TU Delft in the Netherlands and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Spain researchers have a concept developed for the efficient catalytic cracking of unsaturated vegetable oil to greatly increase the production of gasoline and light olefins such as propane and butane. The scientists’ paper on their work was published in the journal ChemSusChem on Aug 4th 2008.

The team seems to have a novel take on the catalysts metallic structure.  By incorporating nickel onto a base commercial fluid catalytic cracking process (FCC) called equilibrium catalyst or ECat and co-feeding hydrogen into the reaction system under realistic FCC operations (525 °C, 1.1 atm), the team found that gasoline production increased 32% relative to the standard ECat. That is a massive improvement in gasoline molecule production worthy of some serious note.

Fluid Catalyst Cracking Vegetable Oil to Gasoline. Adding nickel and co-feeding H2 increased gasoline yield 32% relative to a conventional catalyst.

Contrasting to that the scientists learned that incorporating platinum with our without co-feeding hydrogen, was detrimental both to oil conversion and molecule selectivity.  This information closes a door to the very expensive platinum component often thought to be the highest form of metallic catalyst performance.  The scientists are quoted saying in a conclusion a “judicious choice of metal” is vital for performance during vegetable oil cracking.

The matter remains about coming up with hydrogen for the unit.  As adding hydrogen is a common process in most oil refineries using usually a steam process the technology is readily available.  The authors say in the study:

“This approach can be very promising and economical by utilizing recycle system for in-situ hydrogen produced to eliminate the hydrogen requirement from other sources. This concept can also lead to another potential application: co-processing of vegetable oils together with heavier petroleum feedstocks that contain metal, especially nickel, contaminants.”

“In that case, the great advantage is that metal incorporation onto the base FCC catalyst is not required while at the same time gasoline production from the vegetable oil fraction can be enhanced by exploiting the metal deposits present in the petroleum feedstock. These findings may certainly stimulate interest for directing future research in the rational design of new FCC catalysts for the production of biofuels.”

The paper has an interesting introduction that alternative fuel people might want to keep in mind.  There are several main ways to convert biomass to renewable fuels.  The list isn’t comprehensive but does get the main efforts into a short list.
·    Bioalcohols such as ethanol from the fermentation of sugars;
·    Transesterification of plant-based oils or animal fats to biodiesel;
·    Hydrotreatment of vegetable oils to renewable (“green”) diesel;
·    Pyrolysis of biomass to bio-oil, and its upgrading;
·    Gasification of biomass via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis via syngas; and
·    Catalytic cracking of vegetable oils to gasoline, diesel and light olefins similar to the standard FCC process in refineries.

The authors note that, “Depending on the feedstock type, some of the above-mentioned processes are already commercially available, but except for the FCC of vegetable oils, only the fermentation process is directly designed for gasoline (replacement) production. In addition, some of the processes above are still under development because they are very energy- and capital-intensive.”

The advantage for the new FCC process is pointed out by saying, “Thus, catalytic cracking of biomass (e.g., vegetable oils) is the only process that is able to directly produce gasoline, along with diesel and light olefins components. Furthermore, the compatibility of vegetable oil processing with the existing infrastructure of the standard FCC process makes this process much more economically feasible than other methods.”

The point being made hinges on the fact that FCC is a process with extensive support now for the oil refining business including materials and parts, experienced operators and a fully developed market.

The questions lie in the cost of operation – does feeding an FCC using vegetable oil run at higher or lower cost compared to crude and can vegetable oil source at or below the price of crude oil?  At about $2.00 per gallon for crude many vegetable oils could profitably get to an FCC for conversion and marketing.

Fluid Catalytic Cracking is a technology that many thought peaked in development several times over the past decades, but FCC just keeps on giving.  The Europeans have made a significant contribution expanding the use of FCC and there should be a high probability the new catalysts might see commercial use.

Go here to see the original: New Energy and Fuel

The BP well blowout, fire, explosion and platform collapse, and the ensuing crude oil leak are without doubt the result of human failings.  Underestimating the quality of the reservoir is one reason, perhaps some engineering choices and safety oversights, inadequate equipment, testing that didn’t work out in the real world and all the rest only show that human planning can come up short.

Now that its over this writer can recoil from the anger felt as the catastrophe unfolded.  Yes, the well getting away is cause No. 1 – something that has happened before and will happen again – hopefully with more and more infrequency.  The lessons keep coming – from drilling into the earth since Drake’s day; the pressures down there can surprise you.

But the sorrow of the lives lost was quickly overcome by the shear idiocy of the media and political response.  There has been essentially no worthy information making the mainstream press or incorporated into political activity.  The reverse is the fact – misinformation is rampant and the consequences, not counting the loss of life itself is simply incredible.

