Jatropha seed oil touted for jets.

Photo provided by Mission New Energy Jatropha seeds yield as much as 40 percent oil that has been touted for use in diesel applications and refined into aviation-quality jet fuel.

A plant that some have scorned as a predator might well turn out to be part of the answer to rising fuel bills for consumers.

Jatropha curcas, a poisonous, semi-evergreen shrub that can grow as high as 20 feet, produces seeds laden with oil that backers say is an ideal biofuel. One company that maintains 194,000 acres of the plant under cultivation in India is looking to expand farming, and fuel production, in the United States.

Mission NewEnergy, an Australian-based firm with operations in India and Europe and a recently opened branch in San Antonio, says it can deliver refined Jatropha oil at about $40 to $50 a barrel. The firm’s U.S. entry also included listing its shares on Nasdaq, complementing its Australian Stock Exchange presence.

Mixed with traditional jet fuel, Jatropha oil already has been used on test flights by Continental Airlines, Air New Zealand and other carriers. Once approved for general use, Jatropha could help cut one of the aviation industry’s highest costs.

Jatropha can provide “environmentally responsible fuel without compromising the food supply, so we can help the Earth while helping the public,” said James Garton, president of the firm’s U.S. branch. “That means we can finally reverse the skyrocketing prices at the pump and dependence on traditional sources of oil.”

The race for the next big thing in biofuels is attracting serious investor attention. Jatropha is seen as a leading candidate along with such rivals as algae and camelina, a flowering flaxlike plant that, like Jatropha, can grow in marginal agricultural lands.

Jatropha has been touted as among the most promising biofuel sources, but it is not without problems.

In a study released last month, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at the efficiency of Jatropha and more than a dozen other proposed biofuel sources. Jatropha scored well as a fuel source and because the plant’s husks, shells and meal could be used as fertilizer and other industrial purposes. Some of that gain, however, is offset by production and refining costs and the need for land to cultivate the plant.

“You can’t say a biofuel is good or bad – it depends on how it is produced and processed, and that’s part of the debate that hasn’t been brought forward,” James Hileman, who teaches in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said in a statement accompanying the survey, which was published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Mission NewEnergy said it is linked to its producers via contract farming agreements in more than 15,000 villages across five Indian states. Those operations, the firm said, are providing sustained employment for more than 140,000 previously impoverished farmers. It takes three to four years to get maximum yield from a Jatropha plant, with a 20-year productive life estimated for most plants.

Using a biofuel such as Jatropha in an industry such as aviation has its appeals.

At the end of May, two industry executives briefed congressional staffers on a report about the use of biofuels in the U.S. aviation industry. Speaking with The Washington Times by phone after the event, the executives noted the need for biofuels as a way to help meet the rising cost of jet fuel. A 1-cent increase in the price of jet fuel rings up an extra $175 million in costs for U.S. airlines, reports indicate.

“Fuel is our single biggest cost. Today, fuel costs 47 percent more than it did last year. That’s a pretty big spike for your single largest cost,” said Keith Loveless, vice president of corporate and legal affairs for Seattle-based Alaska Airlines. “We are looking for all sorts of alternatives,” he added.

Added Billy M. Glover, environment and aviation policy vice president at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, “It’s not a matter of one [biofuel] feedstock being better than others. It’s going to take a portfolio of feedstocks, a portfolio of processing methods. … [T]o get to scale and make biofuels viable, you need feedstock options and a variety of processing methods.”

Jatropha is being developed in Ghana, Tanzania, Peru and other nations such as India; a common denominator is the effort to grow the plant in areas where other crops aren’t easily cultivated. Some environmentalists have said Jatropha has been overhyped and that optimal oil production requires initial irrigation and fertilizer that otherwise would be used for food production, a condition supporters say would affect only the short term.

Government officials in the southern African nation of Namibia late last month put the brakes on plans for large-scale Jatropha plantations in the country’s northeast, citing the need for more study on the potential disruptive impact on food cultivation, landownership patterns and a loss of access to communal property.

Patrick M. O’Brien, a retired executive of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service who is now consulting for Mission NewEnergy, said Jatropha could find a domestic production base in an area extending “from Texas around the Gulf Coast up to South Carolina,” although not too far north because of frost concerns. The areas where Jatropha could be grown domestically include some where farmers might reap profits.WASHINGTON TIMES

Agricultural giant Tyson Foods Inc. and fuel developer Syntroleum Corp. will announce Monday that they have successfully opened a plant that makes diesel from chicken fat and leftover food grease.

But they say their new venture won’t survive unless Congress gives them a hefty tax break, an argument that many other alternative energy projects are also making.

A raw-materials check at the Tyson-Syntroleum alternative-diesel plant.

Tyson and Syntroleum say they’ve begun in recent weeks to make diesel and jet fuel from chicken fat, beef tallow and a range of greases and oils at a plant they’ve built in Geismar, La., south of Baton Rouge. The raw materials are leftovers from Tyson’s meat-processing plants and other food-processing factories and restaurants.

The Louisiana refinery has the capacity to produce 75 million gallons of fat-based fuel annually—making it tiny by oil-industry standards but among the bigger alternative-fuel plants in the U.S.

Buyers include oil companies mandated by federal law to mix renewable fuel into their conventional diesel, the companies say, though they wouldn’t identify the purchasers, citing confidentiality agreements. The U.S. Air Force confirmed that it has contracted to buy about 40,000 gallons for testing the fuel for potential use in planes.

The companies contend that the fuel won’t be economically viable unless Congress restores a $1-a-gallon federal tax credit that used to go to companies that mixed alternative fuels into petroleum-based diesel. That break expired at the end of last year, when the $170 million Louisiana plant was under construction.

Had Syntroleum known Congress would let the break lapse, the company probably wouldn’t have built the plant, said Jeff Bigger, a company senior vice president.

Jeff Webster, a Tyson group vice president, said that if the tax break isn’t extended, “The whole green-fuels industry in the U.S. is going to go down.”

Tyson Foods and fuel developer Syntroleum Corp. have successfully opened a factory that makes fuel from chicken fat and food grease. But they say the venture won’t survive unless Congress gives them a hefty tax break. Jeffrey Ball reports from Dallas.
The alternative-diesel credit is among several tax breaks that have lapsed or will soon do so. The Obama administration and Congress will be discussing in coming weeks whether to continue the breaks amid concerns over the federal deficit.

Similarly, a 45-cent-a-gallon tax break for companies that blend ethanol into gasoline is due to expire at the end of this year. Makers of the corn-based fuel are lobbying Congress to extend it.

Several U.S. biodiesel plants have shut down recently, some citing the expiration of the $1-a-gallon tax credit for alternative diesel. Biodiesel—made from grease or oil mixed with chemicals in vats—was all the rage a few years ago, when the tax break existed.

Tyson and Syntroleum aren’t making biodiesel. They use heat to change the molecular structure of fats and oils and then refine them into fuel. They say their brew behaves more like conventional diesel and jet fuel than biodiesel does—meaning it could be used in large quantities in existing pipelines, gas stations, cars, trucks and planes.

Their fuel is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency for use in cars and trucks. It hasn’t been certified for use in planes.

JEFFREY BALL

SOURCE: WSJ

“Biofuels could break the tyranny of oil and lift millions from poverty along with providing a sustainable fuel source for aviation,” Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association said.

Bisignani told an industry conference on aviation and the environment that the oil industry had huge multibillion dollar earnings yet little is being done to prop up biofuels made from non-food crops.

Governments had invested “peanuts, and what have the oil companies done? Peanuts.” he said.

“It’s a wake up call for them, we need to get them on board.”

The civil aviation industry has laid out a range of emissions cutting targets for the coming years and decades aimed at tackle climate change, with about half of IATA’s ultimate target of a 50 percent cut in emissions by 2050 relying on biofuels.

Bisignani noted that the air transport industry was overcoming the technical challenge of flying airliners on biofuels.

But it faced a huge challenge in ensuring sufficient refining, supply and distribution for the world’s airports, with air engine makers, airlines and small developers left largely alone to spur biofuels.

“It is in the self interest of government to get much more involved and support the commercialisation of biofuels with incentives to facilitate the needed investments,” he added.

IATA’s chief renewed appeals for governments to join forces and set global standards for aviation to combat global warming at the International Civl Aviation Organisation later this month, rather than an uneven regional approach.

IATA is at loggerheads with regional and national emissions trading schemes, and additional taxes imposed by some governments.

Some biofuels have been criticised for drawing on vital food crops, land and water resources.

Aviation officials insisted at the conference here that their focus was on others sources such as algae and camelina (flax) for bio jet fuel.

IATA represents some 230 airlines.

SOURCE: AFP

Skies may be filled with algae.Bilal Bomani and salicornia in the Green Lab at NASA Glenn Research Center  In The Region: Scientists at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland may have tied the future of space exploration to sub-aquatic life. 

When it comes to energy, there’s always something new under the sun.  Except for solar power, which has always been under the sun.  NASA Glenn Researcher Bilal Bomani has been working on a process to use biofuel as an alternative energy source for commercial aviation.

Along with experiments involving everything from clean coal to bacteria, the plant Salicornia has emerged that produces an oil that can be refined into biodiesel.  It’s also robust.

“You know that hurricanes devastated Galveston, Texas.  When we went to Galveston, Texas, there was nothing there.  The oil fields were devastated, but we saw Salicornia all over the place!  It can actually help with the coast line, cause it has nice root structure, and Salicornia has very thick roots.”

Salicornia is also known as Pickleweed or Dwarf Saltwort. It’s flourishing far from the coast — in saltwater and sand tanks at NASA’s wind-turbine powered Green Lab near Cleveland-Hopkins airport.

“This is a green solution.  In order to be considered green you have to satisfy three metrics.  One, be alternative, and clearly this is alternative.  Two, be renewable, this is clearly renewable.  And three, be sustainable, and we have all three here.  That’s why this is called a green lab.  It’s completely sustainable.”

This entire process works without precious resources such as fresh water or arable land.  Even the fertilizer comes from an unlikely source: freshwater mollies, which can be climatized to saltwater in a matter of hours.

“They’re cheap, they love to have babies, and they love to go to the bathroom.  And that’s why we use them.  And so, all we have to do is basically is seed one of the tanks outside with 50 mollies, and now each one has over 300.  And that lab’s been in existence since 2009, November.”

Bomani holds degrees in mathematics and computer science from Cleveland State and Case Western, but his interest in fish led him to NASA.

“In college, I did not have a television, I had a fish tank.  In 2006, there was a meeting of the minds at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.  And they said ‘we need to think outside the box; we need to come up with something that’s dealing with saltwater.’  And that’s how they found me.  Actually it was Dr. Bulzan, we had a meeting, he was like ‘well, we’re looking into this, do you think you could do this?’  And I said ‘let me think for a minu- YES, I can do this’.”

As the fish do their thing, the Salicornia grows and eventually produces oil that is shipped to a company in Chicago.  OAP refines the oil into jet fuel, which is sent back to NASA Glenn for combustion testing in a DC-8.  So far, the fuel has all the required characteristics: high freezing temperature, light weight and “carbon neutrality,” which means the entire process of producing the fuel results in lower overall emissions.

David Pimentel of Cornell University, thought this sounded too good to be true.  He’s been skeptical of ethanol and soybean biodiesel for years.  His primary concern is how much labor, fertilizer, water and electricity it takes to make each kilocalorie of fuel?  Depending on how all of those costs are defined, theoretical prices for a gallon of algae-derived fuel range from 19 cents to $52.  And that’s one of the reasons Pimentel was skeptical of algae as well.

