From wine to biofuel, Prince Charles converted his Aston to be environmental friendly

Prince Charles converts his beloved Aston Martin to a green machine... run on English wine

By REBECCA ENGLISH


It is certainly a vintage vehicle. And now Prince Charles's beloved Aston Martin DB6 is running on vintage too.

A nice little white from a vineyard in Wiltshire, to be precise.

As part of cutting his carbon footprint, the prince has converted the 38-year-old classic car - a 21st birthday present from the Queen - to run on 100 per cent bioethanol fuel distilled from surplus British wine.

Drink and drive: Prince Charles has converted his 38-year-old Aston Martin to run on bio-ethanol made from English wine

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030611/Prince-Charles-converts-beloved-Aston-Martin-green-machine--run-English-wine.html#ixzz1C8sX5d3f

The Green Hornet

Will this kind of engine powered US Navy fighter plane?
Used mainly ethanol fuel consist of  crushed seed of flowering Camelia sativa, the Navy hope it will replace petroleum in near future

Photograph by Kirk McMenamin


When the Navy F/A-18 jet called the Green Hornet takes off over the Chesapeake Bay on Earth Day, it will aim to break a barrier that has proven far more durable than the speed of sound.

The twin-engine tactical aircraft is prepared on April 22 to make a supersonic flight on biofuel—its tanks filled 50 percent with oil refined from the crushed seeds of the flowering Camelina sativa plant. The test flight at the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River, Maryland will be a milestone in the Navy’s efforts to reduce its reliance on petroleum, and perhaps, in the elusive search for an alternative fuel for aviation.

The event is meant to showcase the Pentagon’s efforts to increase use of renewable energy, not only as a climate change initiative but to protect the military from energy price fluctuations and dependence on foreign oil. When President Obama announced his offshore drilling and energy security plan last month at Andrews Air Force Base, he used the Green Hornet as a backdrop. As naval aviation’s biggest fuel consumer, the F/A-18 Super Hornet is a fitting test aircraft.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has set a target that half of naval energy consumption will come from alternative sources by 2020. A “Great Green Fleet,” to sail by 2016, will include nuclear ships, as well as surface combatants with hybrid electric power systems using biofuel and biofuel-powered aircraft.

But for now, the Navy is seeking only to certify its first blend of biofuel and petroleum, by showing it can be used for the Super Hornet’s full range of flight operations. That includes demonstrating that the alternative fuel can deliver the power needed to fly faster than the speed of sound (343 meters per second).

Petroleum Paradigm

“One of the challenges we’ve had is that everything we have ever used in naval aviation has been designed around petroleum-based fuel,” says Rick Kamin, the civilian who leads the Navy’s fuel program. “[The engine] is taking advantage of everything that a petroleum-based fuel provides. We’ve had to work to break down that paradigm.”

Case in point: Engine seals. They were designed under the assumption that the engines would run on petroleum jet fuel, which contains aromatics—certain very stable compounds—that cause seals to swell, preventing leaks. After months of testing, the Navy concluded that current engine seals still need a certain amount of petroleum.

“One of our primary objectives is that the fuel we approve from non-petroleum sources has to be a drop-in replacement,” Kamin says. “It has to perform the same as a petroleum-based fuel performs and require no modification to the aircraft.  Our goal is that these fuels have to be invisible to the operator.”

One of the appeals of Camelina oil, in fact, was that despite the aromatics issue, the fuel made from it was remarkably similar to the military petroleum jet fuel called JP-5. The biofuel developed by Sustainable Oils of Seattle has the same energy density. Not only does it deliver the same power, but all the aircraft systems—including the fuel gauge, which reads energy density—can operate on biofuel just as they would on conventional jet propellent.

“All we’re doing is what nature does over millions of years,” says Tom Todaro, chief executive of Sustainable Oils. “Jets today are flying on biomass—it’s just that with pressure and time, the oxygen has been leached off the oil and replaced with hydrogen. All we did was, using molecular biology and chemistry, make that move at a much faster speed.”