The President’s behavior has been an utter failure – doing far more damage than the oil itself.  The offshore drilling ban is keeping 50,000 jobs without paychecks topping $2 billion in payroll losses alone, not counting the effect throughout the local economy in the situation where the major economic engine, tourism, disappeared.  The President’s action wasn’t just foolish, but cruelly focused on a few innocents, thoughtless and without any kind of leadership or sense of responsibility to the local area or the nation as a whole.  The reaction actually fed the media hysteria – a fault beyond forgiving in a leader.  No gulf beach trips and minigolf photoshoots will take away the realization the President is out of his league.

In the meantime property values are gong to be hit with incomes going down.  From Texas to Florida the tourism business is in shambles and may take years to recover.

There are many reports that no one is buying Gulf seafood, even in areas unaffected by the spill. Gulf Coast shrimpers and fishermen are in a tough spot: On the one hand, as more areas of the Gulf are declared safe, they presumably won’t be able to collect compensation from BP or the government and will have to get back to work; on the other hand, no one’s buying their catch. Given the public fear of toxins in food, this problem could last a long time.  But this writer is buying – Gulf seafood – if you can find it, hasn’t been so reasonably priced in decades.

For the future perhaps the most important lesson is the current administration can’t be trusted to act in the national interest.  Bans, moratoriums and other fear based knee-jerk reactions have spoiled regulatory certainty, which will exact a huge cost from oil firms, their shareholders, management and employees and in particular we consumers. Some insider reports suggest that oil assets in the Gulf are already being disposed of at fire-sale prices.  Fear leading fear, just what an economic recovery can not stand.

The most damning realization is the most liberal administration in American history is composed of people who lack the reflexive skepticism that intelligence and science apply to the mainstream media and those left-wing blogs. Spend some time following the reporting and blogging on Deepwater Horizon, and you come to realize that the administration’s behavior in the crisis likely wasn’t based on a cynical progressive master plan.  The administration was overwhelmed by sheer emotional panic about the magnitude of the potential disaster it faced as outlined by its most loyal supporters.  Embarrassing to thoughtful knowledgeable citizens.

Here is why.  What President Obama called the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” – the oil has pretty much already disappeared into the environment.  The disaster was a man made broad-based failure on the part of the media, the science establishment, and the federal bureaucracy. With the nation and its leaders looking for facts, information was replaced with a massive plume of apocalyptic disinformation and threats of losing a significant part of the coastline to the goo.

While the leaking oil was terrible in many resects the magnitude was vastly over wrought.  In June a slick computer-modeled animated video showed a gigantic part of the spill making its way around the southern tip of Florida and up the East Coast. Oil covered everything from the Gulf to the Grand Banks.  The New York Daily News said, “BP Oil Slick Could Hit East Coast In Weeks: Government Scientists.”  CBS, MSNBC and many others followed on.  The video was a huge YouTube hit.  It was one of history’s most successful news frauds from the National Center for Atmospheric Research – paid for by taxpayers.  Then the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) disavowed the scenario.  Too late, who ever hears about the recantations when the media screws up?

Watson Technical Consulting of Savannah, Ga. a firm specializing in computer modeling of the effects of hurricanes, seismic events, geophysical hazards, and weapons of mass destruction asserts the simulation was bogus from the very beginning, because it ignored important conditions in the Gulf. Furthermore, says Chuck Watson, the media never took account of how diluted the oil would be once it got around Florida, through the Gulf Stream and finally got to the Atlantic: The bulk of the theoretically massive spill the video shows amounts to roughly a quart of oil per square mile. Watson claims flat-out that NOAA was “gold digging” for grants as there’s probably more federal research money floating around the Gulf than there is oil. “There is a feeding frenzy with people trying to get funding for their specialty,” he said.  Never let a disaster go wasted or some such cleverness from the administration – does that sound like people that can be trusted?

The coffin for this writer was the “Giant Plumes” of oil.  Here the lying got very creative and flunked high school general science class.  Halfway into May coming up with oil on the surface was getting problematic so some marine researchers were drafted to provide the answer.  Water tests were showing oil in small quantities under the water’s surface from wave action, but how much no one could say nor, obviously, was there any peer reviewed literature to check on the known facts.

Media reports implied and even tried to assert that “enormous oil plumes” were waiting, like nuclear submarines, to rise and attack unsuspecting beaches and wetlands. The New York Times summed up the media consensus on May 15: “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.” The article quoted Samantha Joye, a marine-sciences professor at the University of Georgia, as saying that this oil was mixed with water in the consistency of “thin salad dressing.”  Except there weren’t any plumes at all, let alone any ‘salad dressing’ type stuff.