But he and fellow Cornell researchers investigated and are authoring a paper on the subject.  In their controlled environment, they were pleasantly surprised at their findings.

“We were getting 1.3 kilocalories per kilocalorie of input that we had in the system.  That’s still way and above ethanol production, better than biodiesel production.”

Pimentel’s group isn’t the only one studying algae biomass jet fuel.  Many of Bomani’s partners are right here in Ohio.

“In this area we do have some collaborators.  Obviously Cleveland State University, we have Toledo, we have OAI, we have Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Univenture, which is in Dayton area, we got Phi Cal which you may have heard of is here.  I would say there is an Ohio initiative.”

The Ohio Initiative, as he calls it, has even signed an agreement on alternative fuels with Governor Ted Strickland.

All of this assumes the greener jet fuel can be made on a scale that meets the country’s needs.

“If we had the land mass of the state of Maryland, and we had our algae and halophytes, we’d have enough fuel for the entire U.S.  It’s not as far off as you think.  We don’t have a lot of time, because by 2013, we need 400,000 gallons of this.”

If a former skeptic like Pimentel can be convinced, Bomani’s goal of 2013 doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

SOURCE: WKSU

Accelergy, USAF to evaluate Camelina, liquid coal jet fuel mix
Accelergy has begun production of biojet fuel using a mix of Camelina oil and liquefied coal for evaluation by the US Air Force (USAF). Separately, Accelergy signed a Camelina oil supply agreement with an Ohio company.

US Navy to test F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet with biofuels
In 2009, Accelergy entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with USAF for testing fully synthetic fuels that meet or exceed USAF JP-8 military jet fuel standards.

USAF currently uses JP-8 fuel in all of its aircraft and has been looking for a commercially viable 100% synthetic alternative to petroleum based fuels. To date, synthetic fuels have required blending with petroleum feedstocks on a 50% basis to be suitable in aviation applications.

As reported by Recharge, USAF has issued internal requirements that 50% of its fuel needs comes from domestic and cleaner sources by 2016.

Accelergy will use its coal-biomass-to-liquids technology at a pilot facility under construction at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) University of North Dakota.

Fuel deliveries to the Air Force Research Labs will begin in late 2010. The pilot facility will provide a valuable tool for evaluating new coal and biomass feeedstocks as the technology moves toward commercial deployment.

“Accelergy is the first to provide 100% synthetic jet fuel for the USAF with high thermal stability, increased energy density, lower environmental impact and competitive costs,” says tim Vail, company chief executive.

“The facility at EERC allows us to produce meaningful quantities of fuel, confirm our performance estimates and further refine our fuel product,” he adds. “With the test results in hand, the Air Force and defense contractors can then explore the full range of options for employment and advanced synthetic fuels in next-generation aircraft designs.”

Accelergy says its process technology maintains high overall thermal efficiency while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with comparable refining methods. It can also produce Jet-A fuel along with military JP5 and JP9 military jet fuels.

Camelina is a plant native to Northern Europe and Central Asia that has been traditionally cultivated as an oilseed to produce vegetable oil and animal feed. It does not compete with food crops as it requires little water or nitrogen to thrive, and can be grown on marginal farm land.

Among US states, Montana has been the most supportive of proposals to use Camelina as a raw material for biofuels and is also backing use of its abundant coal reserves for the same purpose..

Accelergy’s supply deal is with Great Plains Oil & Exploration – The Camelina Company , which is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Financial and other details were not released.

A Great Plains official tells Recharge that the company is already growing Camelina in Montana and will extract its oil there after it obtains a crushing plant.

“This will be a great plus for Montana, and is another step on our way to energy independence,” says Governor Brian Schweitzer, who sees creation of jobs as Camelina use becomes more widespread.

Accelergy is based in Houston.

Richard A. Kessler

Source: Recharge news

BA says the plant will reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.

British Airways has struck a deal to build the first plant in Europe to produce jet fuel from waste matter.

