Salicornia – The Way to Go Green

Together with experiments involving everything from clean coal to bacteria, there is a plant called Salicornia that is said to produce an oil, which can be refined into biodiesel, as stated in an energy magazine.

There are several advantages that come handy with the Salicornia. First, these plants are oil-rich and easy to grow; second, sea-based nurseries leave land free for food production; and third, the process should take out more carbon from the atmosphere than what it puts in. Hence, Salicornia would be the best option that could be used to create alternative energy source for commercial aviation.

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.

Hopes from Algae

Algae are one of the world’s most common aquatic plants. Studies have already shown it to have great potentials to create oils for the food industry as well as for various fuels; making it an excellent replacement for fossil fuels.

Algae as both a food source and as a biofuel has been the subject of many projects all over the world; utilizing one of the earth’s most abundant plants that has been  supplying much of our oxygen as well as  food for marine life. Vegans get Omega 3 from algae sources.

Bilal Bomani said, “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, because it has nice root structure, and Salicornia has very thick roots.”

The Green Solution – Biofuel

Scientist Bilal Bomani said in a statement to a business magazine, “Salicornia is a green solution.  In order for a product to be considered green, there are three metrics that need to be satisfied”.  One, is it sustainable?  Bilal Bomani says, “Are you preserving what you’re doing for future use or for future generations”. Well, since unsustainable means eventual collapse, and this is in context to a global scale here, then sustainable means so there can be future generations.  Two, is it alternative, and clearly this is alternative. Is it different in what’s being used today, or does it have a lower carbon footprint than what’s used conventionally.  And three, is it renewable? Bilal Bomani future explains what exactly does renewable mean, saying, “Does it come from earth’s natural repulsing system like sun, water and air”.

The main reason that the aviation industry has been target here for the use of biofuel or biodiesel is because, the field of aviation i uses more fuel than by every other, combined, report business news. Hence, there is a need to find an alternative. It is expected that this alternative would produce biofuel using domestic and safe ‘friendly’ resources.

As we a quite aware that 97.5 percent of the earth water is saline. Why not use it? And the great news here is that entire process of producing biofuel works without precious resources such as fresh water or arable land. Even the fertilizer comes from an unlikely source: freshwater mollies, which can be converted to saltwater in a matter of hours.

Salicornias are cheap and they love to have babies.  And that’s why scientists at the Glenn Research Center are planning to 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.

Bilal Bomani’s Work

Back in the tropical, strong greenhouse at NASA Glenn, Bilal Bomani tends his plants and works to accelerate that bio-fueled future. He knows there are skeptics, disbelievers who doubt that the jets circling overhead will come to depend on what he’s growing. There have been criticizers who are curious to know what goes on in the Glenn Research Center. Bilal Bomani says, his top most reason to work on this project is that he wants to help ‘save the world’.

source: industry leaders magazine

The year 2010 marks the 80th anniversary of the Salt Satyagraha launched at Dandi by Mahatma Gandhi and at Vedaranyam by Rajaji to establish that sea water is a social resource. A Sea Water Farming project and a Genetic Garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam on December 26, 2010 to initiate a new era in strengthening the livelihoods of coastal fisher and farming communities.

Sea water constitutes over 96 per cent of the global water resource, while ground water’s share is only 1.7 per cent. Currently, we are overexploiting ground water leading to the rapid depletion of the aquifer, while we hardly make use of the water of the oceans and seas for agriculture which consumes nearly 80 per cent of the available fresh water. It is in this context that Mahatma Gandhi’s salt satyagraha launched in Dandi, Gujarat, 80 years ago assumes wider significance. The Dandi March was designed to protest against the salt tax imposed by the then colonial Government, thereby emphasising that sea water and the salt manufactured from it are the property of the people and not of the Government.

Gandhiji’s historic Dandi March to break the Salt Law started on March 12, 1930. C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) planned a march from Tiruchi to Vedaranyam for a similar purpose. On April 13, 1930, Rajaji started from Tiruchi and he was joined by large numbers of people at Thanjavur, Kumbakonam and other places. Sardar Vedaratnam Pillai was also an important leader and there is a memorial in his honour at Vedaranyam. Sixteen days later, Rajaji and his followers picked up a handful of salt and were immediately arrested and sentenced to six months imprisonment. Early this year, the Dandi march was commemorated through a programme for the conservation of the coastal ecosystem initiated by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) under the leadership of Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

Programme launch, aim

On December 26, 2010, which marks the sixth anniversary of the tsunami which caused severe damage in Tamil Nadu and other States, a Salt Satyagraha Memorial Programme is being launched at Vedaranyam by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) with support from the Society of Integrated Coastal Management of the MoEF, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and the Government of Tamil Nadu. Its major aim is to harness sea water for raising agri-aqua farms and bioshields along the coast. The crops chosen obviously have to be tolerant to saline water. These salt-tolerant plants, or halophytes, constitute two per cent of terrestrial plant species. Halophytes have been tested in several laboratories as vegetables, oilseed crops and fodder plants.

