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Tag: biofuel

Can we really fuel planes with fat and sugar?

Posted on by dishanth
Can we really fuel planes with fat and sugar?
As the politician next to him took out his phone for a selfie, Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson peered into the camera, grinned, and did a double thumbs-up. The world’s first commercial airliner to cross the Atlantic using 100% biofuel had just landed in New York.

Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787 was powered not by fossil fuels, but plant sugars and waste fats – a form of so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF. A British Conservative MP posted his smiling selfie with Branson to the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, and declared the flight “a significant UK aviation achievement”. (The flight was partly funded by the UK government.)

But not everyone is so sure that this represents the future of flying. The biomass required to make biofuel can come from a broad range of sources – plant material, food waste or even algae. While biofuels release CO2 when burned, some consider them a sustainable option because they are renewable and biomass removes some CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows.

The problem is the sheer volume of biomass needed to power an industry as fuel-hungry as aviation. One academic paper published in August estimated that, if you were to grow sugar cane and use that to make biofuels for commercial jets, you’d need 125 million hectares (482,000 sq miles) of land – roughly equivalent to the surface area of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Louisiana combined.

That’s a lot of land. And if you tried using waste sources of biomass alone, you wouldn’t have nearly enough to keep all the world’s planes in the air, say some experts. The airline industry is currently responsible for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as the entire country of Japan, which is one of the world’s highest emitters.

Proponents of SAF argue that the fuel could make flying much greener than it is currently. It’s just that scaling SAF production up is a gigantic challenge.

“What they’re doing is quite important, they’re just demonstrating that the flight is perfectly safe, there are no problems with the fuel,” says David Lee, a professor of atmospheric science at Manchester Metropolitan University, who studies the impact of aviation on the climate, and who was a co-author of the paper that investigated the feasibility of transitioning to SAF. By switching to SAF over fossil fuels, you can achieve carbon savings of around 70%, says Lee, though this depends on the specific source of biomass you choose.

Lee notes that international regulations don’t actually allow for flights using more than 50% SAF as fuel at the moment, so Virgin Atlantic’s hop across the pond required a special permit from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

It all adds up to a successful proof-of-concept. But it would be difficult to power more than one glitzy flight with 100% SAF today. “You just can’t get hold of the damn stuff,” says Lee. “If we want to do engine tests, we have difficulty purchasing the fuel.”

It’s an issue that Virgin Atlantic itself acknowledges. SAF accounts for just 0.1% of all aviation fuels consumed. The International Air Transport Association predicts that the airline industry will require 450 billion litres of SAF by 2050 – only 300 million litres were produced in 2022. However, to date, SAF has helped to fuel hundreds of thousands of flights – at least as part of a blend with fossil fuels. In the US, SAF production is estimated to reach 2.1 billion gallons (7.9 billion litres) annually by 2030 – well below President Biden’s target of producing 3 billion gallons (11.3 billion litres) of the fuel annually by that year.

Ramping up SAF production is difficult. In a Royal Society report published earlier this year, Lee and colleagues analysed the UK’s potential to produce its own SAF for commercial flights. “We concluded that there wasn’t really enough land,” he says. Around the world, competition for land is fierce. We will need an additional 70-80 million hectares of cropland by 2030 globally, estimates management consultants McKinsey & Company – that’s an area bigger than the state of Texas. The vast majority of this new cropland (70% ) is needed to grow crops for feeding livestock. Only 10% of the total area required would go towards biofuel production in McKinsey’s scenario.

Some SAF comes from waste fats, for example, from food production processes. Relying on such sources could, in theory, lessen the need for expanding crop cultivation just to make biofuels. But there’s far too little waste available, says Hannah Daly at University College Cork, in Ireland. Even if you gathered up all the biomass waste available in the Republic of Ireland, she says, it would only allow you to replace about 4% of fossil fuels consumed by the country. The calculation would be similar in other countries, she suggests.

“There’s substantial risk that that ‘waste cooking oil’ could be fraudulently relabelled virgin palm oil,” says Daly. “That could be contributing to deforestation.”

Some alternatives to SAF, including hydrogen fuel and electrification, are not currently viable options for large commercial flights.

Chelsea Baldino, senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation and her colleagues have calculated that SAF made from waste sources in the UK would only be able to meet a maximum of 15% of UK jet fuel demand in 2030. The ICCT also estimates that just 3.3-4.2 billion gallons of SAF could feasibly be produced domestically in the US by 2030, while in 2019, US airlines used 23 billion gallons of jet fuel.

“Biofuels providing the significant greenhouse gas savings needed to decarbonise jet fuel will not be available at scale,” she says. E-fuels – synthetic versions of fossil fuels made using renewable energy – will be “essential”, according to Baldino. E-fuels require a lot of energy to produce but they have the advantage of not introducing additional carbon into the atmosphere, as would be the case with newly extracted fossil fuels.

Josh Moos, an economist at Leeds Beckett University in the UK, lambasts Virgin Atlantic’s 100% SAF flight as “greenwashing”.

“The science would suggest that there really is no such thing as sustainable aviation,” he says. It would be better to reduce demand for flights globally, perhaps by placing a levy on frequent flyers or by increasing taxes on the airline industry, he argues. Moos acknowledges that such measures are “politically and socially unpalatable”, though both he and Daly suggest they might be necessary if we are to meet net zero goals.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic says, “We are committed to achieving Net Zero 2050 and have set interim targets on our pathway to get there, including 10% Sustainable Aviation Fuel by 2030.”

She notes that the 100% SAF flight from London to New York relied entirely on waste biomass and that the demonstration was “an important step, but not the end goal” in the firm’s efforts to scale up its use of SAF in the coming years.

Some sceptics remain unconvinced. Daly, for one, points out that even if SAF does replace an increasing proportion of fossil fuels for aviation purposes, the overall benefit could be wiped out by the rapidly growing airline industry. Eurocontrol, a European air safety organisation, predicts that the annual total number of flights worldwide will reach 16 million by 2050 – an increase of 44% on 2019’s figure.

“I would love guilt-free flying myself – but it’s just not possible,” says Daly.

 

 

 

 

Source   BBC

 

 

These Maasai women have developed an eco-friendly way to turn invasive cacti into bio-fuel

Posted on by dishanth
These Maasai women have developed an eco-friendly way to turn invasive cacti into bio-fuel

In Kenya, Maasai women have found an eco-friendly solution to an invasive and hazardous plant.

Parts of the opuntia cactus are edible, but its outer layers are covered in spikes and harmful to livestock which try to graze on it.

A group of women are now transforming the prickly pear into a bio-gas and preserves.

It is bringing them a form of employment and a method of empowerment.

 

Kenya’s livestock threatened by invasive cactus

The wilderness of Laikipia County, near Nairobi, is home to goats and cattle that roam freely.

They are frequently attracted to grazing on prickly pears, but these are an invasive species which threaten the natural environment.

The cacti were introduced by colonialists in the early 1900s as a natural fence and have morphed into an invasive menace that outcompetes native plants.

Its seed gets widely dispersed by the wind and the animals that pass through.

The hairs which cover the fruit can cause internal obstructions when eaten by animals, posing a significant threat to livestock.

Local farmers say the cactus now competes for critical resources, jeopardising community lands, wildlife reserves and livestock ranches.

Its encroachment also hinders wildlife navigation as well as reducing grazing areas.

Naimadu Siranga, a 65-year-old herder, has witnessed the devastation of the cactus firsthand, leading to the loss of over 150 of his goats and sheep.

“I once maintained a herd of more than 100 goats. Unfortunately, a series of losses ensued when they started consuming cactus plants, which led to mouth injuries, severe diarrhoea, and ultimately, the demise of my livestock,” he says.

“These circumstances have inflicted significant financial setbacks.”

 

Women’s group transforms cacti into bio-fuel

Now a women’s group in Laikipia County is transforming the cacti from a problem into a new enterprise.

They harvest the prickly pear and turn it into biogas which they can use in their homes.

The Iloplei Twala Cultural Manyatta Women Group has 203 members who are now employed in converting the cactus pulp into fuel.

This approach not only eradicates the cactus but also promotes environmental conservation and offers an alternative livelihood for the women.

“We came together because in Maasai culture, women do all the domestic work and own nothing at home,” says Rosemary Nenini, a member of the group, “so we want to empower ourselves.”

The fruits from the cactus are edible for both humans and animals if separated from their sharp spines.

So the Twala women at Laikipia Permaculture are also using the fruit to create a range of products including jams, cosmetics and juices. This generates an independent income for them.

 

Cacti pose a danger to baby elephants

Loisaba Conservancy, a 58,000-acre wildlife habitat in northern Kenya, home to iconic species such as lions and wild dogs, also grapples with the invasive cactus.

Animals unwittingly facilitate the spread of this invasive plant. Baboons, elephants, guinea fowl, and tortoises consume the sweet fruit and disperse the seeds.

However, elephants, while skilled at extracting the fruit from the spiny thorns, sometimes suffer from digestive issues due to the fruit’s small hairs.

“If the elephant is young, the hairs of the fruit can irritate the gut lining, create diarrhoea and sometimes even irritation in the gut,” says Tom Silvester, the Conservancy’s Chief Executive.

Combatting this invasive species proves challenging, as it spreads aggressively, even on barren rock.

Traditional removal methods, like manual labour and burning, have proved ineffective.

Teams now use heavy machinery to uproot the cactus, transferring it to designated areas and burying it in deep pits to minimise carbon emissions during decomposition.

This strategy results in fertile zones where native plants can regenerate and flourish.

As of June 2023, Loisaba Conservancy successfully cleared 3,100 acres of opuntia, marking a significant step in the fight against this environmental menace.

Research scientist Winnie Nunda from the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International says it’s a step towards preserving the country’s biodiversity.

 

 

 

 

Source    euronews.green

Indigenous Seaweed Farming: Kwiakah First Nation

Posted on by dishanth
Indigenous Seaweed Farming: Kwiakah First Nation

Indigenous Seaweed Farming

There are several reasons why the Kwiakah are taking this approach. First, they want to ensure that kelp forests are available for future generations. Second, they want to protect the marine environment. Third, they want to create a sustainable economic future for their community.

The Kwiakah’s approach to indigenous seaweed farming is based on their traditional knowledge and values. The band has a long history of living off the land and sea. They know the importance of protecting the environment, and they are committed to creating a sustainable future for their community.

Kelp cultivation has a number of environmental benefits. Kelp forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which helps to mitigate climate change. Kelp also provides a habitat for a variety of marine life. In addition, kelp can be used to produce various products, including food, fertilizer, and biofuel.

Kelp forests are facing a number of challenges, including climate change, pollution, and overfishing. Climate change is causing the ocean to become warmer and more acidic, which is making it difficult for kelp to grow. Pollution from runoff from farms and cities is also harming kelp forests. Overfishing is another major threat to kelp forests.

But despite these challenges, growing and harvesting kelp is worth the struggle for the economic benefits it provides.

 

Jobs and Economic Opportunities

The Kwiakah are using their unique approach to indigenous seaweed farming to create a sustainable future for their community. The band is repurposing an old fish farm into a kelp farm. The farm will be used to grow kelp for food, fertilizer, and biofuel. The Kwiakah are also working to educate the public about the importance of kelp forests and the need to conserve them.

Kelp cultivation creates jobs and economic opportunities for Indigenous communities. Indigenous seaweed farming is a relatively new industry, but it is growing rapidly. As the demand for kelp products increases, more people will be needed to grow, harvest, and process kelp. This could provide much-needed jobs for Indigenous communities, many of which have high unemployment rates.

On Eastern Long Island in New York, Shinnecock First Nation kelp farmers began planting kelp in December of 2021. They started small, with a manageable 20 spools of kelp and a year later, they had harvested 100 pounds. Most of the first batch was dried and sold as a natural fertilizer. They then donated excess spores to be used to help start other kelp farms. They have now expanded their operations from 20 spools of kelp to 200.

Since beginning operations, Shinnecock First Nation members have noticed that the water appears clearer, and wildlife are now returning. The group plans on hiring additional farmers from the nation bringing economic prosperity and stability to people that have been marginalized for too long.

 

Additional Thoughts

In addition to the environmental benefits of kelp cultivation, the Kwiakah’s approach also has the potential to create jobs and economic opportunities for Indigenous communities. Indigenous seaweed farming is a relatively new industry, but it is growing rapidly. As the demand for kelp products increases, more people will be needed to grow, harvest, and process kelp. This could provide much-needed jobs for Indigenous communities, many of which have high unemployment rates.

The Kwiakah’s approach to indigenous seaweed farming is an example of how Indigenous communities can use their traditional knowledge and values to create a sustainable future. By taking a slow, intentional approach and focusing on conservation, the Kwiakah ensure that kelp forests will be available for future generations. This is an important lesson for other Indigenous communities who are considering entering the kelp cultivation industry.

 

 

 

 

Source  Happy Eco News

Cellulosic Ethanol for Indonesian Farmers

Posted on by dishanth
Cellulosic Ethanol for Indonesian Farmers

Cellulosic Ethanol vs Bio-diesel

Like many other countries worldwide, Indonesia has ambitious goals for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. With a population just shy of 300 million people, the results of reducing petroleum consumption would be substantial.

Leaders within the country have expressed interest and intent to reduce reliance on fossil fuels; last year, the country’s president Joko Widodo announced that they are dedicating 700,000 hectares of land to cultivating renewable-based sugar ethanol.

However, small farmers have not seen the benefit of this transition toward bio-diesel production. Large palm oil firms dominate the industry, leaving small farmers without much hope in a transition that will benefit them as much as the environment.

According to Tenny Kristiana of the International Council on Clean Transportation, cellulosic ethanol could be the key ingredient to facilitate a boon in the lives of small farmers and Indonesia as a whole in the long run.

What could be done?

Cellulosic bio-ethanol is a bio-fuel that could be incredibly useful for Indonesian farmers due to its nature in the supply chain. The ethanol is created using traditionally considered waste products, like palm husks, trunks, and empty fruit bunches. These leftovers are either left to rot in the fields or sold overseas to countries like Japan, using the byproducts to fuel their own bio-ethanol industry.