By the end of May NOAA, where some grownups still have responsibility, released a study finding weak concentrations of oil in the area surrounding the Deepwater Horizon site at only 0.5 parts per million, maximum. The median was a little over 0.2 parts per million.

Again as the “giant” spill that threatened the East Coast, that’s barely above the threshold of detection.  By late July and early August, BP, the Federal Government, and some independent researchers were saying they couldn’t find any plumes at all. “We’re finding hydrocarbons around the well, but as we move away from the well, they move to almost background traces in the water column,” said Admiral Thad Allen, the administration’s point man on the spill. By then some 75 percent of the oil released is gone – and that’s based on new estimates that put the spill rate at the high end of earlier projections.

The giant-plume threat was greatly overstated by scientists and further blown out of proportion by the media. This writer believes those ‘scientists’ are not scientists at all.  As everyone who passed high school general science knows, oil is lighter than water and rises above it in all known situations on this planet. The idea of underwater plumes defies everything that we know about the physical laws on earth.  It’s been a great source of irritation and anger for weeks.  It’s a very good thing the notion is so incredibly dumb that its funny – but watching people report it is to see a stunning display of ignorance.  Are there no fact checkers left in the mass media?

The Gulf of Mexico and some of the coast of California are warm ecological systems where oil seeps are part of the food chain.  The leak was a bonanza for oil eating bacteria and the bacteria bonanza will work its way up the food chain with its abundance.  While the leak was perhaps a four-fold increase in the annual oil supply to the Gulf, the natural ecosystem adjusted quite well and as seen decades ago in the Mexican leak – it’s a very short-term matter. Truly it’s a disaster not to be left unused – by bacteria.

Dispersants turn thick, ugly slicks into widely distributed droplets, minimizing damage to beaches and sensitive wetlands.  When slicks are broken up the light oil parts evaporate, and the bacteria more easily eat the heavier parts.  Corexit is thought to be the major dispersant used in the treatment – something you shouldn’t spray directly on coral, marshlands or other living things as it’s a detergent like chemical.  Corexit has made lots of disinformation news too, even being a subject for a Congressional hearing.  But the EPA who recently started proceedings to make milk spills hazardous material type events has approved Corexit in supervised use.  In a reality check using dispersants is to break up oil before it gets to shore, piles up and gets out of the water – where the oil breakdown slows down and gets quite messy for wildlife and the flora.  It’s a very good thing the EPA kept its act together and the disbursements flowing – an issue of debate that did have some suspense.

Finally, this writer has a question for everyone – where is the link to the reputable gulf shrimp supplier – I’d like a five gallon bucket full, packed in dry ice for a 3 day UPS ground trip. A shrimp feast might make the anger recede a little more.

In closing, people lost their lives and condolences are due their families and herewith are heartfelt given.  Jobs are lost, suffering and troubles are mounting, so this writer is speaking out for you and will be your customer again.

The disaster isn’t about oil anymore, it’s the impact of media and politics – something that should and could be fixed in just a few words by just one man.  Do you think it will happen?

Here is the original: New Energy and Fuel

In an article titled “Feedstocks for Lignocellulosic Biofuels” published in Science, Chris Somerville of the University of California, Berkeley, and Deputy Director Steve Long of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with bioenergy analysts Caroline Taylor, Heather Youngs and Sarah Davis at the Energy Biosciences Institute suggest that a diversity of plant species, adaptable to the climate and soil conditions of specific regions of the world, can be used to develop “agroecosystem” for fuel production that are compatible with contemporary environmental goals.

Well, press release and research notes aside, they mean that there can be a set of plant species that could provide substantial amounts of biomass grown widely across the planet without an impact on food and feed production.  The troubled firm BP, well before the Gulf well crisis, funded the study.

The study authors discuss the sustainability of current and future crops that could be used to produce advanced biofuels with emerging technologies that use non-edible parts of plants. Such crops include perennial grasses like Miscanthus grown in the rain-fed areas of the U.S. Midwest, East and South; sugarcane in Brazil and other tropical regions, including the southeastern U.S.; Agave in semiarid regions such as Mexico and the U.S. Southwest; and woody biomass from various sources.

The team takes some assumptive license by making some simplifying assumptions: that technology will become available for converting most of the structural polysaccharides that comprise the bodies of plants to sugars, that all the sugars can be used for fuel production, and that the process energy required for the conversion of the sugars to fuels will be obtained from combustion of the other components of the biomass, mostly the lignin.  That way a sugar-to-ethanol bioconversion process using current technology, a metric ton (MT) of switchgrass or poplar, for example, would be expected to yield about 310 liters of ethanol.

