Gevo lands marine endorsement for isobutanol

By Gevo | June 18, 2015

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  Gevo's isobutanol plant at Luverne, Minnesota
  

Gevo Inc. has received a key endorsement for the use of its renewable isobutanol by the marine industry, following support and recommendation for the use of isobutanol by the National Marine Manufacturers Association as an effective, less damaging, more suitable biofuel alternative than ethanol for powering various types of marine and recreational boat engines.

The NMMA is the leading association representing the recreational boating industry in North America. Its member companies produce more than 80 percent of the boats, engines, trailers, accessories and gear used by boaters and anglers throughout the U.S. and Canada. Over the last five years, the NMMA has worked together with Gevo, the U.S. DOE, Argonne National Laboratory, the U.S. Coast Guard and others on the testing of isobutanol in a variety of marine engines. During this time, the NMMA has gathered a great amount of data supporting the viability of isobutanol as the preferred renewable fuel blendstock for gasoline-powered marine engines.

The studies showed that isobutanol fuel blends are a preferable power source for the marina markets. Isobutanol solves concerns that many boaters have with ethanol-blended fuels, which can damage internal engine parts. In the studies several advantages of isobutanol-blended fuel were apparent, including:

  -- Provides higher energy content;

  -- Prevents moisture absorption & phase separation; and

  -- Reduces engine corrosion.

 "We believe that the marine industry will be an important market for Gevo's isobutanol. The technical properties of isobutanol shine in this application. We appreciate the efforts and the collaboration between Gevo and the NMMA throughout the testing program. We are pleased to have provided, from our plant in Luverne, the isobutanol needed to make the 16% isobutanol blended fuels that the studies required, for both on-water tests and in the laboratory," said Dr. Patrick Gruber, Gevo CEO. "We are delighted with the results of the testing and to have the endorsement of the NMMA. Isobutanol has proven to be an effective, highly compatible biofuel for the recreational boating industry."

"Based on years of collaborative testing across the industry, biobutanol fuel blends, such as the ones provided by Gevo during our test program, are a safe and viable alternative to ethanol for use in recreational marine engines and boats up to 16.1 percent by volume," said Jeff Wasil, engineering manager, emissions testing, certification and regulatory development at BRP US Inc. (Bombardier Recreational Products), an NMMA member.

The formal announcement by the NMMA to endorse isobutanol as an industry-wide biofuel alternative comes as the fuel industry focuses on addressing the congressionally-mandated renewable fuel standard, which requires 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into the gasoline supply by 2022. These events will help broaden the market for Gevo's isobutanol fuel technology, enabling Gevo to support recreational boating in its efforts to move towards alternative, renewable fuels and chemicals.

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Predicting sediment flow in coastal vegetation

Model could help engineers design erosion-prevention strategies in marshes, wetlands, aquatic forests.

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
June 16, 2015

Seagrass, kelp beds, mangroves, and other aquatic vegetation are often considered “ecosystem engineers” for their ability to essentially create their own habitats: Aquatic leaves and reeds slow the flow of water, encouraging sediments to settle nearby to form a foundation on which more plants can grow.

Such underwater forests provide shelter to hundreds of organisms, and can also protect shorelines from erosion. However, in the last few decades, large swaths of aquatic vegetation have disappeared around the world, including 100 million acres of wetlands, and thousands of acres of seagrass and kelp beds, in the United States.

In large part, sediment transport — how sediment flows through a region — determines the survival of coastal marshes and mangroves: Plant growth depends on the accumulation of sediment to the seafloor. When strong storms or currents carry sediment away, underwater forests can also wash away, exposing coastlines and riverbanks to erosion.

Now researchers at MIT have developed a simple model that can help scientists understand how and when sediments move through a region of aquatic vegetation, such as a wetland. The researchers say engineers may use this model to design better ways to restore seagrass, mangroves, and other underwater plant beds. For example, using the model, scientists may be able to identify locations where aquatic vegetation may be less prone to erosion.

“Wetlands are very important because they protect our coastal areas, but they are eroding,” says Qingjun Yang, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “With this, engineers can do modeling on how the stresses vary, and whether it would be helpful to plant vegetation here or there, based on the equation.”

Yang and her colleagues —Heidi Nepf, the Donald and Martha Harleman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and postdoc Francois Kerger — have published their results in the journal Water Resources Research.

Catching drift

To estimate sediment transport in aquatic environments, one key factor is what’s known as “bed shear stress” — the friction exerted by water at the seabed, which gives scientists an idea of how sediments move across the seafloor. Existing models and equations calculate bed shear stress for underwater environments without vegetation. However, there exist no applicable models for vegetated regions, as plants create more complicated currents and eddies, muddying the picture of sediment transport through such regions.

Yang and her colleagues sought to develop a model of bed shear stress for vegetated environments by first setting up a controlled experiment to simulate sediment transport through a simple, reed-like environment.

In a large, 10-meter recirculating water tank lined with a bottom layer of plastic, the researchers erected thousands of thin dowels to simulate sturdy, marsh-like reeds. They then deposited polymer particles in the water, and ran a pump to circulate water through the tank.

Using a technique called laser Doppler velocimetry, they aimed a pair of lasers into the tank at various depths and positions. The researchers used the lasers’ backscattering, or reflected light, to calculate the particles’ velocity at a particular location. As the particles were very small, their velocity was equal to that of the surrounding water parcels, or groups of water molecules. The researchers then converted velocity measurements into estimates of friction, or stress, between water parcels, and at the bed.

Shaping the seabed

After multiple trials, the researchers observed that the friction exerted by one water parcel on another resembled a linear function with depth: The deeper a water parcel, the more friction it experienced, with the most stress occurring at the bed. This linear relationship is contrast to a well-established theory of bed shear stress, called “the law of the wall” — a theory that has mostly been applied to nonvegetated regions, and that generally assumes that an aquatic environment exerts constant stress near the bed, regardless of depth.

Yang developed an equation for bed shear stress based on the linear stress observed in the group’s experiment. She then used the equation to successfully predict friction at the bed, based on the velocity of water parcels at any location above the bed.

Yang says the model is most relevant for environments with relatively smooth beds and emergent vegetation — long, thin plants, such as reeds, that extend from the seabed to the water surface.

“We can use this model to predict how much energy it takes for sediment to begin to flow, and how fast the flow has to be,” Yang says. “The faster the flow, the more friction is exerted on the bed, and the more the sediment begins to move. Then we know how the land will evolve, and how we can shape and design vegetation and soil so they can live on without much erosion.”

“As anyone can imagine, the presence of plants makes the flow patterns very complicated — we can only approach the problem from a statistical perspective, by modeling relevant statistics of the flow field through the plants,” says Francesco Ballio, a professor of civil engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan who was not involved in the research. “This model can be already used for calculation of the flow field in vegetated water systems such as rivers and wetlands. … As a consequence, it may be incorporated also as a component of more complex eco-hydrodynamic models for water bodies management and restoration. But this will require some testing.”

This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

FEEDING THE HUNGRY WITH MICROALGAE

Spirulina cultivation in Bangui, Central Africa Republic. Photo: Nutrition Santé Bangui

in Worldcrunch about a 72-year old French chef who has taken on the challenge of bringing spirulina to the malnourished youth of the Central Africa.

Freddy owns a restaurant, the Relais de Chasse (hunting lodge), a popular eatery in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. He also works with an agricultural cooperative, hidden in the middle of luxuriant tropical vegetation, where the “miracle product” spirulina is made. Spirulina can get a child suffering from dietary deficiencies on his or her feet in just a matter of weeks.

In the local market spirulina sells for about 30 Euros per kilogram, and is a serious, natural and affordable alternative to the famous “Plumpy’nut,” a French-made sugar and peanut paste that is widely used by NGOs to fight against child rickets in developing countries.

Freddy comes from Brittany, in the northwest of France, but has spent almost half his life in Africa, single-handedly dealing with his small spirulina factory and a child nutrition center, where his “magic potion” is saving lives. Freddy himself swallows a large coffee spoon of it every morning, and welcomes his guests to do the same. It’s the secret, he says, to his own good health.

Freddy’s fascination for spirulina began in 1991, when he accommodated Dr. Jean Dupire, a general practitioner working for a local clinic. Dr. Dupire had just obtained two large barrels of spirulina that were supposed to go to Zaire, which was at war, but ended up by accident in Bangui. Locals didn’t know what to do with the barrels. But for the doctor, a nutrition specialist, they were a priceless treasure. He knew all about the virtues of this microalgae filled with proteins that also has most of the essential nutrients, and lacks only Omega-3 to be complete.

To treat the unfed children and compensate for the lack of Omega-3, the doctor developed a “spirulina-fish” formula. The results have been nothing short of spectacular. “In one month, a child suffering from severe malnutrition is back on his feet,” says Dr. Dupine, who plans to expand the model by training doctors and producers.

Algal genes advancing pacemaker technology

June 22, 2015
Kevin Hattori

Technion researchers have successfully established a new approach for pacing the heart and synchronizing its mechanical activity without the use of a conventional electrical pacemaker. This novel biologic strategy employs light-sensitive genes that can be injected into the heart and then activated by flashes of blue light.

Professor Lior Gepstein

More than 3 million people worldwide have had electronic pacemakers implanted. The most common indication for a pacemaker is the treatment of a slow heart beat which can put patients at risk for fainting, heart failure, and even death. Pacemakers work by sending electrical signals to the heart to regulate the heart beat. Pacemakers can also be used for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), an approach aiming to synchronize the contraction of the heart’s two ventricles in order to improve heart function, symptom status and decrease mortality in some patients who suffer from heart failure.

The new optogenetic approach for cardiac pacing and resynchronization was developed by Prof. Lior Gepstein and Dr. Udi Nussinovitch of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, and Rambam Medical Center.

“Our work is the first to suggest a non-electrical approach to cardiac resynchronization therapy,” Gepstein said. “Before this, there have been a number of elegant gene therapy and cell therapy approaches for generating biological pacemakers that can pace the heart from a single spot. However it was impossible to use such approaches to activate the heart simultaneously from a number of sites for resynchronization therapy.”

If the biological pacemaker can be adapted for humans, it could help patients avoid many of the drawbacks of electrical pacemakers. These include the surgical procedure needed to implant the device, the risk of infection, the limitation on the number and locations of the pacing wires used, the possible decline in cardiac function resulting from the change in the normal electrical activation pattern, and the limitations on implantation in children.

“This is a very important proof-of-concept experiment, which for the first time, demonstrates a mechanism to pace the heart without the need for wires and allows for simultaneous pacing from multiple sites,” said Dr. Jeffrey Olgin, chief of the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Heart and Vascular Center at the University of California, San Francisco. “The most common site of failure of current pacemakers are the leads or wires that connect the heart muscle to the electrical impulse. The approach demonstrated in this paper has the potential to eliminate these wires or have a single lead excite multiple sites simultaneously.”

Pacing the heart with light is part of the emerging field of optogenetics, which has gained considerable momentum in the field of brain research. Researchers working in the field have been taking light-sensitive genes from algae and placing them in cells where they act like a switch, turning certain behaviors on or off when the cells are exposed to pulses of light.

As they report in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the Technion researchers injected one of these algae genes (channelorhodopsin-2) into a specific area of rat heart muscle. The scientists then showed that the light-sensitive protein expressed at this site could be turned on with flashes of blue light and drive the heart muscle to contract. By altering the frequency of the flashes, Gepstein and Nussinovitch could control and regulate the heart rate. They went on to deliver the gene to several places in the heart’s pumping chambers, and demonstrated the ability to simultaneously activate the heart muscle from many places in an effort to synchronize the heart’s pumping function.

Scientists will need to do more research for this optogenetic-based pacemaker strategy to become a reality in human health, Gepstein said. For instance, the gene injected in the rat experiments is sensitive to blue light which has poor tissue penetration potentially limiting its utility in large animals or humans.

“This means that the affected cells have to be relatively superficial–near the surface of the heart–and that an optical fiber should be implanted bringing the illumination beam as close as possible to the cells,” Gepstein said. “A potential solution in the future may be the development of similar light-sensitive proteins that will be responsive to light in the near-red or even infra-red spectrum, which penetrates tissue much better, allowing illumination from a long distance.”

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is a major source of the innovation and brainpower that drives the Israeli economy, and a key to Israel’s renown as the world’s “Start-Up Nation.” Its three Nobel Prize winners exemplify academic excellence. Technion people, ideas and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world including life-saving medicine, sustainable energy, computer science, water conservation and nanotechnology. The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute is a vital component of Cornell NYC Tech, and a model for graduate applied science education that is expected to transform New York City’s economy.

American Technion Society (ATS) donors provide critical support for the Technion—more than $2 billion since its inception in 1940. Based in New York City, the ATS and its network of chapters across the U.S. provide funds for scholarships, fellowships, faculty recruitment and chairs, research, buildings, laboratories, classrooms and dormitories, and more.

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Algae Energy Farm

June 13, 2015
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

The University of Queensland has established an Algae Energy Farm to cultivate and harvest microalgae for a range of uses, including as a feed supplement for beef cattle. Lead researcher Professor Peer Schenk said the farm showed that algae could be grown easily in Australian conditions, leveraging feed and fuel, and without competing for arable land needed for food production.

