(Bio) Mass Transit: What's the Use?

Source: energy.gov

Spent beer yeast, invaluable grass clippings and already-processed vegetable oil from a local restaurant. They all appear to be useless compounds. But guess again. Never has the term "one man's waste is another man's treasure" been more applicable than with what's taking shape in the renewable energy camp, for the purpose of powering vehicles. Namely, planes, trains, buses and automobiles.

That beer you're enjoying: it's helping generate fuel to power vehicles in California. San Diego-based GreenHouse, a purveyor of green building services and products, is teaming-up with beer pioneer Karl Strauss Brewing Co. to convert spent beer yeast into ethanol fuel for California cars of all types. The endeavor comes on the heels of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiling in June of the revolutionary E-Fuel MicroFueler, a portable ethanol micro-refinery fuel system for consumer use.

Together, the two companies have combined to form the GreenHouse Developmental Pilot Program, a distribution model being introduced in Southern California. Within the agreement, Karl Strauss Brewing, also based in San Diego, has signed off on providing 28 tons of spent beer yeast per week. GreenHouse will collect the left-over waste and distribute it throughout California to home and business-owners where, using the E-Fuel MicroFueler, they can safely and efficiently distill their own ethanol.

"After 20 years of crafting some of the highest quality beers in the region, Karl Strauss has taken an enormous step in creating essential clean energy by providing its waste not just to GreenHouse, but to the entire State of California," said Chris Ursitti, GreenHouse CEO.

From Grass to Gas
That mower you're using to trim your lawn: It's soon going to play a role in enabling the construction of "green fuels depot" in Naperville, IL, a Chicago suburb. The depot is going to take grass clippings that lawnmowers so ably provide, and use the biomass to make electricity, hydrogen and ethanol, according to a recent report in the Chicago Tribune.

The city of Naperville already has a waste hauling contractor who picks up residents' yard clippings and takes them to a composting facility. The depot would use about 3 percent of those clippings to produce energy. The depot is being set up as a partnership between the City of Naperville, Packer Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory and the College of DuPage.

One U.S. Rep. from Illinois, Judy Biggert, has requested a $4 million earmark from the U.S. Department of Energy to pay for the green fuels depot, which would be situated on an acre of land in the city and set apart from residential areas.

The role of Naperville-based Packer Engineering would be to convert the waste into "syngas" to power plug-in hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, or to convert the waste so that it can be fermented into ethanol and blended with gasoline. Students at College of DuPage, located in Glen Ellyn, Ill., would receive course credit for working at the depot, and Argonne Labs, based in south suburban Darien, would provide plug-in hybrid vehicles to test at the depot.

Originally, the depot would be used to generate electricity to fuel plug-in hybrid vehicles or supplement the city's municipal electric system. The depot would not produce hydrogen for a while since automakers have not begun manufacturing hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles.

Resistance still pervades
A green fuels depot sounds well and good but what must be factored in is the often-intense resistance put forth by local communities, who balk at having such facilities in close proximity to their homes.

This fact was made clear at the second annual Waste-to-Fuels Conference in May, where speakers pointed out that the public's resistance to having waste-to-fuel plants in their area is a significant challenge, and encouraged situating biomass plants on brownfields as one possible solution to encourage community support.

Such might be the case with Los Angeles-based Rentech Inc., which plans to build a plant in Rialto, Calif., that will turn green waste such as yard clippings into clean-burning synthetic fuels. Company officials said the construction of the Rialto facility (it wasn't readily determined if the plant was being built on a brownfield site) is expected to create approximately 250 jobs. The plant is in the design phase and would create 55 permanent jobs when fully operational.

The Rialto Renewable Energy Center is designed to produce approximately 600 barrels per day of renewable synthetic fuels and to export approximately 35 megawatts of renewable electric power that will be sold to utilities—an amount officials said can provide electricity for 30,000 homes.

Rentech President and CEO D. Hunt Ramsbottom said the Rialto plant will produce a "next generation" biofuel that does not compete with the food industry for materials. For instance, the use of corn and soy to make ethanol has driven up the cost of those materials in both the fuel and food marketplaces. "This plant will be able to transform low-value waste streams into high-value green power and pure synthetic fuels that can be used in today's engines and distribution infrastructure," Ramsbottom said in a statement.

The primary material for the Rialto plant will be urban woody green waste such as yard clippings, for which Rentech is negotiating supply agreements. Officials said the project's location will provide local green waste haulers with a "cost-effective alternative" to scarce landfill.

Buses and Planes
Meantime, buses and jet planes are also getting in on the bio-bass revolution. In early 2008, a high school science club in Chicago Heights, Ill., took the wraps off what they call the "Bloom Veggie Bus," because the bus was powered by soy-based vegetable oil collected from local restaurants. The school is Bloom Township High School.

The effort was all part of a project aimed at promoting and researching the use of alternative energy sources, as it's become well known that the biggest cause of global warming is the release of carbon dioxide when fossil fuels like oil and coal are burned for energy.

To get the project off the ground, the team first had to obtain a bus at little or no cost—which they did when a local auto dealership donated them one. As the bus sat idle, waiting for its new fuel infusion, students began the process of collecting vegetable oil from local restaurants, accumulating 25 gallons of oil that was then converted to biodiesel to power the bus.

The process is a cumbersome one: It involves testing and filtering oil, and then sifting out unusable oil while retaining quality oil before transferring it into a 55-gallon drum. (For the record, translucent oil is the good stuff while trans-fatty oil must be discarded.) Once enough quality oil has been collected, it's heated and methanol is added. There's a washing process involved to avoid any accrual of unnecessary by-products.

In the air, there's yet another example of using bio-mass that's flying high. Houston-based Continental Airlines became the first U.S. airline to power one engine of a Boeing 737 with a concoction of 95% jatropha oil and 5% algae-derived oil.

Adopting plant-based fuels could dramatically reduce airlines' greenhouse gas emissions. There's a refining technology that converts oil into a fuel. The concept is an ambitious one, with one challenge being that both jatropha oil and the algae-derived oil are in shorter supply at present.

Print article | Close window

Copyright 2009 DaVinci Graphics, Inc.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or any part without the expressed written permission of the publisher is prohibited. ISSN 1947-5594 and ISSN 1947-5608. Downloading and/or printing this article constitutes you agreement to the terms and conditions of service.