Experiments have been carried out in the U.S., Mexico and India with Salicornia brachiata, also known as sea asparagus, to assess its usefulness as a protein feed for livestock and as a source of oil. Salicornia is also being regarded as a good feedstock for biodiesel production.

Among other species chosen for economic exploitation are Atriplex and Sesuvium portulacastrum. Sesuvium has been cultivated in Italy and in the Middle East with sea water. In India, research has been carried out at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research’s (CSIR) Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute, Bhavnagar, and at Annamalai and several other universities. The crops chosen for sea water farming should be economically attractive, in order to offset the cost of pumping sea water. Also, the agronomic techniques used should belong to the ever-green agriculture category, i.e. higher productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm. The aquaculture techniques chosen should involve Low External Input Sustainable Aquaculture (LEISA) technology.

The components

Dr. V. Selvam and his colleagues of MSSRF have standardised techniques for raising halophytes and for rearing fish in experiments conducted on a participatory research mode in farmers’ fields near Chidambaram. The sea water farming project will have the following components:

•Cultivation of Salicornia for production of oil seed and biosalt using seawater for irrigation.

•Seawater-based agri-aqua farming system involving cultivation of halophytes, mangroves and culture of fish

•Restoration of degraded mangrove ecosystems and raising new mangrove forests

•Development of the Vedaranyam area on the biovillage model, with concurrent attention to ecological rehabilitation and generation of new on-farm and non-farm sources of income through market-driven micro-enterprises.

They will be initially implemented with the participation of the fishing community of Seeruthalaikadu village in Vedaranyam taluk in Nagapattinam district, as a self-replicating model so that sea water farming becomes a movement in coastal areas. Exposure visits, orientation workshops and technical training will be organised. The demonstrations will be taken up in mudflats, where no other plants are growing now due to hypersaline condition. Baseline data on geological, geophysical and hydro-geological characters are being collected and these parameters monitored regularly to assess how halophytes play a role in reducing soil and ground water salinity in the mudflat. Anna University has already prepared a detailed land use and land cover map of the area.

The project will involve the regeneration of degraded mangrove forests and raising new mangrove plantations. It was observed during the tsunami that mangrove forests serve as bioshields and speed-breakers. Thus, coastal afforestation will help managing the impact of sea level rise and contribute to carbon sequestration. Through a Joint Mangrove Management system, MSSRF has restored about 1,500 ha of degraded mangroves in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal in partnership with State Forest Departments and local fishing communities. After the tsunami, mangrove bioshields were established in about 280 ha in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Both the restored mangroves and mangrove bioshield are managed by multi-stakeholder based rural institutions.

The per capita availability of freshwater has gone down from 5,000 cubic metres in 1981 to 1.700 cubic metre now. This led the Supreme Court of India to direct the Government of India to constitute a Committee of Experts, under the Chairmanship of Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, DST, to standardise solutions for the problem of water scarcity.

Three groups

The DST has classified the technological approaches for solving these problems into three groups. First, Winning water from sustainable resources, second, Augmentation of quality of water from available and accessible sources, and third, Renovation and Recycling. A Technology Mission on Winning, Augmentation and Renovation (WAR) for Water was launched by the DST in August 2009. The Vedaranyam Sea Water Farming project is designed to help in augmenting water availability for agriculture. Through halophytes, sea water can become a substitute for freshwater in raising crops in the coastal areas, where over 20 percent of our population lives.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has projected that an additional 200 million hectares of new cropland will be needed to feed the population of nearly eight billion over the next 30 years. Some calculations show that only 93 million hectares of additional land may be available for crop cultivation. This too will be at the expense of forest land. On the other hand, we have large areas of arid and semi-arid land along the sea coast. With sea water farming we can extend the area of cultivation by growing not only halophytes but also relatively salt-tolerant plants like coconut, date palm and cashewnut. Mangrove and non-mangrove bioshields will help meet the challenge of sea level rise. The MoEF has calculated that we may have to be prepared for a one metre rise in the mean sea level by the end of this century. The Vedaranyam project can thus strengthen the livelihood security of coastal communities, and help tackle the challenge of sea level rise.