The author’s base is founded on the comparative soil impacts.  Maize or corn plants used completely remove much more soil fertility than a perennial plant.  Perennial plants that use C4 photosynthesis, such as sugarcane, energy cane, elephant grass, switchgrass, and Miscanthus, have intrinsically high light, water, and nitrogen use efficiency as compared with that of C3 species as seen in corn.  Moreover reduced tillage and perennial root systems add carbon to the soil and protect against erosion.

While the team reports that tropical Napier Grass in El Salvador natural stands of Echinochloa polystachya on the Amazon floodplain can respectively reach production of 88 and 100 MT/ha/year, temperate Miscanthus x giganteus produced in England at 52°N a peak biomass of 30 MT/ha/year and harvestable biomass of 20 MT/ha/year. (ha is hectare, 2.47 ha per U.S. acre) Miscanthus also offers an important soil protection effect, seasonality leads to an annual cycle of senescence, in which perennial grasses such as Miscanthus mobilize mineral nutrients from the stem and leaves to the roots at the end of the growing season. Thus, harvest of biomass during the winter results in relatively low rates of removal of minerals.

That could account for the observation that stands grown at Rothamsted, UK showed no response to added nitrogen during a 14-year period during which all biomass was removed each year.  In side-by-side trials in central Illinois, unfertilized M. x giganteus produced 60% more biomass than a well-fertilized highly productive maize crop, and across the state, winter-harvestable yields averaged 30 MT/ha/year.

Miscanthis US Growing Area Map. .

The author’s note in an observation that if Miscanthus were used as the only feedstock, less than half of the 14.2 Mha currently set aside for the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program  (CRP) would be required to deliver the ethanol mandate of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  Contrary to that readers should be informed that a great chunk of the CRP land area is tiny little headlands, terraces, protective filters along watercourses and the like.  But there are vast amounts of highly erodeable land that could better serve the economy than being used for corn or soybean production.

Its worthwhile to note that as the authors seem to overlook some details they turned up others.  The Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands published in 2008 reveals that more than 600 Mha of land worldwide has fallen out of agricultural production, mostly in the last 100 years.

Most readers will know that for tropical production sugarcane isn’t beaten yet and won’t most likely.  Harvested cane arrives with the sugar in liquid form ready for fermentation and the plant remnants can be burned for distillation with power left over for the electric grid.  Many other regions of the world beyond Brazil are also well suited to sugarcane production or formerly produced sugarcane on land that has been abandoned. Thus, “the total amount of fuel that may be produced from sugarcane worldwide could eventually be a very substantial proportion of global transportation fuels.” As the authors seem to be aware – the potential in sugarcane defies calculation in responsible numbers for now.

Approximately 18% of the earth’s surface is semi-arid and prone to drought.  The authors suggest various Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions with high efficiencies of water use and drought resistance hold a potential opportunity for production of biomass for fuels.  Agave species that thrive under arid and semi-arid conditions by using a type of photosynthesis called Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) that strongly reduces the amount of water transpired by absorbing CO2 during the cold desert night and then internally assimilating this into sugars through photosynthesis during the warmer days.  By opening their stomata at night, they lose far less water than they would during the day.  Much of the land noted in the Global Potential of Bioenergy on Abandoned Agriculture Lands that has fallen out of agricultural production worldwide is semi-arid, and it appears that the amount of land that may be available for cultivation of Agave species is vast.

The research paper points out that about 89 to 107 Mha of land that were formerly in agriculture globally are now in forests and urban areas.  The authors bravely note the biomass that is harvested annually in the Northern Hemisphere for wood products has an energy content equivalent to approximately 107% of the liquid fuel consumption in the United States.  Wood resources provide regionally specific opportunities for sustainably harvested biomass feedstocks.  That explains the Chevron and Weyerhaeuser deal for biomass.

For this summary its important to note one more point the authors took the time to briefly discuss.  It is inevitable that some mineral soil nutrients will be removed when biomass is harvested, it will be essential to recycle mineral nutrients, which are not consumed in the production of biofuels, from biomass-processing facilities back onto the land. That is virtually all of the minerals.  It needs to be a built in cost before soils are degraded further by any new biomass effort.

This writer’s summary leaves a lot out from the published study including the references, the supporting documentation and the available links.  For this article Science has free registration, an opportunity cost well worth the small effort.

The authors did a good job here, but left a lot out.  There are lots more plants to consider, but the local weather and soils are going to decide what farming can accomplish and the profit for production will in the end decide.  This writers main concern is that highly profitable biomass could displace prime food and feedstock land and force food and feedstock production onto the less optimal soils.  Some oversight, as oppressive as it is – is going to be needed to balance the demands with the conditions – something competition isn’t going to get done.

Original post here: New Energy and Fuel

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An impressive idea is out in the International Journal of Energy Research from the University of Leeds and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research group has invented a new way to answer quick peak electricity demands.