Small farmers would benefit from selling these raw materials to bio-ethanol companies in Indonesia under long-term contracts guaranteeing the benefits for a long time. Expanding this domestic industry would also create jobs in transportation, manufacturing, and plantation work.

Indonesia specifically has large potential in developing its cellulosic ethanol industry, with estimates ranging up to 2 million kiloliters from palm residues alone. This could be the major push that Indonesia needs to support its domestic supply chain and create long-term stability in the job market that they need.

Read also about myECO, An Electric Saving Startup Based in Indonesia.

Being Done Elsewhere Too

This push towards sustainable development in cellulosic ethanol production is not without precedent. Brazil has one of the most successful bio-ethanol programs in the world, making up 50% of all fuel consumption in the gasoline market by April 2008.

This push would also reduce reliance on trade with foreign countries, as the fuel supply would be provided domestically, leaving Indonesia less vulnerable to changes outside its borders.

As the industry expands, they could also expand the inputs in ethanol production. Sugar cane bagasse, corn stalks, rice stems, and others could be used to create bioethanol.

While the long-term goal for many countries is to decarbonize and get off of ICEs entirely, in other countries, the costs outweigh the benefits. In the short to medium term, domestic bioethanol production could be necessary to help small farmers and the Indonesian society at large to buy into the green transition.

 

 

 

 

Source   Happy Eco News

Producing Net Zero Scotch Whiskey

Posted on by dishanth
Producing Net Zero Scotch Whiskey

Scotch whiskey, although delicious, is very energy intensive to produce. Creating Scotch whiskey involves a four-step process of malting, mashing, fermentation and distillation. The kettles are heated using natural gas or fossil fuel oil which boils the mash and distils the alcohol. The creation of Scotch whiskey requires burning vast quantities of peat to dry barely. The peat gives the whiskey a smokey flavour. Peatlands are areas that consist of organic materials from decaying plants. The peat captures carbon dioxide normally released during decomposition and is trapped as carbon in the oxygen-free peatland. Peatlands are important carbon sinks as they can sequester 550 gigatonnes of carbon, more than any other vegetation type, including forests. However, once the peat is burned during scotch distillation, all the carbon is released into the atmosphere.

To undo these environmental impacts while continuing to produce Scotch whiskey, owners of the 140 distilleries in Scotland have pledged to recreate their industry into net zero operations by 2040. This is all without government intervention. The Scotch Whisky Association is on board with this pledge as well. The Association wants its customers to imagine a future where distilleries no longer rely on fossil fuels. Instead, they create an industry using energy generated by wind, wood chips and ocean tides.

From 2009 to 2022, the Scotch whiskey industry reduced its carbon emission by more than half and has gone from consuming just 2% renewable to 39%. Offshore wind farms have been installed in Scotland’s coastal waters, near whiskey distillery islands, to pump electricity to land. Distillery co-products as animal feed has begun to shift to their use in bio-energy production. The Association wants scotch producers to funnel the byproducts like draft and pot ale and use it for fertilizer, animal feed and biofuel.

The Association also supports whiskey makers to protect Scotland’s water and consciously recycle their waste. Many distilleries are also moving towards battery-operated vehicles used on their whiskey-tasting tours. Scotland’s government has promised 30 000 new charging stations by 2030, making this possible.

To address their environmental impact on peatland use, the Association and distilleries are actively conserving and restoring Scotland’s peatland by 2035. They are developing a Peat Action Plan to outline how the industry will deliver a net environmental gain. They are also working with agricultural partners to ensure the barley and cereal used to produce Scotch whiskey becomes net zero.

Scotland’s Scotch whiskey distilleries are taking significant and necessary measures to tackle climate change, use water responsibly, move towards a circular economy and care for the land. Their efforts should exemplify all other beverage companies looking to produce products with minimal environmental impact.

 

 

 

 

Source Eco Hero News

Algae biofuel back from dead, now with carbon capture

Posted on by dishanth
Algae biofuel back from dead, now with carbon capture

Algae biofuel stakeholders have been stuck in the doldrums for years, but in an odd twist of fate, the fossil fuel industry could help algae make a comeback. Apparently the new plan is to pair algae farming with waste carbon from gas power plants and other industrial operations. In addition to biofuel, algae farming can also produce animal feed, fish food, nutritional supplements and toiletries for people, and bioplastic products.

 

Why Algae Biofuel?
CleanTechnica spilled plenty of ink on the area of algae biofuel research some years ago, during the Obama administration. Unlike other energy crops, algae can be grown in ponds or human-made structures without taking arable land out of circulation, and it has a rapid growth-to-harvest cycle. The high oil content of certain strains of algae is another leading attraction, and the algae R&D pathway can lead in a carbon negative direction.

On the down side, figuring out an economical way to cultivate algae and extract the oil at an industrial scale is a challenging endeavor, especially when the over-arching goal is to reduce carbon emissions rather than adding them.

The picture was looking bright in the early 2000s, up through the Obama administration. However, by the time former President Obama left office in 2016, oil prices were crashing. The relatively low cost of petroleum seemed to put the idea of a bioeconomy fueled by algae biofuel to bed.

Nevertheless, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory was among those continuing to invest in algae research projects, and the algae field continued to branch off into new angles. In 2018, for example, the Energy Department was funding the algae bioplastics angle. In 2020 researchers were exploring the idea of hooking up with high speed 3-D printing. The Mars mission has also sparked a new burst of interest in the algae biofuel field.

 

Algae biofuel could have another moment in the sun, now that more federal dollars are pouring into carbon capture-and-recycling technology (photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL).

 

Carbon Capture To The Rescue
In January of this year the Energy Department’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) launched the new AlgaePrize competition for students, aimed at developing “the next generation of bioeconomy professionals by expanding novel solutions to production, processing, and new product development on the way to gigaton-scale algae commercialization for fuel, food, products, and carbon dioxide utilization/sequestration.”

If you caught that thing about carbon dioxide, that’s where the happy dance for natural gas stakeholders comes in. Carbon capture from flue gas could turn out to be a value-added element that improves the bottom line for algae farming.

That’s where BETO seems to be heading. Last week the office announced a $16.5 million round of funding for six algae projects related to carbon dioxide capture.

The six projects were selected for their potential to demonstrate an improvement in carbon capture by algal systems leading to biofuels and other products, while also cutting costs and decreasing overall greenhouse gas emissions.

“Algae can grow on waste CO2, functioning as a carbon sink. This algae biomass can then be used to create low or no-emissions biofuels and bioproducts which displace GHGs,” BETO noted.

 

Natural Gas Hearts Algae Biofuel
Not all six of the new BETO-funded projects are focusing on carbon captured from flue gas. The Colorado School of Mines, for example, plans to put its pond-grown algae system through its paces using concentrated carbon dioxide from direct air capture.

Another awardee, Colorado State University, is working on an algal system that functions efficiently on atmospheric carbon.

Three of the other awardees are focusing on carbon dioxide from industrial fossil energy users including power plants: Dioxide Materials, MicroBio Engineering, and the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Sciences. A fourth awardee in the point source class is Global Algae Innovations, which is focusing more specifically on flue gas from a naphtha-fired power plant.

If the biofuel angle doesn’t work out at commercial scale, other aspects of the algae biofuel market could come into play.

Market analysts are forecasting growth in the algae market in the coming years. Consumers are on the prowl for healthy diet supplements, especially among the up-and-coming generation.

“Rise in the acceptance of algae-based food products and a growing popularity of vegan food are expected to emerge as trends in the algae market. Algae are already widely employed in bioplastics, cosmetics, food, bio-packaging, biofuel, and pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products,” observes the firm Transparency Market Research.

 

The Long Algae Biofuel Game Of ExxonMobil
All this activity puts the on-again, off-again algae biofuel journey of ExxonMobil into perspective.

ExxonMobil spearheaded the charge into shale gas after the Bush Administration lifted Clean Water Act regulations in 2006, and the company continued to double down on gas acquisitions even as prices plummeted.

 

Next Steps For Algae
ExxonMobil, for one, is excited. The company lists the following benefits compared to corn ethanol and other biofuels made from land-based energy crops:

Unlike making ethanol and biodiesel, producing algae does not compete with sources of food, rendering the food-vs.-fuel quandary a moot point.
Because algae can be produced in brackish water, including seawater, its production will not strain freshwater resources the way ethanol does.
Algae consume CO2, and on a life-cycle basis have a much lower emissions profile than corn ethanol given the energy used to make fertilizer, distill the ethanol, and to farm and transport the latter.
Algae can yield more biofuel per acre than plant-based biofuels – currently about 1,500 gallons of fuel per acre, per year. That’s almost five times more fuel per acre than from sugar cane or corn.
That’s all well and good, but it’s about time for ExxonMobil and other fossil energy stakeholders to stop digging more carbon up from the ground and start taking giant steps towards a more sustainable energy profile.

Capturing carbon dioxide at power plants is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t change anything in terms of the local environmental impacts of fossil energy extraction, and it doesn’t make a dent in the amount of fugitive emissions escaping from drilling sites, transportation networks and storage facilities.

To the extent that algae farming at gas power plants enables more gas extraction, it’s just another form of greenhouse gas whack-a-mole.

Either way, it looks like algae farming at power plants has a window of opportunity. Last November ExxonMobil re-upped its collaboration with Synthetic Genomics, under the new name of Viridos. If you have any thoughts about that, drop us a note in the comment thread.