Some 500,000 tonnes of waste will be used by the UK facility each year to produce 16 million gallons of fuel.

Construction of the plant in east London will start within two years. It is set to produce fuel from 2014, creating up to 1,200 jobs.

BA said the plant would produce twice the amount of fuel needed to power all its flights from London City Airport.

It would only account for about 2% of flights from Heathrow, however.

Greenhouse gas

BA argues the plant will cut the amount of waste that is sent to landfill, reducing the amount of methane that is produced.

Methane is thought to be a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

The plant will be built by a US company Solena Group, with BA committing to buy all of its output.

It will be another four years before it starts producing fuel, and it is unlikely to work at full capacity straight away.

The ideal source material for the plant is waste matter that has a high carbon content.

Biofuel creation

The waste is fed into a high temperature “gasifier” to produce BioSynGas.

A chemical process called Fischer Tropsch is then used to convert the gas into biofuel.

Waste products from the process can be used to power the plant as well as supply 20MW of electricity to the national grid.

A solid waste product can be used as an aggregate in construction.

The fuel produced by the plant is certified for use in other countries, but not currently in the UK.

BA says it is confident of getting the certification by the time the plant starts producing fuel, either for use in a blend with traditional kerosene or on its own.

By Richard Scott

Source: BBC

A research project will make jet fuel without wasting fresh water or farmland.

A project in the Middle East aims to make jet fuel from saltwater-tolerant crops grown in the desert. Researchers at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates are starting a two-square-kilometer demonstration farm that will combine fish and shrimp farming with the cultivation of mangrove trees and salicornia, a plant with oil-rich seeds that can be converted into fuel.

 The goal is to produce biofuels without taking away land from food crops or using large amounts of fresh water, which are two of the major shortcomings of conventional biofuels, says Scott Kennedy, an associate professor at the Masdar Institute who is leading the project. The project is supported by several major companies: Boeing, Etihad Airways (the national airline of the UAE), and UOP Honeywell, which will supply technology for converting the biomass to chemical precursors and fuels. The Masdar Institute is part of a zero-emissions city being built in Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the UAE.

Kennedy and his colleagues will refine a technique called integrated seawater agriculture. It begins with digging a canal from the sea. That canal delivers water to several stages in the system. First, the researchers pump saltwater into ponds or flow it past cages used for growing shrimp or fish. Ordinarily, such aquaculture is an “environmental disaster,” Kennedy says. The runoff contains large amounts of feces that can cause dangerous algae blooms, for example. But in the Masdar system, the researchers will use that effluent downstream to fertilize salicornia.

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The salicornia is grown in saltwater-irrigated fields, and can be harvested like other crops, such as wheat or rice. The runoff from that irrigation, now saltier and still containing some effluent from the fish and shrimp, together with more water from the canal, is next fed to a stretch of planted mangrove trees, which can grow in that saltier water. The mangrove forest provides a barrier, so that none of the polluted water from the fish farm returns to the ocean. The leaves can also be used as food for the fish.

The oil-rich seeds of the salicornia can be pressed using processing similar to that used for other oil seed crops, such as sunflowers. That oil can then be modified by a proprietary UOP Honeywell process that makes it suitable for blending in jet fuel. The rest of the plant can then be further used to produce liquid fuels, or burned to produce steam for electricity generation.

The fish farms provide both a source of income and a source of fertilizer, which reduces overall carbon emissions, since producing and using fertilizer is ordinarily a major source of carbon emissions in biofuels production. The mangrove forest also sequesters carbon dioxide in its root system. Most biofuels are at best carbon neutral, emitting as much carbon dioxide when they’re produced and burned as the biofuel crops take in as they grow. One of the key parts of the Masdar research project is determining just how much carbon can be economically sequestered.

A version of the system has already been demonstrated in the north African country of Eritrea by Carl Hodges, the founder and chairman of the Seawater Foundation. (He’s acting as a special advisor to the Masdar project.) In that project, the salicornia and leaves from the mangroves were used as animal feed, and some of the oil from the seeds was converted to biodiesel. That project ended as a result of political upheaval in that country, Hodges says, but it demonstrated that the integrated approach could work.

The effort to avoid using fresh water and land that’s used for food “should be applauded,” says Mark Schrock, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University. But he says it will be important to quickly develop a mechanized means of harvesting the salicornia. This could be a challenge because, although it can be harvested with existing equipment, the plant has high salt levels that could damage these machines, says Wayne Coates, a professor at the Office of Arid Land Studies at the University of Arizona.

It will also need to compete with other biofuels crops. Per acre yields of oil are on par with soybeans (which provide additional economic value from non-oil products), but are just one-eighth the yield of palm oil. The saltwater system, however, has the advantage of not requiring expensive land and water, and it produces its own fertilizer. Kennedy says that initial estimates suggest that fuel produced from salicornia could be competitive with petroleum-based fuels, but warns that detailed studies still need to be done.

Kevin Bullis

Source: Technoloy Review

www.salicornia.net coming soon

The flight took place on March 8th, but until today the aeronautical company Boeing has not disclosed the world event, that has taken place in the aerodrome of the toledanian town of Ocaña.

A team of engineers of the department of investigation of Boeing, directed by the spanish Nieves Lapeña has developed the airship prototype with the help of a dozen of companies of Germany, Austria, United States, United Kingdom, France and Spain.Â

The aeronautical landmark has been possible starting from the structure of a two-seat Dimona motor-glider , with a span of 16,3 meters, of the company Diamond Aircraft Industries of Austria.Â

The team of engineers of Boeing substituted the motor of conventional fuel for an electric one of 40 kilowatts of power, fed by an ion lithium battery and by the electricity generated by a fuel battery fed by hydrogen gas.Â

The fuel battery is an electrochemical device that transforms the hydrogen in electricity and heat, without producing dioxide of carbon (CO2) and that it emits as residual water vapor. The hydrogen becomes electricity in the fuel battery by means of a chemical process known as inverse hydrolysis.Â

The director of Programs and Engineering of Boeing Research and Technology Europe, José Enrique Román, pointed out that the important thing is that “it has been able to demonstrate that it is possible to carry out a manned flight sustained with a fuel battery” and that on the other hand “it serves as experience to develop new systems for aeronautical or aerospace platforms”.Â

During the four flights made between February and March, the pilot of the airplane, the spanish Cecilio Barberán managed to take off and to elevate the apparatus up to an altitude of 1.000 meters over the sea level, and once in the wanted height to maintain a flight of 20 minutes at about 100 kilometers per hour, until it drained the kilo of hydrogen of its tank, that was kept at 370 pressure atmospheres.

Twenty minutes in the airÂ

The take off and ascending phase, the airplane used the electric power of the conventional and the fuel battery. Already achieved the wanted altitude, the pilot disconnects the battery and the flight continued the 20 minutes exclusively with the hydrogen as fuel.Â

For the take off and ascending phase 35 kilowatts were needed, while in the cruise phase the necessary energy was of 17 kilowatts.Â

“It is very pleasant and precise”, declared to EL MUNDO Cecilio Barberán. The pilot highlighted as advantages of the apparatus the absence of noise and the uniform power of its electric system. “I didn´t go through fear. It was a project with all the security guarantees and now I feel proud of the obtained success”, added the crewmember.

John Tracy, Technological director of Boeing, declared that Spain had been chosen to carry out this pioneer project, because our country “offers at the moment the best environmental technologies”.Â

The giant of the aeronautical Boeing discards at the moment that the commercial civilian airplanes be impelled by hydrogen. However the technology of the hydrogen could be effective for small airships.Â

Nevertheless, Boeing will continue investigating in the mentioned technology, because in her it sees applications for the civil aviation, when having autonomous electric generating sets of the commercial airplane to make work other apparatuses of the airship.Â

Gustavo Catalán DeusÂ

Source: El Mundo/España