Peak demand and particularly quick and short-lived peaks are when demand for electricity soars, causing a problem for electric grid operators.  The amount of electricity drawn from national grids varies enormously at different times of day. It usually peaks in the early evening for a couple of hours after homes are occupied from people leaving school and work.  But it’s the short duration peaks that cause such concern.  Those common spikes turn up after major televised sporting events, during commercial breaks and in the morning hours.  It’s ‘the everyone hits the microwave and refrigerator’ and those industrial startups with homemakers staring the clothes dryer moments that pull down the available volts and amps.

Grid operators matching the highs and lows in demand with a steady supply is a major challenge. The companies typically top up a ‘base’ supply of energy with electricity from power plants that are just switched on to cope with the peaks. But those natural gas-fired generators often used to feed these peaks are notoriously inefficient, expensive to run and sit idle for long periods of time.  The system as it works now is both energy consumption dense and financially consumes lots of money for very little operating time.  Answering peaks is a huge chunk of your power bill.

Professor Tulong Ding. rmartion.

University of Leeds Professor of Engineering, Yulong Ding, and colleagues are proposing a more environmentally friendly system that could also be much cheaper to run.

Of crucial significance, the system would store excess energy made by a plant supplying the ‘base’ demand and use this to supply the ‘peaks’ in demand – as and when they happen.  The clever boffins of the UK and China have a fascinating take on forming a fuel to store energy.

The practice is to use excess electricity to run a unit producing liquid nitrogen and oxygen – or ‘cryogen’ from right out of the atmosphere. At times of peak demand, the nitrogen would be reheated to a boil – using waste heat from the power plant heat and as needed from the environment.   Step one: the hot nitrogen gas would then be used to drive a turbine or engine, generating the peak demand’s ‘top up’ electricity.

Step two: the oxygen would be fed to a combustor to mix with the natural gas before it is burned. Burning natural gas in pure oxygen, rather than air, makes the combustion process more efficient and produces almost no nitrogen oxide. Instead, the ‘oxygen + fuel’ combustion method produces a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide that can be removed easily in solid form as dry ice.  Clean, neat and the only effluent would be what’re produced when making the cryogen.  Smartly managed with adequate storage, the efficiency could be quite high.

Operating an integrated system with cryogen and the down process methods the amount of fuel needed to answer peak demand could be cut by as much as 50%. Greenhouse gas emissions would be lower too, thanks to the greatly reduced nitrogen oxide emissions and the capture of carbon dioxide gas in solid form for sale.  The base production efficiency if effluent free would make peak demand effluent free as well.  It’s an elegant, innovative and simple design that begs the question how could this not have been thought of before?

Professor Ding said, “This is a much better way of dealing with these peaks in demand for electricity. Greenhouse gas emissions would also be cut considerably because the carbon dioxide generated in the gas-fired turbine would be captured in solid form. On paper, the efficiency savings are considerable. We now need to test the system in practice.”

Technically speaking the new system combines a direct open nitrogen (cryogen) expansion cycle with a natural gas-fuelled closed Brayton cycle and the CO2 produced in the system is captured in the form of dry ice.  Thermodynamic analyses were carried out on the system under the baseline conditions of 1 kg s−1 natural gas, a combustor operating pressure of 8 bars and a cryogen topping pressure of 100 bars. The results show that the energy efficiency of the proposed system is as high as 64% under the baseline conditions, whereas the corresponding electricity storage efficiency is about 54%, an 10% gain or nearly a 20% improvement.

A sensitivity analysis has also been carried out on the main operating conditions. The results indicate that the baseline performance can be enhanced by increasing the gas turbine inlet temperature, decreasing the approach temperature of the heat exchange processes, operating the combustor at an optimal pressure of ~7 bars and operating the cryogen topping pressure at ~90 bars. Further enhancement can be achieved by increasing the isentropic efficiency of the gas turbine and the liquefaction process. The results of this work also suggest that the power capacity installation of peak-load units and fuel consumption could be reduced by as much as 50% by using the newly proposed system. Further work is suggested for an economic analysis of the system.

The engineering choices for a working design are a huge list with lots of variables to work through for different situations.  The outstanding point is the existing generating capacity could fuel up for the peaks leaving the whole investment for fresh fuel sourced peak demand generation out of the cost equation.  It’s a superb idea with lots of potential, not just for power plants either.

Here is the original post: New Energy and Fuel

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This writer was asked in an email a couple days ago about what the non-committed, seemingly idealism free, and generally pro commerce view is here about incentives for energy and fuel production.