Genetic garden

In the Genetic Garden of Halophytes, there may be over 1,600 species belonging to 550 genera and 117 families. The garden will initially comprise halophytes occurring along the coasts of India including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasis on the social ownership status of sea water should be converted into scientifically designed sea water farming practices to strengthen water security for agriculture. For domestic needs more expensive methods of solar desalination, and reverse osmosis can be adopted. But for agriculture, it will be best to use this vast resource for livelihood benefits through halophytes on the one hand and through marine fish species on the other. The 80th anniversaries of the Dandi and Vedaranyam marches can then mark the beginning of a new era in the livelihood security of coastal fisher and farm families.

(The writer is Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Foundation.)

SOURCE: THE HINDU

“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

The investment will span over a seven-year period. Speaking about the investment, the minister of natural resources Christian Paradis said: ‘By investing in this project we are helping to create and sustain local jobs and economic opportunities while creating a healthier environment for all Canadians.’

 The Biocardel Quebec plant will use animal fat and waste cooking oil to manufacture around 40 million litres a year of biodiesel, which will then be sold to Quebec-based diesel producers, in addition to producers located in the US. ‘We are very pleased with the government of Canada’s support. It will help to secure the future of our biodiesel production,’ commented Biocardel Quebec’s president Rene Delarus.

‘Biocardel’s production of biodiesel and our R&D work in algal biofuels and recovery of by-products will help to reduce greenhouse has emissions while promoting a sustainable environment.’ This CA$18.79 million investment is part of a $1.5 billion investment by the Canadian government that will take place over a total of nine years.

SOURCE: BIOFUELS NEWS

The world’s first commercial-scale seawater-based biofuels project boosts Egypt’s aquaculture profile. (Photo: Global Seawater).

EGYPT, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 00:40 (GMT + 9)

Houston-based energy projects development company Energy Allied International and the Seawater Foundation and Global Seawater, Inc, pioneers in the development of Integrated Seawater Agriculture Systems (ISAS), have signed an MOU to develop the world’s first commercial-scale seawater-based biofuels project in Egypt: “New Nile Co.”

It will be one of the largest biofuels investments thus far in the Middle East or Africa.

ISAS is an advanced biofuels production model that uses effluent from seawater aquaculture as a natural fertilizer to grow large plantations of the halophyte (naturally salt resistant plant) salicornia, which can yield hefty volumes of high-grade vegetable oil for use as a biofuel feedstock.

“Energy Allied International’s expertise in developing large scale energy projects in the Middle East and Africa, tied with the Seawater Foundation’s and Global Seawater’s extensive knowledge of developing and operating ISAS models, is a winning combination to ensure the success of the world’s first, commercial scale, seawater-based biofuels project,” stated Dr Carl Hodges, chairman of The Seawater Foundation and co-chairman of Global Seawater.

Unlike first-generation biofuels producers that menace to displace staple foods like corn due to reliance on freshwater and nutrient-rich soil, New Nile will apply the ISAS model, thereby relying exclusively on untreated seawater and currently unproductive arid, desert and degraded lands.

“New Nile Co is poised to launch a great agricultural revolution in Egypt, by making productive use of the country’s abundant agricultural-skilled labour, unlimited access to seawater and vast desert lands,” said Mike Nassar, chairman of Energy Allied.

New Nile plans to produce tens of millions of lts of biofuels from a 50,000 ha-project site. Jointly with leading architecture design firm and the project’s lead planning advisor, Gensler, the developers are presently considering potential site locations along the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts.

Already having successfully applied the ISAS model in Eritrea after conducting broad research and development in Mexico, the developers are secure of achieving similarly favourable results in Egypt.

Besides automotive markets necessitating the use of blended biofuels, New Nile will target the European civil aviation market. The latter is put through strict European Union (EU) regulations, and aviation will enter the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2012.

New Nile’s developers are currently discussing potential project site locations with the Egyptian Government and intend to complete the bankable feasibility study this year and being construction in early 2011.

