in the process as a way to cut greenhouse gas concentrations. The United Nations has proposed classifying biochar as a carbon credit for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

When forestry or agricultural waste are converted into biochar and put into the soil, the carbon that would have been released through decomposition is held in the soil for hundreds or potentially thousands of years, say proponents.

A number of companies have formed to either create fertilizer or use modified machines to convert biomass into a liquid fuel such as methanol. The first U.S. biochar conference was held in Boulder, Colorado, two weeks ago, organized by the International Biochar Initiative industry group.

Tons of green waste
Biochar Systems, a joint venture created by BioChar Engineering and EcoTechnologies Group, has developed a mobile machine targeted at landowners or other organizations that generate a lot of "green waste," such as agricultural producers, nurseries, or land managers. The biochar can be used on-site as a soil amendment or moved and sold as a fertilizer, according to Fernando Migliassi, chief corporate development officer at EcoTechnologies Group.

The Bureau of Land Management will use one unit, which weighs 4,000 pounds and is 12 feet long, seven feet high, and five feet wide, to improve soil that has been damaged by mining, according to Biochar Systems. The North Carolina Farm Center for Innovation & Sustainability will use test a unit as well to see how agricultural waste can be converted into fertilizer.

The Biochar Systems Biochar 1000 costs $100,000 and is capable of turning out 1,000 tons of biochar a year.

Another unit will be tested by the Colorado State Forest Service to thin forests and treat the tons of wood infested by pine beetle into a soil amendment. Thinning forests manually is very expensive but the biochar machine could be a cheaper route.

"If this is feasible, it would allow us to manage a greater portion of forested lands that right now aren't cost effective," Joseph Duda, forest management supervisor for the Colorado State Forest Service told ClimateWire.

The U.S. produces 368 million tons of forest product waste a year and another 60 million tons a year of wood infested by the pine beetle, according to BioChar Engineering. Having a mobile unit reduces overall pollution as biomass doesn't need to be hauled for treatment at a centralized plant, according to the company.

But although it has potential to mitigate climate change, some people have warned against relying heavily on biochar as a carbon offset. The impact of biochar on land may have changed since the time thousands of years ago when people in Amazon region created charcoal, called terra preta.

"But despite its astounding potential, caution is warranted in implementing biochar on any sizeable scale. Though re-creating terra preta sounds simple, recent research suggests that modern-day soils may respond less well to the treatment and that the carbon may escape sooner than anticipated. On these questions alone, all of the evidence is not in," according to a recent editorial in the journal Nature Reports Climate Change.

BioSolar has filed a patent application for a new type of backing for photovoltaic cells.

A backsheet is the bottom layer of a photovoltaic cell used by solar manufacturers to protect the cell from moisture, temperature fluctuations, and the elements.

BioSolar's BioBacksheet-A, a new addition to the company's line of backsheets, consists of a sheet of aluminum foil sandwiched between two layers of polymer made from renewable plant sources. The aluminum used in the sheets is also 100 percent recyclable.

The company announced that it was developing plant-based plastics for solar-cell components, which included the use of cotton and castor beans, in August 2008.

BioSolar's biomass backsheets for solar cells will work with existing industrial manufacturing machines.

(Credit: BioSolar)

The BioBacksheet-A can meet the requirement of thin-film photovoltaics "to have a water vapor transmissions rate of nearly zero," according to BioSolar.

"BioSolar's goal is to reduce the costs of solar modules and make solar energy greener by replacing petroleum-based module components with bio-based materials made from renewable plant sources," David Lee, CEO of BioSolar, said in a statement.

The company is also trying to make it easy for interested solar manufacturers to make the switch from petroleum-based components. BioSolar's rolls of biomass backsheets can be used with existing industrial machines, according to the company.

LiveFuels lets aquatic life do the work when it comes to converting algae into oil.

(Credit: LiveFuels)

LiveFuels, an algae biofuel start-up, announced a pilot project on Thursday to grow and harvest algae biofuels in open waters with the help of naturally occurring activities in the ecosystem.

The approach is different than other attempts at algae biofuels, in which algae is grown and harvested in a closed environment.

The LiveFuels algae pilot farm, set to cover 45 acres of saltwater ponds in Brownsville, Texas, will consist of algae already native to the region.

Algae is known to bloom in salt water that has been polluted by the lakes, rivers, and streams that feed into it and are tainted with agricultural chemical waste runoff.

Algae blooms, when in excess seen as detrimental to the health of an ecosystem due to the oxygen-depleting "dead zones" they create, will actually be purposely replicated in LiveFuels' 45-acre test area to determine if these commonly occurring blooms from pollution could be harnessed for biofuels.

The company plans to encourage algae growth with the additive of agricultural-waste products. Then, instead of retrieving the algae itself to be converted into biofuels through a mechanical process, it plans to let algae-eating fish do the conversion.

Once the algae-eating fish plump enough, LiveFuels plans to catch them and process them for their oil in the same way people used to harvest whale blubber for oil. Only instead of using the oil for lamps, this harvested oil could fuel cars and trucks, according to LiveFuels.

LiveFuels, which has so far garnered $10 million in funding, has filed 10 patents with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on its approach to growing and harvesting algae in nature for the purpose of biofuels. The pilot algae farm-fishery will be used to test which breeds of algae-consuming fish work best.

"By harnessing the power of natural systems, we hope to achieve what has eluded the biofuels community for decades: cost-effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability," LiveFuels CEO Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones said in a statement.

If the pilot project works, LiveFuels plans to apply the technique to an area of coastal Louisiana where the Mississippi River is particularly plagued by fertilizer runoff.

By harnessing the agricultural waste currently polluting the river to create algae blooms, the company hopes to both grow their algae and schools of fish for biofuels, and reduce the amount of agricultural-waste pollution that is finding its way into the ocean.