It is an arena fraught with special interests of every stripe including the environment itself to the consumers ranging from wealthy to dirt poor.  The principle is here and always will be to get the most abundant supplies at the lowest possible cost.  Competitive Capitalism, not just capitalism that’s in bed with government doing the business on the sly, but out in the open, everyone gets the same deal from government – competition.

Which leads back to the principle of patents.  Now admittedly the law as dictated by special interests has diluted the value of a patent unless your situation matches well with the special interests that have hooked the law to their advantage, but the concept of exclusivity has a parallel for incentives.

So here is this writer’s take on incentives.  For new products, not services please note and mind carefully on this point; just products get a period, such as with a patent’s exclusivity that would be tax-free.  Consumers might even get an income tax deduction for buying such stuff. Put progress in high gear with high power.

Say two decades, or twenty years for no income tax, employee matching FICA, excise or other taxes for the new product’s business.  For everything, energy, widgets, you name it.  New products in new companies get two decades of freedom from taxation.  It’s time for a “tax patent policy”.

Ready to fight, got a better idea, or want to poke holes in the concept?  That’s what comments are for.  Change, modify, reject, everyone except spammers gets to have their say.  No cussin’ or you’ll get deleted.  No personal affronts either. Be nice.

Some will notice straight off that some products like software have product lives of just a few years.  That’s OK.  Just cut the averaged tax in half for say 10 year, or 25% for 5-year product life cycles.  So long as everyone gets the prize for the risk.  That’s the whole point – put an incentive on taking risk.

What has everything on slow or stop isn’t the quality of ideas.  It’s the potential between the loss of the time and money against the payoff from a risk.  Take out 35%  tax of profiting and the payoff picture looks very different indeed.

Moreover, wanting to get or losing an earned tax-free product puts intense focus on new better and cheaper products – a boon to research. Humans tend to want to be safe, but put an economy on safe with growth and better products plus lower costs and the need for innovation will explode.  It supports the emotional side of the mind as well.  New, better, faster, cheaper, has great appeal – the intellect needs stimulation to do better – not crawl into a hole and pull over a rock with a weapon poking out to fight off anyone with an advantage.

Maybe you’re thinking ‘that writer is a perverse bugger’ and maybe so, we’re talking incentives here, trying to get people to do things they would otherwise postpone or pass over.  What matters is to get human energy moving and making contributions.  That ‘Hu’ thing noticeable in some TV ads doesn’t have legs to travel.  But a product with a twenty-year tax-free status, maybe reaching to the employees, management and consumers surely will.

Lastly, one might kick in a special deal for everyone instead of a special interest set.  Let’s say your product at the tenth year costs half as much – give that product an extra ten years!  Better faster cheaper, right.

That’s enough, past 600 words.  A seed is set; ‘tax patent policy’ is out now.  This writer’s snowball has just been pitched into hell.  Lets see what the devils can do with it.

Author: New Energy and Fuel

This year will see the GM Volt and Nissan Leaf go on sale and likely deliver to buyers following the Tesla Roadster success with electric motors connected to the driving wheels.  The two are of three very different designs representing the three main manufactured groups of choices we’ll see.  Then there are the Do It Yourself crowd’s ideas that likely will find some role in the manufactured area someday.

Its been a long time coming, electrified personal transport is far to sensible to overlook, particularly in energy efficiency, but as manufacturing volumes go up, the basic personal investment needed will come down, too.

Volt Leaf Prius Tesla

The two cars are opening rounds for the three main types.  Hybrids that are powered by fuels, fueled hybrids that plug in to the grid and fully plugged in vehicles with no fuel for extending range.  They are very different paths to personal transport.

Some 20+ models of hybrids powered by fuels are on the market now soaking up about 2.3% of U.S. new car sales, down from 2.8% a year ago.  The Toyota Prius takes about half of the market.  The Prius is the model for many, its fueled without a grid connection, gets better than 50 mpg highway and sells in the high $20K range.  Most of the other 25 models work much the same – all the energy comes from the fuel – the energy is simply handled more efficiently.

The GM Volt is expected to sell at $41K before dealers gouge the first buyer group.  The Volt can be plugged in to the grid – replacing gasoline with generated power for the first miles of a trip.  For most trips that could be all grid energy.  The Volt does have serious appeal on this point.

The Nissan Leaf is much more daring.  Less complex than the Volt, no generation set is aboard; the Leaf relies on the plug in to get energized.   With 24kWh of battery capacity fully loaded and kind weather that capacity will satisfy a huge segment of the driving public.  The price will be some anxiety on range and perhaps some new habits, like plugging in.  The Leaf is thought to be sold out already.  Some say the Nissan dealers are more decent about price than the GM dealers.  The sales when deliveries begin promise to be interesting. Then the owner reports will be critical for the future.  Who gets stopped on ‘E’ looking for a plug or a tow and why will matter to the rest of us.