The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy

Chapter 5. The Solar Revolution

Earth Policy Release The Great Transition June 12, 2015

Over the next few weeks we will be releasing The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy in its entirety. Stay tuned for more exciting developments. In April 1954, top scientists gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear something new: voice and music broadcast by a solar-powered radio transmitter. Scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey were demonstrating their invention, the first practical solar cell, which was made of silicon. This breakthrough paved the way for the solar revolution taking place today on rooftops and in massive ground-mounted solar farms around the world. Solar cells, also called solar photovoltaics or PV, powered U.S. satellites during the 1960s space race with the Soviet Union. But PV technology was still too expensive to be used for much else until the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Amid rising fears about energy security, governments and private firms poured billions of dollars into solar research and development, reaping big gains in efficiency and cost reductions. This led to widespread use of PV in the 1980s for powering telephone relay stations, highway call boxes, and similar applications. Japanese and U.S. companies became early leaders in PV manufacturing for uses both large and small. For example, Japanese firms such as Sharp and Kyocera pioneered the use of solar cells in pocket calculators. A credit-card-sized solar-powered calculator from 1983 still helps us do quick calculations. In the mid-1980s, Germany joined the United States and Japan in the race for PV production dominance, but by the early years of the new millennium, Japanese and U.S. companies accounted for roughly 70 percent of the world’s PV output. Forward-thinking energy policies in Germany were the catalyst that spurred solar power’s astounding growth over the last decade or so. By guaranteeing renewable power producers access to the grid as well as a long-term premium price for their electricity, the German government’s policy made going solar economically attractive. A reinvigorated German PV manufacturing industry climbed back into the number two spot behind Japan. As world production increased to meet demand, the price of solar panels dropped, helping to drive demand higher. With demand for PV cells growing quickly, China—factory to the world—got into the game. Beginning around 2006, a boom in the Chinese PV industry massively expanded global production and drove prices down even further. Today China is a solar manufacturing giant, producing close to two thirds of the world’s PV—more than the United States, Japan, and Germany combined. The decline in PV panel prices over the decades is astonishing. In 1972, they cost over $74 per watt. The average price as of mid-2014 was less than 70¢ per watt—99 percent cheaper. (For reference, the typical U.S. rooftop system today has between 2 and 10 kilowatts of generating capacity. One kilowatt equals 1,000 watts.) Around the world, solar installations are growing by leaps and bounds on residential and commercial rooftops and in solar farms, also called solar power plants or parks, that can cover thousands of acres. Between 2008 and 2013, as solar panel prices dropped by roughly two thirds, the PV installed worldwide skyrocketed from 16,000 to 139,000 megawatts. That is enough to power every home in Germany, a country with 83 million people. In its January 2014 solar outlook report, Deutsche Bank projected that 46,000 megawatts would be added to global PV capacity in 2014 and that new installations would jump to a record 56,000 megawatts in 2015. The International Energy Agency in Paris, which is typically conservative in its renewable energy forecasts, has been revising its solar projections upward. As recently as 2011 it forecast 112,000 megawatts of solar generating capacity by 2015—a figure the world left far behind in 2013. The organization now projects that by 2018 the total will be 326,000 megawatts of generating capacity, but the world will likely come close to this in 2016. As solar power installations spread, it is worth remembering a point often made in the energy literature to convey the sheer scale of the solar resource: The sunlight striking the earth’s surface in just one hour delivers enough energy to power the world economy for one year.

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Australia’s dairy problem, and algae solutio

Australia’s dairy problem, and algae solution

June 7, 2015

Cow manure and other waste makes the wastewater generated from daily cleaning rich in compounds and micro-organisms that can damage river ecosystems.

There are around 4500 dairy farms in Victoria, Australia, according to Business Victoria. Together they produced about 86 per cent of Australia’s dairy product exports, worth almost $2 billion, in 2011-12.

The wastewater generated from daily cleaning is a dairy product that has been an issue of concern, however. Cow manure and other waste makes this water rich in compounds and micro-organisms that can damage river ecosystems.

The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI), responsible for government oversight of the state’s dairy industry, has been investigating ways to more responsibly manage dairy effluent. Barrie Bradshaw from DEPI says, “The main environmental issues are around water quality and nutrients getting into waterways as well as greenhouse gases off treatment ponds.”

Working with Victorian bio-solutions business Algae Enterprises, DEPI successfully ran a Market Validation Program project to demonstrate the potential of algae in treating dairy effluent on a farm-scale at DEPI’s Ellinbank dairy research facility.

“Algae Enterprises is a partnership between myself and Sustainability Ventures,” says Dr. Alex Falber, “to explore opportunities in algae and algae cultivation as a means of producing biofuels and useful products.”

Algae Enterprises’ Photoluminescent Algae System alters incoming sunlight to improve algae growth by fine-tuning the colors and wavelengths of light that reaches the algae.

“We developed what we called the Photoluminescent Algae System, which is a system of thin film plastics embedded with fluorescent dyes,” he says. “The system alters incoming sunlight to improve algae growth by fine-tuning the colors and wavelengths of light that reaches the algae.”

The algae remove all of the waste components from the wastewater, producing a very dense algae biomass (or clump) and a water stream that can be recycled for irrigation or other use on the farm. That algae biomass is then collected in a concentrated form and put into a digester system that breaks down the algae and converts it into methane gas to be used as a renewable energy source.

“The challenge has been implementing this technology in a way that is commercially viable for farmers,” says Algae Enterprises CEO Ayal Marek. “Cleaning the water was the main target, but you can add value for farmers, and that’s what we were able to do.”

The completed project now has scope for further development.

“Now that we’ve completed the project,” says Mr. Marek, “we are developing the system as modules, which will suit both larger and smaller farms. We’re about to roll out three of these modularized systems over the next year, with the aim of increasing beyond that.”

This project was funded under the Victorian Government’s Market Validation Program (MVP). The new Driving Business Innovation program builds on the MVP.

Increasing gas production from algae in anaerobic digesters

June 3, 2015
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

Thermal pretreatment laboratory-scale system.

ater and wastewater utilities are dealing with separated algae waste from water reservoirs and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent holding ponds, respectively. This algae waste is typically hauled to landfills or composting facilities for disposal. In some cases, separated algae waste is added to anaerobic digesters that receive primary and waste activated sludge (WAS).

Adding algae decreases the capacity of the digestion and dewatering facilities with little benefits in terms of additional gas production because of limited algae degradation under mesophilic conditions within the typical hydraulic retention time of anaerobic digesters (20 to 30 days).

It has been previously reported that thermal pretreatment increases the anaerobic degradability of algae (Chen, 1998). Direct steam injection is used to heat anaerobic digesters by mixing steam directly with sludge, providing an instantaneous heat transfer from steam to the liquid. The Hydroheater (Hydro-Thermal Corporation) is a direct steam injector (DSI) that combines high temperature (up to 120 °C) and mechanical shear.

For digester heating, these units are typically operated at temperatures of 35 to 55 °C and differential pressures of 0.5 to 2.0 bar. These units are also widely used for starch hydrolysis in slurry from dry grinding or wet milling processes at temperatures of up to 125 °C and differential pressures of 3 to 7 bar. Hydroheater operation at high temperature and high differential pressure may achieve thermal hydrolysis of algae and improve the anaerobic degradability of algae digestion.

A recent study at Georgia Institute of Technology explored the development of a process that combines thermal pretreatment with high shear to increase the degradability of separated algae waste.

The algae waste samples were subjected to different temperatures (170, 230, and 350 ˚F), differential pressures (1 to 4 bar), and high shear using a Hydroheater DSI, maintained at the target temperature for 30 min, and cooled to ambient temperature.

Thermal pretreatment with high shear resulted in 230 and 500% increases in the soluble chemical oxygen demand (COD) levels of the algae samples when treated at 230 and 350 ˚F, respectively. Pretreatment at 170 ˚F did not increase the soluble COD concentration in the algae waste. These results indicate that the level of hydrolysis is proportional to the pretreatment temperature.

Anaerobic biodegradability batch tests showed specific gas production of 6.4 ft3 per lbs feed volatile solids (VS) for the untreated algae and 6.6, 8.4, and 8.0 ft3 per lbs feed VS for the samples pretreated at 170, 230, and 350 ˚F, respectively. These results showed that increasing temperature from 230 to 350 ˚F increased solubilization but did not result in higher gas production. Among the conditions evaluated in this study, the optimum temperature for thermal pretreatment with high shear was 230 ˚F.

Thus, the proposed thermal pretreatment system would receive separated algae waste, heat it at 230 ˚F for 30 min, and blend it with unheated digester feed (primary sludge and/or WAS). Because the thermally pretreated material would be cooled by transferring heat to the digester feed, the heat added in the thermal pretreatment process would off-set digester heating requirements.

Thermal pretreatment with high shear at 230 ˚F is a feasible process that enhances separated algae waste degradability in anaerobic digesters treating primary sludge and WAS. This process adds negligible energy consumption to existing anaerobic digestion facilities because the heat required for thermal pretreatment offsets the digester heating requirements.

The research group consisted of Toshio Shimada, Michael Jupe, Lee Vandixhorn, Spyros G. Pavlostathis and Rodolfo E. Kilian of Carollo Engineers, Dallas, TX;
 with cooperation from Waco Water Utility Services, Waco, TX;
 Hydro-Thermal Corporation, Waukesha, WI; and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.