 

 

Source  CleanTechnica

Blockchain-verified sustainable aviation fuel scheme launched by Shell, Amex and Accenture

Posted on by dishanth
Blockchain-verified sustainable aviation fuel scheme launched by Shell, Amex and Accenture

Called Avelia, the scheme is offering around one million gallons of SAF in the first instance, which its co-founders claim makes it the largest of its kind to date. This amount of fuel could cover 15,000 individual business traveller flights from London to New York, the co-founders state.

There are many business flight schemes through which customers can either offset the emissions related to their tickets or purchase SAF, but this is believed to be the first of its scale to utilise blockchain.

Business customers will be able to book flights using the American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) platform and request verification that SAF, equivalent to that which would have been used if their flights had directly been powered with the maximum blend of 50%, has been produced and supplied. Verification will be provided in the form of blockchain-generated tokens, which have a tamper-proof audit trail.

Shell will produce the SAF while Accenture is contributing its IT services and partnering with the Energy Web Foundation to use its existing blockchain platform, powered by Microsoft’s Azure.

Shell currently manufactures SAF using agricultural wastes in Rotterdam, and at a separate facility fed by agricultural wastes and virgin plant feedstocks in Singapore. It is aiming to produce at least two million tonnes of SAFs annually from 2025 and to continue expanding production through to the 2030s, eyeing new production and blending facility locations in markets including the UK to meet these aims.

Shell claims that its SAF can reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80% when compared with traditional jet fuel, if it is used neat. Current international regulations limit the maximum proportion of SAF in blends to 50%, however. Barriers to using neat SAF include the need for the development of suitable engines and the need to scale up SAF production while avoiding unintended negative consequences, such as poor land-use practices for feedstock crops. SAF currently costs between two and eight times as much as conventional jet fuel, depending on national markets and feedstocks, as it is yet to benefit from the same ‘economies of scale’ benefits as kerosene.

“SAF is a key enabler of decarbonisation in the aviation industry, and it is available today- however, it is currently scarce and costs more than conventional jet fuel,” said Shell Aviation’s president Jan Toschka. “Avelia will help trigger demand for SAF at scale, providing confidence to suppliers like us to further increase investment in production, and in turn helping to lower the price point for these fuels.”

Shell, Accenture, and Amex GBT will notably use the Avelia platform for all of their own business flights.

 

SAF – the state of play

SAF has proven to be a popular approach to decarbonisation for the aviation industry, which is responsible for 3% of annual global emissions and which – pandemic aside – had been growing rapidly in terms of passenger numbers and emissions for a decade.

It is doubtless so popular because using blends of 50% is a ‘drop-in’ solution, requiring no changes to aircraft – as would be necessary for electrification or the use of hydrogen. The UK’s industry body for sustainability in aviation is planning to prioritise SAF use, efficiencies and offsetting to reach net-zero, and this approach has influenced national policymaking on the issue.

This approach is against the recommendation of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). The CCC’s most optimistic forecast for the use of SAF in the UK’s aviation industry is for it to cover 7% of fuel supply in 2030. With this in mind, and with electric and hydrogen technologies for large planes still years from maturity, the CCC has recommended that the Government caps airport expansion and limits the growth in passenger numbers. The Conservative Party has, to date, been staunchly against this approach – as have most large businesses in the sector.

Instead, the Government is planning to deliver a rapid scaling of SAF production. Ministers have asked the industry to collaborate to bring at least three commercial SAF production plants online in the UK by 2025. The Government has partnered with LanzaTech, Velocys and Philipps 66 to help deliver this ambition, through its Jet Zero Council.

To ensure adequate demand for these SAFs, the Government is mulling a SAF mandate. Its proposals involve requirements for jet fuel producers to ensure that at least 10% of their production annually is SAF by 2030, rising to 75% by 2050. The EU is considering a similar mandate.

 

 

Source Edie

M&S adds 20 biomethane trucks to fleet through DHL partnership

Posted on by dishanth
M&S adds 20 biomethane trucks to fleet through DHL partnership

DHL Supply Chain announced the launch of the 20 vehicles, which are Volvo’s FH Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tractor unit models with Globetrotter cabs, on Monday morning (13 June). They will be used to transport M&S products across the retailer’s routes in Peterborough, Swindon and Castle Donington, replacing pure diesel models.

An 80% reduction in tailpipe emissions is expected to be delivered through the introduction of the trucks, which will be powered using bio-based LNG. DHL last year began sourcing bio-LNG from Shell, which produces the fuel from agricultural waste, to power trucks for Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos. edie has requested information on the source of the bio-LNG for M&S.

Should non-renewable LNG need to be used to power the trucks at any point, they will still generate 10-20% less tailpipe emissions than their diesel predecessor, DHL said in a statement.

DHL is notably aiming to operate more than 500 LNG-powered heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in Europe by 2025, as it works towards net-zero by 2050. The company promised to set verified 2030 emissions reduction targets through the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) last year to support this long-term vision, and pledged €7bn to deliver decarbonisation. It is yet to gain SBTi approval for these targets.