By Natalia Real

SOURCE: FIS

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

JATROPHA CURCAS, ENERGY AND SOCIAL CULTIVATION

The Second Monographic International Conference on Jatropha Curcas, held during the past 14th and 15th of May in Madrid, fulfilled its objective of showing the current state of this important energy cultivation. Of the hand of Global Energy, the appointment gathered ten important experts at world level with more than 150 conference members interested in the production and commercialization possibilities of the Jatropha Curcas. The reports also highlighted the important social side of this cultivation.Â

Jatropha CurcasÂ

This bush, native from Central America but that at the present time has extended to several continents, is popularly known by the high content in oil of its seeds (approximately 40%) and for its special resistance, what allows it to adapt to almost any land and be used to combat the desert or to rehabilitate degraded lands. It is important to highlight that its seeds are toxic, for what its price is not influenced by the competition with the alimentary uses.Â

The different reports of the conference, enlarged this information, also showing, real experiences of cultivations and of its use as raw energetic material.Â

The opening of the conference was in charge of professor Reinhard Henning. The current founder and CEO of Baganí, German consultant specialized in the realization of studies of viability on the Jatropha, began to work with it in 1987 inside a program of the government from Mali for the development of plantations of this bush. Of this collaboration the successful “System Jatropha” was born, a program that looked for the production of oil from the plant as a way of facilitating the rural development of the areas where it was planted.Â

The economic impact that has the cultivation of Jatropha Curcas in the local communities also centered the report of the president of Getco, James V. Fanning. The company Getco expects very positive impacts in the areas where Jatropha is cultivated. Thus, during the congress, it presented two of the projects in wich he works, one in Colombia and another in Peru. In both he considers enough to use only 5% of the arable land to create, after ten years of production, oil for the value of more than 146 million dollars and 18.000 work positions in the Colombian case and oil for the value of more than 258 million dollars using 32.000 people in the Peruvian project. James V. Fanning demonstrated, in his report, his clear bet on the profitability of the cultivation of Jatropha Curcas.Â

Jatropha Curcas for the electricity productionÂ

Another of the outstanding presenters of this international conference was the energy cultivations investigator of the FACT Foundation, Ywe Jan Franken. This dutch foundation has as mission the production and commercialization of biofuels for the local development and it has active projects in Mali, Mozambique and Honduras. In these areas the cultivation of Jatropha Curcas is very positive since its oil is used for the electricity production and biogas. The investigator points out that they also use the peel and the cake of the plant, triplicated this way, the energy production. At the present time, the FACT Foundation carries out, in cooperation with the Technical University of Eindhoven, a study that is focused in the biogas use as blended fuel with conventional diesel and pure vegetable oil. This project is obtaining promising results at the present time.Â

Another option, is the use that contributed to the congress James Scruby, president of Viridesco. This English company is specialized in the elaboration of pure oil for the substitution of the conventional diesel. Viridesco centers its projects, as that of Mozambique that presented in the conference, in the energy creation for local use. This African country offers the lands and the appropriate manpower for the plantation in big extensions of Jatropha Curcas. The obtained oil is used directly as fuel in diesel motors type Elsbett with excellent results.Â

Positive examples in Colombia and MexicoÂ

Three of the speakers arrived from the other side of the Atlantic to tell to all the present their experiences in plantations of Jatropha Curcas. The first one was Jorge Bendeck, executive president of the Federación Nacional de Biocombustibles of Colombia. The plans of this country are to substitute all the imports of diesel for biodiesel of own production in 2020. In his conclusions on the studies made in the plantation of Jatropha he highlighted the high social value of this cultivation, since its manual gathering favors the little qualified manpower placement.Â

Who also shared this opinion were the mexican Rubén Lazos and Eduardo García, responsible for an important project of plantation of Jatropha Curcas in one of the most degraded areas in Mexico, the state of Michoacán. The work, that has lasted already five years, offers to the local farmers a profitable alternative in excluded areas, since the oil obtained is treated in a pilot plant located in the same state and that has an annual capacity production of nine thousand tons of biodiesel. In the Mexican case, the Jatropha will energize the activity in poor areas and will put a stop the desert in areas of marginal cultivations.Â

The Hindu betÂ

India, the country of the world where the energy demand grows most quickly, had an important representation in this Second Monographic International Conference on Jatropha Curcas organized by Global Energy. The new Hindu business sector was represented by Bhaskar Chalasani, managing director and CEO of Naturol, the first company that manufactures biodiesel in India. While the investigating sector of the country had as representatives to the speakers Dilip K. Kulkarni and K.K Meher, both investigators of the Agharkar Research Institute. The doctor Kulkarni presented us the results of a deep study on the variety “Nana” of the Jatropha Curcas, endemic variety of the India.

On the other hand K.K. Meher closed this conference with an interesting report focused in the biometanization of the cake of Jatropha. During the presentation he explained the important bet that India is beginning for the substitution of fossil fuels by biocarburants and other renewable energy sources and the possibilities of the cultivation of Jatropha inside these plans. As other speakers, doctor Meher, highlighted the social character of this cultivation, since the cake of Jatropha is being used at the present time for the biogas obtaining that provides electricity to many families of the India.

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