The Leaf also cracks the $400 per kWh battery price point.  The Times of London is reporting that Nissan can load the battery at under $9,000US. But Nissan has an advantage – the sales volume is set across much of the world instead of just the U.S.  Without internal combustion engine emissions compliance, variations across markets for the standardization gets much simpler, which cuts back on engineering, tooling and parts costs.

The GM Volt rumors have the Volt’s battery estimated at near $600 kWh.  The U.S.’s Advanced Battery consortium has a target of $400 by the mid 2010s.  Even more significant is Nissan is using air-cooling for the batteries while others, significantly the Volt, using liquid cooling – again simplifying and cutting costs.  The maintenance of air over liquid will be a long-term advantage for owners, too.  No surprise here, the Japanese have been crushing U.S. makes for decades, and the trend looks to continue.

These observations will take second seat to the customer’s ideas of what’s important.  Nissan trumpets some wild numbers for the equivalent miles per gallon.  That’s a topic yet to be standardized and when it is – it will be complex.  Owners will get to compare the power bill for a month over a chosen previous month with the earlier periods gasoline bill for hard numbers.  It will be cheaper.  Lots less money if done smartly.

The problem that can come up is range.  The needs in the car’s cabin are going to drive engineers a little nuts trying to come up with heat and air conditioning.  Leaf and other full plug ins are going to need some serious effort at getting to less energy demand for the vehicles interior.  Hybrids with generator sets are going to have a perceived advantage if not a deal making advantage.

Finally the incentives – the Prius seems to miss the Federal tax credit of $7,500.  That tax credit requires an adjusted gross income better than $55K for single filers or $74K for married couples.  That might slip when the tax rates go back up – but not a huge amount – leaving a huge part of the market out of the deal.  This will hurt many for the benefit of a few.  The tax credit idea might haunt manufacturers for years.

For better than one hundred years racing has lead automobile technology.  For the electrification of personal transport the racing crowd has started in and may offer some great ideas soon.  If anything electric vehicles are entertaining.  While one isn’t seeing 500-mile races the ¼ mile accelerating ‘drag race’ is seeing lots of innovation.  While battery or ultracapacitors could bring the long milage races into reality, the drag race is the scene for now.  And it’s quite a scene.

What follows is the ‘White Zombie’ from Oregon that has gone through the quarter mile from a dead stop to 117.23 miles per hour in just 10.4 seconds.  That’s supercar/musclecar territory.  Owned, built and driven by John Wayland the 1972 Datsun (now Nissan) has been a project for 16 years.  The Datsun sports a 22.7 kWh lithium manganese cobalt polymer pack battery running at 355.2 volts.  In the video the Datsun is paired to a Nissan GT-R supercar with 485 horsepower.  For the run Wayland boosted the power to 1800 amps and the motor current to 2000 amps.  Poor GT-R, not fair is it?

Original post created by: New Energy and Fuel

HAI, the leading manufacturer of integrated automation and security products since 1985, announced today that the OmniTouch 10pe (HAI part number 94A00-1) is now shipping from Home Controls!

“HAI’s 10pe Touchscreen is lighter, thinner, and has enhanced screen resolution with no increase in price,” explained HAI President, Jay McLellan.

HAI’s OmniTouch 10pe is a dedicated home control Touchscreen. The portable 10.4″ Ethernet based Wi-Fi Touchscreen provides easy access to manage the home’s security, lighting, temperature, audio/video and more. The 10pe can view IP cameras without any extra equipment and analog cameras with HAI’s Camera Server (part number 87A00-1).

Although the product ships with a default user interface, the interface is fully customizable using HAI’s Automation Studio software (part number 1126). Dealers can develop a graphic user interface based upon the homeowner’s lifestyle and interests. Simple updates like removing a button or more involved applications like adding a floorplan can be accomplished with Automation Studio.

HAI’s 10pe can be set up as a room controller without the need for a full-blown home control system. Using the HAI Home Theater Extender (part number 86A00-1) and the aforementioned Automation Studio, any room can be automated including home theaters, corporate boardrooms, or school classrooms. One button push can close the curtains, lower a screen, and turn on the appropriate Audio/Video equipment.

The OmniTouch 10pe features a 10.4″ XGA high-resolution TFT LCD screen and a rechargeable lithium ion smart battery. Also included are a built-in stand and stylus. A docking cradle (HAI part number 94A01-1) is also available.