Other low-carbon transport commitments already unveiled by DHL include operating more than 80,000 electric and hybrid vehicles globally by 2030. The firm confirmed in March that it will add at least 270 new electric vans to its UK fleet by September, following the launch of 100 in 2021.

As for M&S, the retailer updated its flagship ‘Plan A’ sustainability strategy last September, with major commitments to net-zero operations by 2035 and a net-zero supply chain by 2040 among the new additions. Plan A’s webpage lists ‘zero-emissions transport’ as a priority through to 2025 – but M&S is yet to set new targets for sourcing a certain number of certain vehicles within set timeframes.

M&S’s head of transport Tim Greenwood said: “We are committed to reducing our environmental impact in line with our Plan A sustainability action plan. It’s important to us that our partners’ values and ambitions align with ours and that’s one of the reasons we have a long-standing relationship with DHL. Replacing diesel trucks for brand new bio-LNG vehicles is a good step forward in reducing our carbon emissions.”

 

 

 

Biogas backers

Other businesses investing in biogas trucks to reduce transport emissions include brewer Anheuser-Busch, Evri (formerly Hermes) Royal Mail and M&S competitor John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose & Partners.

To date, it has been easier for many businesses to replace diesel HGVs with those powered by alternative fuels such as bio-LNG than with electric alternatives. The larger and heavier a vehicle is, the more challenging it is to electrify while retaining the same performance.

However, a new generation of electric HGVs is beginning to emerge. Sainsbury’s trialled fully electric refrigerated trailer lorries last year, integrated them into its fleet this year, and is now developing smart charging solutions for them.

Aldi UK is also trialling similar vehicles, assessing their performance in comparison to those powered with alternative fuels – as are Amazon and Carlsberg Group.

 

 

Source edie

Bacteria upcycle carbon waste into valuable chemicals

Posted on by dishanth
Bacteria upcycle carbon waste into valuable chemicals

Bacteria are known for breaking down lactose to make yogurt and sugar to make beer. Now researchers led by Northwestern University and LanzaTech have harnessed bacteria to break down waste carbon dioxide (CO2) to make valuable industrial chemicals.

In a new pilot study, the researchers selected, engineered and optimized a bacteria strain and then successfully demonstrated its ability to convert CO2 into acetone and isopropanol (IPA).

Not only does this new gas fermentation process remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, it also avoids using fossil fuels, which are typically needed to generate acetone and IPA. After performing life-cycle analysis, the team found the carbon-negative platform could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 160% as compared to conventional processes, if widely adopted.

“The accelerating climate crisis, combined with rapid population growth, pose some of the most urgent challenges to humankind, all linked to the unabated release and accumulation of CO2 across the entire biosphere,” said Northwestern’s Michael Jewett, co-senior author of the study. “By harnessing our capacity to partner with biology to make what is needed, where and when it is needed, on a sustainable and renewable basis, we can begin to take advantage of the available CO2 to transform the bioeconomy.”

Jewett is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and director of the Center for Synthetic Biology. He co-led the study with Michael Koepke and Ching Leang, both researchers at LanzaTech.

Necessary industrial bulk and platform chemicals, acetone and IPA are found nearly everywhere, with a combined global market topping $10 billion. Widely used as a disinfectant and antiseptic, IPA is the basis for one of the two World Health Organization-recommended sanitizer formulas, which are highly effective in killing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And acetone is a solvent for many plastics and synthetic fibers, thinning polyester resin, cleaning tools and nail polish remover.

While these chemicals are incredibly useful, they are generated from fossil resources, leading to climate-warming CO2 emissions.

To manufacture these chemicals more sustainably, the researchers developed a new gas fermentation process. They started with Clostridium autoethanogenum, an anaerobic bacterium engineered at LanzaTech. Then, the researchers used synthetic biology tools to reprogram the bacterium to ferment CO2 to make acetone and IPA.

 

By harnessing our capacity to partner with biology to make what is needed, where and when it is needed, on a sustainable and renewable basis, we can begin to take advantage of the available CO2 to transform the bioeconomy.”

Michael Jewett, Synthetic Biologist

 

“These innovations, led by cell-free strategies that guided both strain engineering and optimization of pathway enzymes, accelerated time to production by more than a year,” Jewett said.

The Northwestern and LanzaTech teams believe the developed strains and fermentation process will translate to industrial scale. The approach also could potentially be applied to create streamlined processes for generating other valuable chemicals.

“This discovery is a major step forward in avoiding a climate catastrophe,” said Jennifer Holmgren, LanzaTech CEO. “Today, most of our commodity chemicals are derived exclusively from new fossil resources such as oil, natural gas or coal. Acetone and IPA are two examples with a combined global market of $10 billion. The acetone and IPA pathways developed will accelerate the development of other new products by closing the carbon cycle for their use in multiple industries.”

Jewett is a member of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

The study, “Carbon-negative, scaled-up production of acetone and isopropanol by gas fermentation,” was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (award numbers DE-EE0007566 and CRADA/NFE-16-06364), DOE Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Division, Genomic Science Program (award numbers DE-SC0018249 and FWP ERKP903), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Program.

 

 

Source Northwestern

Meet the giant mechanical stomach turning food waste into electricity

Posted on by dishanth
Meet the giant mechanical stomach turning food waste into electricity

Tonnes of food scraps collected from restaurants and supermarkets are being converted into electricity under a green energy initiative powering thousands of homes in Perth.

The City of Cockburn has made the waste to energy service a permanent fixture of its general duties, collecting rotting food waste from local businesses and feeding it to a mechanical ‘stomach’ at a nearby fertiliser plant.

The anaerobic digester heats the food, traps its methane gas and feeds the energy into the electricity grid, powering up to 3,000 homes.

 

Key points:

  • A giant mechanical stomach is turning tonnes of food waste to energy
  • The electricity is being fed into the grid, powering 3,000 homes
  • The City of Cockburn has made the initiative part of its general duties

 

“Food waste really shouldn’t be thought of as a waste, it should be thought of as a resource,” said the city’s waste education officer, Clare Courtauld.

 

“It’s really important to take food waste out of landfill because it produces harmful greenhouse gases.

“If global food waste was a country, it would actually be the third-highest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.”

 

Food scraps are fed to the mechanical stomach around the clock.(Flickr: Taz, CC BY 2.0)

 

Ms Courtauld said the City had so far recycled 43 tonnes of food waste and saved 81,000 kilograms of CO2 equivalent gasses that would have otherwise entered the atmosphere rotting in landfill.

The $8 million mechanical stomach sits at the Jandakot headquarters of fertiliser company RichGro.

It was the first bio-waste plant of its kind to operate in the southern hemisphere when it opened in 2016.

 

“Their trucks come in … they tip off the food waste.

“It then goes through a piece of machinery which removes any packaging that might be in with the food waste and any contamination.

“It pulps the food waste up into like a porridge consistency and doses it into a big tank.

 

The food waste is pulped into a rich slurry and pumped into the digester.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)

 

“This tank then feeds the two digesters … they’re getting fed 24 hours a day.

“As it breaks down, it generates methane gas. We’re capturing that gas and we’re running large generators that combined can produce up to 2.4 megawatts of electricity.”

The plant powers the company’s entire operations and up to 3,000 neighbouring homes, all from food waste.

 

What goes in, must come out

“Out the back end comes a liquid that is actually certified organic as a liquid fertilizer,” Mr Richards said.

“We sell a percentage of that to farmers and the remaining percentage of it we add into our compost piles.”

 

The bioenergy plant converts the methane gas from food waste into electricity to feed into the local power grid.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)

 

Some foods are better than others.

 

“Certainly, you can overdo a good thing — you wouldn’t want too much fats, oils and greases.

“A lot of fruit and vege, starchy, sugary products are good. They produce a lot of energy.”

The City’s waste manager, Lyall Davieson, said there was community appetite for these sorts of initiatives.

“I’ve been in waste for about 25 years,” he said.

“Not so long ago, all we could really do was just recycle a few cans and a bit of steel.

“But now we really have at our disposal lots of options to divert waste from landfill and to recycle.”

 

The energy created from food waste is fed into the existing electricity grid, powering up to 3,000 homes.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)

 

Frank Scarvaci, who owns a longstanding independent supermarket in Hamilton Hill, was one of the first businesses to sign up for the service.

He said it was a natural progression for his grocery store after embracing a plastic bag ban and installing solar power.

“I’ve been surprised [at] how the community has accepted the change,” he said.

“I thought [there] was going to be much more resistance in regards to when they scrapped plastic bags, for example — but there was virtually no resistance at all.”

 

Contamination causes indigestion

While common in Europe, the plant is just one of a few of its kind to be built in Australia.

 

People living close to the plant in Perth’s southern suburbs wouldn’t even know their homes are being powered by food waste.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)

 

The City of Cockburn said it was not a waste service it would expand to households, because the risk of contamination disrupting the process was too high.

“We do have a machine that does have a certain ability to remove a level of the contamination,” Mr Richards said.

“Can it remove everything? No, it can’t.

“We’ve even had bowling balls come through — you can’t process things like that, in a system like this. It does damage our machinery.”

 

Bio-energy has a bright future

The bio-energy technology is growing in Australia, with the next logical step in the process to convert the bio-waste into biomethane, which could be fed into the gas grid.

The Federal Government is co-funding a biomethane production facility at a wastewater treatment plant in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

Once online in 2022, the $14 million plant is expected to pump biomethane derived from biogas created by a similar ‘mechanical stomach’ that would meet the gas needs of more than 13,000 homes.

 

 

By Gian De Poloni

Source ABC News Australia