Originoil Videos

Here is a video of their process in Action from their website

Originoil is only obne of several companies researching algea as biofuel.

Manure Growing Energy Algae

Algae Power
Bridport, Vermont - July 13, 2009

The cows at the Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport make more than milk. Their manure also produces power through the digester at the south side of the barns. But for the last nine months some of that liquid manure has also been sent over to a mini greenhouse where it's being investigated as another source of alternative energy.

"Algae's been around from day one of the world," said Gail Busch of Algepower.
That's right-- they're growing algae from manure. Busch is the inventor of Algeponics, a patented photobioreactor-- what she calls a vertical stream. She says it's the only indoor, controlled system in the world.

Here's how it works: Once the liquid manure gets pumped over and diluted with water it runs from top to bottom, the manure serving as the host.

"Half of the volume of that tray runs into the tray below and all the way through. Also, if you look at the system you can see that the bottom trays are much greener than the top. That's because the algae is growing as it moves down through the system," explained Mark Hoffman of Algepower.
"Once it's grown and it's nice and creamy we turn it into separate products such as oil for biodiesel, you could actually eat it if it were not on manure and the paste which can be turned into animal feed, fertilizer," said Busch.

But before they can begin making that energy, they must first fine tune this process. And Central Vermont Public Service is looking to help fund that next step.

"We've always tried to look at renewable energy ideas that were a little off the mainstream and weren't getting a lot of attention from other places-- to put our efforts into," said Steve Costello of Central Vermont Public Service. "Cow power is the perfect example. When we started that people looked at us askew and that we were a little bit out of it and now it's proven to be a very successful program and it's continuing to grow. This has the same type of potential we think."

Algepower expects to expand the algae growing operation here in coming months and begin producing power sometime next year. Another clean energy innovation right here in the Green Mountain State.

Bridget Barry Caswell - WCAX News

Half of Europe's Biodiesal Plants Lie Dormant

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) - Production of biodiesel in the European Union rose by more than 35 percent in 2008 and capacity will grow again this year although half the plants are idle due to poor demand, the EU producers group said on Wednesday.

The Brussels-based European Biodiesel Board (EBB) said the European production of biodiesel, by far the main biofuel made in the bloc, had reached 7.76 million tonnes last year putting the EU's global market share close to 65 percent.

However, the EBB qualified the 2008 rise as "moderate" compared to the jump of 65 percent in 2005 and 54 percent in 2006 but the rise was only at 17 percent in 2007.
"In line with the trend initiated in 2007, the year 2008 saw a relatively small increase in EU biodiesel production, and even a reduction in two major producing Member States, Germany and Austria," the EBB said in a statement.

For detailed statistics of biodiesel output per country and estimates for the 2009 capacity, please click on

"This situation has to be understood primarily against the background of unfair international trade competition which has severely affected the profitability of EU biodiesel producers since early 2007," it added.

The EU last week endorsed a proposal by the Commission, the 27-member bloc's executive arm, to extend for five years its anti-dumping tariffs against cheap U.S. biodiesel imports. The move was welcomed by the EBB, which had complained that EU producers were being hammered by U.S. subsidies.

"This decision will help re-establishing EU producer's legitimate right to operate in a level-playing field," it said.

HALF EU PLANTS IDLE

In addition to a fall in demand mainly linked to strong U.S. competition, EU producers have also suffered from slumping margins as the fall in crude oil prices over the past year was not compensated by a similar drop in vegetable oils prices.

Even if the EU will have total biodiesel production capacity of close to 21 million tonnes this year -- a rise of 31 percent on the year -- the EBB said 2008 and 2009 statistics showed that at least 50 percent of existing plants remain idle.

"Unfair international competition has been the main driver of this trend, while the political discussions in 2008 on adoption of the Renewable Energy Directive have added to market uncertainty," it said.

In an interview with Reuters late May, the EU's largest biodiesel maker, France's Diester Industrie, said it was pausing in its investments until it knew the details, expected next year, of the implementation of the EU's target of 10 percent renewable energies in transport by 2020.
The share that will be allocated to biofuels to reach this target is still unclear.

The Rest @ Reuters
(Editing by Peter Blackburn)

Three Approaches to Biomass Fuel Production

March 9, 2009

Bio-mass : will that be filtering, pyrolysis or gasification?

• “Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Zero Emission Energy Plants, Inc. Sign Gasification Licensing Agreement”,
• “Vegawatt plugs in grease-fired restaurant generator”, and
• “Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and AERI Collaborate to Develop Gasification Technology”;

are but three headlines that have appeared over the last several months regarding systems and/ or methods for processing a carbon-containing feedstock into some type of fuel. There are a myriad of techniques for the above processing, each having a different set of pressure, atmosphere and reaction conditions.

The particular combination of reaction conditions being dictated by at least the nature of the feedstock and the desired end product.

• With consideration to the second headline, the Vegawatt system is designed to use waste vegetable oil to generate on-site electricity. It is indicated on the Vegawatt website that a four-stage cleaning process is used to process the waste cooking oil for use as a fuel. In this case the original hydrocarbon chain is most likely still intact. Such a process is quite different from that of the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) technology.

• A flavour for the PWR gasification technology emerges from visible patent documents. In general PWR appears to have developed a high temperature, high pressure system, similar to a so-called entrained flow gasifier. Published US patent application 2008/0141913 describes a dump cooled gasifier. In particular it describes structures around a slag-based regenerative liner. Published US patent application 2008/0060914 and issued US patent 7,303,597 describe feed systems for use with a gasification system. A common theme emerging from these and other PWR documents is the development of technology around providing for a continuous gasification process.
  

While the above two approaches appear quite different on the surface there is a least one common thread, the use of what would have been once considered waste as a source of energy. Both processes also discuss the implementation of “waste” heat to further improve the overall energy captured from the fuel.

The Rest @ Getting Technolology Right

Wood Biomass Gasification Combined Heat and Power in the UK

I pulled this from a Alfagy's website: They are developing wood mass gassification in a high heat low oxegen invironment, the burining the clean gas. Very interesting...

-CTE Editor

The range of fully automated Wood Gasified Heat and Power Plants are as follows:


The ENERCARB wood gas technology offers customers a turn-key automated solution for heat and power generation from wood. We can provide a complete solution covering the full value chain from wood preparation to power generation in the 250 kW to 1,000 kW range. This is a gap in the market where the company believes there is a potential £725m market worldwide.A full scale 500 kW wood gasification plant was built for a client and has been operating since April 2009.

Over the next 3 years sales of wood gasification plants are expected growing rapidly with the introduction of new support structures.

Biomass accounts for around 5 per cent of total energy consumption in Europe. In countries such as Finland, Sweden and Austria its contribution reaches 15-20 per cent as biomass is supported with specific policies.

It is primarily used for both production of electricity and heat in cogeneration plants and as a fuel in municipal district heating facilities.

Biomass is likely to have an important role in Europe's ability to meet its targets for renewable use by 2020, according to Frost & Sullivan. There are five accepted technologies for converting biomass fuels into electrical energy; the Schmitt ENERCARB plant is focussed on addressing the second technology:

1. Conventional steam cycle – biomass is burned to produce steam which is then used to drive a turbine

2. Gasification – biomass is converted to a gas using a high temperature oxygen starved environment

3. Pyrolysis – biomass is converted to a liquid rather than a gas

4. Anaerobic digestion – typically sewage sludge is digested to produce methane

5. Landfill gas – collection of gas from landfill sitesGasification is possibly the most attractive of the technologies, but also one of the least developed.

There are a number of practical and engineering issues with gasification which, until now, have been a barrier to full commercial roll out of this technology.The particular issues are:

• Quality of feedstock – can a system be developed to work with a range of different biomass fuels.
• Supply chain – can the fuel be provided in an efficient consistent way.
• Consistency of gas produced – can a plant produce gas of a standard quality that can be burned cleanly.
• Tar free gas production – can the resulting gas have low tar levels which will allow it to be burned for extended periods without maintenance.

The gasification plant has been developed to address all these issues. The Alfagy gasified heat and power plant offers a highly efficient solution to producing electricity from biomass in the 250 kWe – 1,000 kWe range.

Through careful engineering of the gasifier and scrubbing of the gas output, Schmitt has developed a virtually tar free wood gasfier. Specific aspects of the Alfagy Woodgas CHP system that give us a competitive advantage include:
• Improved process for automated fuel feeding
• Effective automated gas scrubbing and filtering systems to produce tar free gas.
• Modular approach offering a simple scalable solution with operational security
• Well engineered, automated, turn-key product giving customers an easy to implement plant.The benefits of producing tar free wood gas include:
• Increased running time between maintenance, in some cases from 24 hours to 8,000 hours
• Higher Return on Investment (ROI)


The Rest @ Alfagy

MERCED, Calif. -- A new study suggests converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol for transportation produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions and offers more “miles per acre.”

Researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Merced, studied the lifecycle of plant-based electricity, or “bioelectricity,” and ethanol technologies to determine which delivered more miles of transportation with fewer environmental impacts.

They concluded battery-powered vehicles that used electricity derived from biomass provided an average of 80 percent more miles of transportation per crop acre than internal combustion engine vehicles running on ethanol made from corn or switchgrass.

"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles," Co-author Eliott Campbell of U.C. Merced said in a statement last week. "

Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this." A small SUV with an internal combustion engine can travel roughly 9,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an acre of switchgrass, compared to nearly 14,000 highway miles for a small SUV powered by bioelectricity.

Electric cars fueled by bioelectricity avoid twice as many greenhouse gas emissions as ethanol-powered internal combustion engine vehicles, according to the study.
"We found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate," Co-author David Lobell of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment said in a statement.

"But we also need to compare these options for other issues like

• water consumption,
• air pollution
• economic costs."

In addition to Lobell and Campbell, the research team included Chris Field, a Stanford professor and director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution.

The trio’s study appeared in the May 8 issue of the journal Science.

Source: Greenbiz.com

Environmental Power Corporation

Environmental Power Corporation is a developer, owner, and operator of renewable energy production facilities. The Company owns and operates the Huckabay Ridge facility in Stephenville, Texas, a multi-digester facility for the production of pipeline-grade natural gas, which began commercial operation and has several similar facilities in varying stages of development.
It also operates three digester facilities in Wisconsin utilizing the same technology that is employed at Huckabay Ridge.

The Company has operated in two major segments through Microgy, Inc., as a
developer of renewable energy facilities for the production and commercial application of methane-rich biogas from agricultural and food industry wastes, and through EPC Corporation and its subsidiary, Buzzard Power Corporation, the holder of a leasehold interest in a waste-coal fired generating facility in Pennsylvania known as the Scrubgrass facility. On February 29, 2008, the Company completed the disposition of the leasehold interest Scrubgrass facility.

After the disposition the Company operated only in Microgy’s segment.
The biogas produced by Microgy facilities can be used to produce pipeline-grade methane, which it refer to as RNG, marketable biogas, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquified natural gas (LNG), renewable electrical energy or thermal energy, as well as other useful by-products.

In addition, Microgy has developed, for itself, significant engineering, construction and process knowledge regarding these systems.

Source Reuters

Algae Most Promising Biofuel

Algaoil

Biomethane Technologies, LLC.

Biomethane Technologies, LLC.The Leader in Anaerobic Digesters, Biogas Plants, and Biogas-to-Biomethane TechnologiesProviding Consulting, Engineering, Feasibility Studies & Turnkey Project Development Services
Home Contact Us Links
For more information:
(832) 758 - 0027
info @ AnaerobicDigester.com

Methane Gas Production 101

by Al Rutan Research http://www.methane-gas.com/

Methane, Biogas, or Gobar Gas (Gobar is the Nepali term for manure) is made by the anaerobic (in the absence of oxygen) digestion of manure and plant life. The purpose is to convert this manure into methane to use as cooking fuel.

Methane is:

• A gas made up of one molecule of carbon and four molecules of hydrogen.
• It is the major component of the "natural" gas used in many homes for cooking and heating.
• It is odorless, colorless,
• Yields about 1,000 British Thermal Units (Btu) [252 kilocalories (kcal)] of heat energy per cubic foot (0.028 cubic meters) when burned.

Natural gas is:

• a fossil fuel that was created eons ago by the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials.
• It is often found in association with oil and coal.
• The same types of anaerobic bacteria that produced natural gas also produce methane today.
• Anaerobic bacteria are some of the oldest forms of life on earth. They evolved before the photosynthesis of green plants released large quantities of oxygen into the atmosphere.
• Anaerobic bacteria break down or "digest" organic material in the absence of oxygen and produce "biogas" as a waste product.
• Aerobic decomposition, or composting, requires large amounts of oxygen and produces heat.) Anaerobic decomposition occurs naturally in swamps, water-logged soils and rice fields, deep bodies of water, and in the digestive systems of termites and large animals.

Anaerobic processes can be managed in a "digester" (an airtight tank) or a covered lagoon (a pond used to store manure) for waste treatment.

The primary benefits of anaerobic digestion are nutrient recycling, waste treatment, and odor control.

Except in very large systems, biogas production is a highly useful but secondary benefit.

Biogas is:

• produced in anaerobic digesters consists of methane (50%-80%), carbon dioxide (20%-50%), and trace levels of other gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen sulfide.
• The relative percentage of these gases in biogas depends on the feed material and management of the process.
• When burned, a cubic foot (0.028 cubic meters) of biogas yields about 10 Btu (2.52 kcal) of heat energy per percentage of methane composition. For example, biogas composed of 65% methane yields 650 Btu per cubic foot (5,857 kcal/cubic meter). http://www.eren.doe.gov/consumerinfo/refbriefs/ab5.html

Source from http://www.methane-gas.com/