A limited number of the OmniTouch 10p (HAI part number 67A00-1) are still available, at a clearance sale of 25% off! Read more »

• See the entire HAI product line @ Home Controls

Original post created by: Home Controls

Luca Technologies harnesses natural processes to sustainably produce natural gas. The Golden, Colo. based company has developed a process to generate and then extract more natural gas from depleted coalbed methane wells by injecting water, microbes, and nutrients into the coal seams. The company is now pursuing permitting in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to expand pilot testing of its technology.

Luca CEO Robert Pfeiffer says he anticipates that Luca will get permits for larger-scale pilot projects of “restoring” existing wells in the next four to six months. Luca, one of many start-up companies pursuing technologies to make fossil fuels cleaner has acquired 1,350 coalbed methane wells, which have been sold by their original owners because they are no longer productive enough.

The principle Luca exploits is anaerobic microbes living in subsurface coal, gas, oil and shale reserves for millions of years, feeding on hydrogen-rich organic matter and producing natural gas. Commercial drilling and extraction exposes these anaerobic microorganisms to oxygen by taking water out of the formations and removing essential nutrients that support microbial growth. As a result, the production of biogenic natural gas slows or in some cases ceases. Over time, water is replaced in the geologic formation by natural recharge providing an environment that allows the microbes to once again produce natural gas at low rates.

Luca uses its proprietary technology to restore formation habitats to conditions that enable existing microbes to produce economically significant rates of natural gas at accelerated production volumes. Then the company harvests this newly created natural gas and delivers it to the national grid via the existing pipeline from the pre depletion era of the wells.

Luca Technologies Underground Process. .

Unlike the oil and gas industry’s extraction methods in which production peaks then steeply declines as stored hydrocarbons are depleted, Luca “gas farms” can reliably produce low-cost clean energy for decades and reuse existing wells and infrastructure to create, extract and transport the natural gas.

How big a deal could this be? Pfeiffer explains, “Farming” natural gas from depleted wells in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana alone could produce more gas than the annual consumption in the U.S., said Pfeiffer. Microbes have converted one-hundredth of 1 percent of the coal into methane in existing wells. Luca has reached 3 percent conversion in its labs, which would not happen in actual wells but it reflects the potential of the process. It could be a very big deal indeed.

The potential, which raised $76 million in equity in late 2008 for Luca, of tapping this stranded natural gas in coalbed methane wells is significant.

When Luca identifies a depleting area or well as a natural gas farming candidate, it withdraws water from the well, transfers it to a mobile nutrient module to replenish essential vitamins and nutrients vital to sustaining microbial community health. The water is then recycled back into the well through existing infrastructure and the mobile nutrient module is moved to other wells to provide nourishment to new subsurface habitats.

Luca then temporarily shuts in the well for an average of one month to allow natural microbial populations to flourish. During this “dwell” period, the now activated microbes begin producing significant amounts of natural gas. Luca harvests the natural gas using the existing system. This cycle of restoration and harvesting enables Luca to produce natural gas from depleting wells for decades.

Its long been known that a portion of natural gas is produced by naturally occurring subsurface microorganisms. Luca’s founders discovered that certain coalbeds, organic-rich shales and oil and gas reserves were teeming with microbial life capable of producing economic and commercially significant volumes of natural gas. Based upon this discovery, Luca founders recognized that integrating the disciplines of oil and gas with biotechnology could produce a solution to the global demand for clean, affordable energy.

Here’s a list of nutrients Luca uses in its natural gas farming process in the Powder River Basin to replenish underground habitats depleted by previous drilling operators: Minerals of calcium added as calcium chloride, magnesium added as magnesium chloride, phosphate added from magnesium phosphate, phosphoric acid, calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, or sodium tripolyphosphate, potassium added as potassium chloride. Vitamin B-12, Niacin, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Biotin, Pantothenic Acid, Folate are added. Proteins and perhaps activators, casein hydrolyzates, yeast extract, brewer’s yeast, soy protein, and peptones.

Looks like a nutritionist’s prescription, but Luca isn’t done yet. Add in some vitality things like glycerol, weak organic acids, formic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid, lactic acid and decanoic acid. A smorgasbord of supplements!

One has to wonder, just what does a concoction cost to treat a well, how often does a well need to be fed again, does the feeding peak with production running along on its own, and do any of the feedstocks get back to the surface for recycling?

There is an enormous amount of natural gas formation types, from landfills to deep hot rocks. Somewhere between the extremes is an opportunity that Luca has figured out how to make pay.
If Pfeiffer is right about the potential recovery, and at least in some small part they’re correct now, the reserves in place could multiply dramatically.

Since it’s mostly all proprietary and intellectual property the hard details are out of reach. But many a gas producer has to be looking over at Luca wondering . . . just how do I make use of that technology? Many a consumer must be relieved as well . . . natural gas is by no means a short term fuel supply, its here to stay.

The original post: New Energy and Fuel