Without the work in the laboratory, wild-growing Camelina would not easily squeeze out a type of oil with the oomph to power military flight. A member of the mustard family and a relative of canola plants, the heavily-branched Camelinalooked like a good biofuel source because it produces copious small seeds with high oil content. But Sustainable Oils and its two parent companies, agricultural science firm Targeted Growth and Houston-based biofuel producer Green Earth Fuels, spent a decade and millions of dollars breeding a strain of seed optimized for fuel production. The company won contracts valued at $18 million from the Defense Department last year.

Crop Science

The company is confident that it has overcome many of the disadvantages of the corn- and soy-based biofuels now in commercial use, like ethanol and biodiesel.  Camelina is cold-tolerant, needs little water or fertilizer, and can be rotated in the northwestern United States and Canada on fields that farmers otherwise would leave fallow between wheat crops. “We wanted a crop that didn’t compete with food,” says Todaro. The company points to a lifecycle analysis conducted by scientists at Michigan Technical University concluded that the Camelina-derived jet fuel would produce 84 percent lower carbon emissions than petroleum fuel.

Sustainable Oils is just one of several companies working with the Department of Defense in the search for military-grade biofuel. Solazyme of South San Francisco, California has contracts to provide algae-based fuel to the Navy for testing in ships as well as aircraft.  Houston-based Accelergy last month announced it has begun production of a synthetic jet fuel from coal and biomass to be evaluated by the Air Force.

For the biofuels companies, the Pentagon is a much-desired customer; it consumes 60 to 75 million barrels of oil per year in jet fuel alone. But some hope a military stamp of approval also will lead to commercial contracts. Sustainable Oils, now running a pilot plant in Houston, is working with partners to build a commercial facility near Seattle.  In December, 14 airlines signed a memorandum of understanding with the partnership to negotiate the purchase of up to 750 million gallons of renewable jet fuel and diesel, an agreement that would replace about 10 percent of the petroleum fuel consumed annually at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.  Sustainable Oils is also working on renewable fuels for both ground-based and marine transportation. “But we chose jet fuels to start because it’s the hardest,” Todaro says. “We wanted to show it could be done.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100420-energy-biofuel-fighter-jet/

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy technologies

Renewable energy technologies are essential contributors to sustainable energy as they generally contribute to world energy security, reducing dependence on fossil fuel resources, and providing opportunities for mitigating greenhouse gases.

The International Energy Agency states that:

Conceptually, one can define three generations of renewables technologies, reaching back more than 100 years .
First-generation technologies emerged from the industrial revolution at the end of the 19th century and include hydropower, biomass combustion, and geothermal power and heat. Some of these technologies are still in widespread use.

Second-generation technologies include solar heating and cooling, wind power, modern forms of bioenergy, and solar photovoltaics. These are now entering markets as a result of research, development and demonstration (RD&D) investments since the 1980s. The initial investment was prompted by energy security concerns linked to the oil crises (1973 and 1979) of the 1970s but the continuing appeal of these renewables is due, at least in part, to environmental benefits. Many of the technologies reflect significant advancements in materials.

Third-generation technologies are still under development and include advanced biomass gasification, biorefinery technologies, concentrating solar thermal power, hot dry rock geothermal energy, and ocean energy. Advances in nanotechnology may also play a major role.

—International Energy Agency, RENEWABLES IN GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLY, An IEA Fact Sheet[5]

First- and second-generation technologies have entered the markets, and third-generation technologies heavily depend on long term research and development commitments, where the public sector has a role to play.

A 2008 comprehensive cost-benefit analysis review of energy solutions in the context of global warming and other issues ranked wind power combined with battery electric vehicles (BEV) as the most efficient, followed by concentrated solar power, geothermal power, tidal power, photovoltaic, wave power, coal capture and storage, nuclear energy, and finally biofuels.

Plants and Energy

Biofuels – liquid fuels derived from plant materials – are entering the market, driven by factors such as oil price spikes and the need for increased energy security.

Bioethanol is an alcohol made by fermenting the sugar components of plant materials and it is made mostly from sugar and starch crops. With advanced technology being developed, cellulosic biomass, such as trees and grasses, are also used as feedstocks for ethanol production. Ethanol can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, but it is usually used as a gasoline additive to increase octane and improve vehicle emissions. Bioethanol is widely used in Brazil (Ethanol fuel in Brazil, where 100% of the gas stations sell it and all gas contains 25% of bioethanol) and in the USA.

Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled greases. Biodiesel can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, but it is usually used as a diesel additive to reduce levels of particulates, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons from diesel-powered vehicles. Biodiesel is produced from oils or fats using transesterification and is the most common biofuel in Europe.

Biofuels provided 1.8% of the world’s transport fuel in 2008. Investment into biofuels production capacity exceeded $4 billion worldwide in 2007 and is growing.

First generation biofuels

'First-generation biofuels' are biofuels made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil, or animal fats using conventional technology.[2] The basic feedstocks for the production of first generation biofuels are often seeds or grains such as wheat, which yields starch that is fermented into bioethanol, or sunflower seeds, which are pressed to yield vegetable oil that can be used in biodiesel. These feedstocks could instead enter the animal or human food chain, and as the global population has risen their use in producing biofuels has been criticised for diverting food away from the human food chain, leading to food shortages and price rises.

1.Ethanol
Alcohol fuels are produced by fermentation of sugars derived from wheat, corn, sugar beets, sugar cane, molasses and any sugar or starch that alcoholic beverages can be made from (like potato and fruit waste, etc.). The ethanol production methods used are enzyme digestion (to release sugars from stored starches), fermentation of the sugars, distillation and drying. The distillation process requires significant energy input for heat (often unsustainable natural gas fossil fuel, but cellulosic biomass such as bagasse, the waste left after sugar cane is pressed to extract its juice, can also be used more sustainably

2.Biodiesel
Feedstocks for biodiesel include animal fats, vegetable oils, soy, rapeseed, jatropha, mahua, mustard, flax, sunflower, palm oil, hemp, field pennycress, pongamia pinnata and algae.

3.Solid Biofuels
Examples include wood, sawdust, grass cuttings, domestic refuse, charcoal, agricultural waste, non-food energy crops (see picture), and dried manure.

Second generation biofuels

Supporters of biofuels claim that a more viable solution is to increase political and industrial support for, and rapidity of, second-generation biofuel implementation from non food crops.

Second-generation biofuel production processes can use a variety of non food crops. These include waste biomass, the stalks of wheat, corn, wood, and special-energy-or-biomass crops (e.g. Miscanthus). Second generation (2G) biofuels use biomass to liquid technology[25], including cellulosic biofuels from non food crops.[26] Many second generation biofuels are under development such as biohydrogen, biomethanol, DMF, Bio-DME, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, biohydrogen diesel, mixed alcohols and wood diesel.

Cellulosic ethanol production uses non food crops or inedible waste products and does not divert food away from the animal or human food chain. Lignocellulose is the "woody" structural material of plants. This feedstock is abundant and diverse, and in some cases (like citrus peels or sawdust) it is in itself a significant disposal problem.

The recent discovery of the fungus Gliocladium roseum points toward the production of so-called myco-diesel from cellulose. This organism was recently discovered in the rainforests of northern Patagonia and has the unique capability of converting cellulose into medium length hydrocarbons typically found in diesel fuel.

Third generation biofuels

Algae fuel, also called oilgae or third generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae. Algae are low-input, high-yield feedstocks to produce biofuels.
Based on laboratory experiments, it claimed that Algae can produces up to 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybean, but these yields have yet to be produced commercially. With the higher prices of fossil fuels (petroleum), there is much interest in algaculture (farming algae).

One advantage of many biofuels over most other fuel types is that they are biodegradable, and so relatively harmless to the environment if spilled.
Algae fuel still has its difficulties though, for instance to produce algae fuels it must be mixed uniformly, which, if done by agitation, could affect biomass growth.

The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (38,849 square kilometers), which is roughly the size of Maryland.

Second and third generation biofuels are also called advanced biofuels.
Algae, such as Botryococcus braunii and Chlorella vulgaris, are relatively easy to grow,[38] but the algal oil is hard to extract. There are several approaches, some of which work better than others.

Macroalgae (seaweed) also have a great potential for bioethanol and biogas production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel