Researchers Recycle Used Coffee Grounds into Biodiesel
Coffee: it could keep you and your heating system running. (image: channelbf.com)
Anyone who’s ever heard decaffeinated coffee referred to as “unleaded” knows the intimate relationship between coffee and fuel. Now researchers at the University of Missouri have gone one step further, and are working on a method to convert used coffee grounds into biodiesel, reports The Maneater, the university’s student paper (via the Huffington Post).
Researchers and staff collected the coffee grounds from the faculty cafeteria and a local Starbucks, then extracted oil from the grounds and converted the oil into biodiesel. The research team is testing the fuel on a diesel engine in their laboratory, but any biodiesel that is successfully developed could also be blended with home heating oil.
Used coffee grounds are an attractive alternative to soybeans, a common biodiesel feedstock, because used coffee grounds are not a potential food source. Additionally, like another biodiesel feedstock, waste cooking oil (which is used by Tri-State Biodiesel, for example), coffee grounds would otherwise be thrown away. Converting coffee grounds to biodiesel is a way of recycling.
A team of British scientists have developed a coffee-powered car (the Car-puccino) for a BBC science program, but the car was terribly inefficient, and was built primarily to dramatize the variety of potential alternative fuels rather than present a plausible substitute for fossil fuels.
The University of Missouri researchers, on the other hand, are trying to develop an affordable fuel from coffee grounds, and have found a way to extract the oil from the grounds without drying them. Drying coffee grounds is both time-consuming and energy-intensive. By eliminating drying and by recycling material, the researchers have lowered the costs of producing biodiesel.
Coffee already helps people get through rush hour, morning meetings, and homework assignments—why not let it heat your home, too?
New Ethanol Product Replaces Charcoal in Outdoor Grills
The FlameDisk is billed as the green alternative to charcoal briquettes. (image: domesticfuel.com)
With spring here and the weather turning warmer, many people are doubtless getting the itch to break out the grill for some burgers and hot dogs. DomesticFuel.com reports that outdoor grillers now have a choice in the fuel they use. If you have a charcoal grill, the Wisconsin-based Sologear would like to tempt you away from charcoal briquettes in favor of their FlameDisk—solidified ethanol designed especially for outdoor grilling.
The packaging, as seen above, says the FlameDisk offers the “same flavor as charcoal,” allaying any fears that cooking with corn-based ethanol would give everything the flavor of corn. According to Sologear, the ethanol burns 90 percent cleaner than charcoal, and the casing, which resembles a Jiffy Pop pan, not only is easier to clean than briquettes but is also recyclable.
The FlameDisk is already available for about $5 at Ace Hardware, Home Depot, and True Value. If you try it, let us know how it works!
Stationary Bikes Are Latest Source of Renewable Energy at Danish Hotel, Arizona Jail
An iPhone measures the amount of electricity generated by pedaling. This is on the bikes at the hotel, not the jail. (image: guardian.co.uk)
Guests at the Crown Plaza Copenhagen Towers have the chance to earn a free meal if they produce 10 watt hours of electricity by pedaling an electricity-generating stationary bike, reported the Guardian on Wednesday. The Copenhagen hotel wasn’t the first to implement such technology, though; CBS News reported that the Tent City Jail in Phoenix, AZ started a program last week that makes female inmates pedal if they want to watch TV.
Pedaling an electricity-generating bike produces only a minor amount of energy. It takes about an hour of cycling at Copenhagen’s Crown Plaza to produce 100 watt hours, the amount of energy necessary to power a 100-watt light bulb for one hour, so the exercise is doing more for the guest’s health and awareness of energy use than it is for the 366-room hotel’s utility bill. Luckily for guests, it only takes about six minutes to earn the free meal. For inmates at Tent City, an hour of pedaling runs a TV for about the same length of time. If they slow down, they generate less electricity and the TV might stop.
So far the experience is only available to environmentally minded world travelers and women incarcerated in Phoenix, but when luxury hotels and prisons find themselves embracing the same technology it could signal the beginning of a trend.
Newly Unveiled Bloom Boxes Show Promise for Clean, Affordable Energy
K.R. Sridnar (r.) opens the Bloom Box to CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl and the world's eyes for the first time. (image: digitaltrends.com)
On Sunday, 60 Minutes premiered a technology so stunning that, if legitimate, will transform the world.
The “Bloom Box,” is a black, refrigerator-sized box purportedly requiring inputs of only air and gas to produce the total energy consumed by a home residence, emitting little pollution and eliminating reliance on the electrical grid. Inventor K.R. Sridhar revealed that the device merely contains a stack of wafers made of compressed sand painted a different color on each side, each separated by a plate of cheap metal alloy. The device appears to rely on an advance in fuel cell science that has yet to be spelled out.
Under secret R&D for nearly 10 years, Bloom Energy’s announcement comes with an air of credibility because high-tech, high profile companies eBay and Google have been testing an industrial version of the Bloom Box for months and have found the results to be more than satisfactory. That, and the $400 million price tag that primary venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins says has been the device’s total investment, is what’s crediting this latest green tech gadget with the more than usual attention.
Obama Touts Green Energy Tech at Nuclear Plant Announcement with Energy Bills Stuck in Congress
President Obama tours the job training center at IBEW headquarters in Lanham, Maryland where he spoke about energy policy and announced new government support for the construction of nuclear power plants. (image: baltimoresun.com)
President Obama once again hammered home his belief that green energy technology development is the most important avenue to economic recovery and a brighter future for America. Speaking at a training center for energy technicians in Maryland yesterday, Obama announced federal loan guarantees that will allow for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the US for the first time in over 30 years (watch a video of the speech below).
Obama fit the announcement into a larger context, once again calling for comprehensive energy legislation that provides incentives for the energy industry to move away from fossil-fuel sources that produce carbon emissions and toward low- and zero-emissions electricity generation. Although nuclear reactors do produce dangerous waste, they do not produce carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas emissions, unlike CO2-spewing coal-powered plants, which generate the bulk of US electricity. Obama framed the move as an embrace of bipartisanship, as many Republicans have favored construction of new nuclear power plants to help meet America’s energy needs.
Study: Volatile Oil Prices of ’08 and ’09 Were Result of Fundamental Forces
Craig Pirrong. (image: bauer.uh.edu)
The C.T. Bauer College of Business of the University of Houston reports that Craig Pirrong, Professor of Finance and Energy Markets and Director for the college’s Global Energy Management Institute, has concluded that the extreme volatility in the oil markets in late 2008 and early 2009 was the result of “market fundamentals during a time of extreme stress.”
In a nutshell, Pirrong’s study concludes that futures prices and oil inventory storage levels were logical adjustments by the market to the sudden reduction in oil demand due to the recession. The logic goes like this:
• It is difficult to quickly or efficiently adjust oil production levels.
• The burgeoning recession depressed economic activity, and therefore oil consumption, which is usually equated to demand. (Consumption and demand are not quite the same—you can have demand that exceeds actual use or consumption, as many feel has been happening with China as it stockpiles oil.)
Inside Source: CFTC Will Enact “Generous” Limits On Energy Trading
Highly lax regulation of commodity futures speculation makes market abuse frighteningly feasible. (image: mediainfidel.com)
Question: When is a limit not a limit? Answer: When it’s generous. That’s something every parent knows. Telling your fifteen-year-old to be back by 2 a.m on a school day isn’t exactly laying down the law, and telling your five-year-old she can only have five cookies after dinner isn’t holding the line.
So if every parent gets it, why don’t commodities regulators? Inside sources told the Wall Street Journal that the CFTC will consider “generous” trading limits for energy speculators when it meets January 14th. The CFTC’s concern? That meaningful limits might disrupt how the futures market functions.
Massive Solar Updraft Energy Project Planned For Arizona
Solar tower illustration. (image: blog.yaaqui.com)
“Massive solar updraft…” if you say that with the right Dr. Evil intonation, it sounds like you’re describing a Bond villain’s latest doomsday scheme. However, what it really is a way of capturing solar energy using man-made wind.
As reported by Inhabit.com on Wednesday, an Australian company hopes to build a pair of 2,400 foot towers, surmounting four square miles of glassed-in greenhouse in the Arizona desert, to pump out 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power. The idea is simple: hot air rises. Heat enough air, and the resulting updraft—basically a vertical wind, familiar to anyone who’s used a fireplace and felt the pull of air being drawn up the chimney—can turn turbines to produce electricity.
Tobacco Could Be the Next Source of Biofuel
Tobacco leaves. Today’s second-hand smoke producers may be tomorrow’s biofuel. (image: tradeindia.com)
One day, burning tobacco could be good for your health. At least that’d be the case if researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia get their way. As reported Tuesday by USA Today, they believe that tobacco could be a good source for biofuel, including biodiesel and biofuel heating oil.
Scientists have discovered how to tweak tobacco’s genes to increase its production of oil by up to 20 times. That would make it an excellent stock for conversion to biofuel. Moreover, as one of the authors of the research study noted, “tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren’t used in food production.” That way, biofuel production doesn’t compete or conflict with growing crops to eat.
HydroFill Uses Water to Charge Electronic Devices
(image: cnet.com)
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was held this week in Las Vegas, turning the city into gadget central for the duration. Amidst the games consoles, tech toys, and televisions there were some items designed to save energy rather than just consume it, like Horizon’s HydroFill home hydrogen fuel cell system. The HydroFill is an ingenious piece of technology that uses water and power supplied by solar, wind, or wall outlet to fill fuel cells that can be used in mobile phones, digital cameras, GPS units, and other portable electronics. The rechargeable fuel cells replace batteries containing heavy metals, and the only byproduct of the charging process is the water vapor released when the hydrogen is extracted. The HydroFill is expected to go on-sale later this year. Learn more about other new developments that may help us all to conserve energy in the near future by browsing our green energy technology section.
Offshore Wind Energy Could Grow Rapidly in Next Decade
Sights like this could become far more common in Europe and the US. (image: PEBondestad via flickr.com)
Offshore drilling has yielded huge oil discoveries in recent years (making countries like Brazil and Angola oil powers), and offshore drilling rights were dangled as a carrot to entice senators to support a climate bill. But oil and gas companies aren’t the only ones looking offshore for energy—so are wind companies, reports the New York Times.
Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm, predicts that in ten years the offshore wind energy market will grow from $10 billion to $30 billion. Though more costly than on-shore projects, offshore wind farms are gaining traction in Europe, which Emerging Energy Research says will be the primary market for offshore wind energy through 2014, when the US and China may enter the field.
Offshore wind projects have already come up in the US, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said he will take measures to speed up the approval process for offshore wind projects. The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts has been held back by objections from the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes, but a community-owned wind farm in Maine has recently opened and is New England’s largest offshore wind farm.
New Device Turns Vibrations into Electricity
(image: laist.com)
Just when you thought you’d read it all when it comes to creative ways of generating energy, here comes a new one: vibrations. And anything that vibrates: highways, train stations, or even a disco dance floor, could potentially be used to garner energy.
A team of researchers has developed a micro-scaled device that uses vibrations, or piezoelectric energy, formed by the conversion of mechanical strain into electrical current, reports Clean Technica.
This device could be used to convert energy from vibrations in machines, engines, and other industrial appliances. It can also be used to detect early signs of deterioration in bridges or machines and may potentially play a role in more energy efficient maintenance for technologies such as wind turbines.
Latest Way to Heat Your Home: Battery Power
Panasonic’s home-use battery. (image: physorg.com)
Panasonic is working on a lithium-ion storage cell that could power a home for a week, and it could be available as early as April 2010, reports Tim Hornyak at CNET. The move is made possible by Panasonic’s recent merger with Sanyo, which has developed cutting-edge battery technology.
Sanyo and Panasonic have already manufactured test versions of the battery. The president of Panasonic, Fumio Otsubo, told the Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun that this advance put Panasonic at the head of companies working “to realizing CO2 emission-free daily life.”
Energy storage is one of the obstacles to wide-scale use of renewable energy sources. In the right area wind and solar power can produce a great deal of energy, but when the sun sets, or the wind stops, that energy is gone. Batteries provide one form of energy storage, and a battery capable of storing enough energy for one week of home use would not just take advantage of a turn to renewable energy sources, it would promote the use of renewable energy.
Saudi Aramco CEO: Renewable Energy and Petroleum Have Bright Future
Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Aramco CEO, sees room for alternative energy and the Saudi national oil company. (image: geobahrain.org)
For a man at the top of the global oil industry, the president and CEO of Saudi Aramco, Khalid Al-Falih is accepting of the rise of renewable energy, reports Aramco ExPats. “Ultimately,” he said in a speech in Korea, alternative sources of energy “will displace petroleum.” He’s not too worried, though, because “there will be attractive uses for our hydrocarbons other than burning.”
Wait, isn’t he supposed to say that renewable energy can’t replace oil? Well, Al-Falih thinks Aramco can have it both ways. Renewable energy will “ultimately” take oil’s place—“over time.” But for now, petroleum is still king, and “an essential commodity to virtually every aspect of modern life.” He’s previously conceded that believers in peak oil have a case, but that oil will last longer than they think.
Heating Oil Weekly Roundup: List of Year-End Lists
(image: damonclifford.com)
As the year closes, everyone is taking a look back, so this week’s roundup gives you the best of the “best of” stories.
At MIT Technology Review, Kevin Bullis offers up the top energy stories of the year. Some of the choices were expected—the rush for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, carbon capture, and biofuel—but hamsters? Follow the links for a video demonstrating hamster power.
Energy analyst Robert Rapier compiled his top-ten list of energy stories this year, which you can find at The Oil Drum or his R-Squared Energy Blog. His choice for top story seems hard to argue with: volatility in the oil markets.
BusinessGreen.com’s James Murray crunched some numbers and found the most popular stories on the site from the past year. You’ll find green investment, solar panels, and lots about hybrid cars.
The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t stop at stories of the year—they take a look at the top science stories of the whole decade. The genome, stem cells, and pandemic flu all make the cut, as does one story with more relevance to this site: alternative energy. From peak oil to a post-petroleum world, from natural gas to electric cars, Sandy Bauer covers the highlights.
Ben Jervey at GOOD looks beyond 2009 as well to cover the top environmental news of the last ten years. Follow him as he goes in chronological order, when green became the new black, Al Gore became inconvenient, and Copenhagen was kind of a flop.
Does The Simpsons Shape Public Opinion on Nuclear Power?
(image: blogs.citypages.com)
Dr. Bill Irwin, a philosophy professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and editor of The Simpsons and Philosophy thinks so. The Canadian Press reported on Monday that Irwin suggests the show may have had strong influence on social perception of the nuclear industry. Perhaps trying to drum up some controversy and boost book sales (or earn himself a cut of some lobbying funds?) Irwin says that the show’s trifecta of characters – careless plant employee Homer, miserly Mr. Burns, and environmentalist Lisa – has made powerful and repeated arguments against the safety of nuclear power.
It’s true there hasn’t been a new power plant built in the US or Canada in over 30 years, and for 20 of those The Simpsons has been on the air, creating indelible images of nuclear havoc–Homer dropping a fuel rod in the title sequence, falling asleep at the control panel and then pushing random buttons in a panic, and of course of Blinky the three-eyed fish—a mutant product of the power plant’s unchecked radiation.
Blinky the fish. (image: blogs.sfweekly.com)
Irwin undoes his own argument, though, by raising the specters of some other things that have happened in the past 30 years that also may not have been great for nuclear reactor sales: the meltdowns at Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl.
The report coincides with the rejection of a proposal for a new Saskatchewan plant by Ontario-based Bruce Power; the plan was scrapped after public polling determined that area residents were opposed to it. The Wall Street Journal weighs in, saying that economics are a far larger argument against building any new plants, given the investment required to build and maintain them, and the years of labor necessary before they can start supplying power.
Laying the blame for the shortcomings of nuclear power at the feet of a bumbling cartoon family. Sounds like a plot worthy of a certain American TV show…
Reducing Environmental Impact and Saving Money by Living Off the Grid
The community of Scoraig gets its energy, in part, from wind turbines like the one above. (image: africanwindpower.com)
Living off the grid isn’t just for “hippies and environmental mavericks,” CNN reports. The news service, in a piece filed from England, says thousands of people across the pond have unhitched themselves from the power grid, generating their own electricity (through the use of things like home-installed solar panels) and water. While some say it’s a green effort, others are doing it for financial reasons, seeing it as “an antidote to rocketing energy prices and fears of economic collapse.”
Relying predominantly on wind and solar energy, the off-the-grid lifestyle isn’t just being adopted by pioneering individuals, either. A number of communities are, as CNN puts it, opting to “live unplugged.” Scoraig, a small peninsula town on the northwest coast of Scotland, is such a community. And as one local explains, the impression that residents there live a tech-free lifestyle because they’re off the grid is off base. Fifty-seven-year-old resident Hugh Piggott told CNN: “We have the same sort of facilities as everybody else—televisions, computers, fridges and washing machines. The difference is that we’re doing it with renewable energy rather than connecting to the national grid.”
Bio-products Could Soon Lower Oil Prices by Replacing Petroleum in Plastics
Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer (pictured) hopes that a higher price for crude oil will soon make bioplastics attractive to major manufacturers like Dupont and SASF. (image: france24.com)
The Agence France-Presse ran a profile on Monday of Frederic Scheer and his company Cereplast, which makes biodegradable, compostable plastics that are slowly working their way into use in a host of disposable items.
Cereplast plastic compounds can currently be found in take-out cups, flatware, plates and packaging – Solo, manufacturer of single-use cups in the billions, now has a line using Cereplast, among a growing list of other bioplastic companies. Bioplastic resins are made from the starches in tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes, and hold up well under heat and stress. For more intensive uses, Cereplast also has a “hybrid” line that incorporates a maximum of 50% petroleum derivatives, and which can be used in items such as toys and car parts. The growth of bioplastics as an industry should be of interest to any oil consumer, because plastic manufacturing takes a sizable bite out of the available supply of crude oil—in the US alone, 1.5 million barrels per year go into just the production of plastic water bottles. Read More »
Scotland Turns to Wave Energy to Cut Emissions
Scotland plans to convert its waves into a renewable source of energy. (image: woodruffshelties.com)
Scottish energy developer Pelamis has signed a joint venture agreement with Swedish energy company Vattenfall for an energy project worth about $100 million off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, CleanTechnica reported on Monday. The project has been dubbed Aegir, after the mythical Norse sea god, and will be Scotland’s largest wave power scheme.
The project is expected to feature 26 wave power machines, each at a length of 180 meters; these machines will generate a total of up to 200 megawatts of power, which can power about 13,000 households for one year. Aegir will begin producing power in 2014.
Scotland hopes that this project and others like it will help the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 42 percent by 2020, as delineated under the Scottish Climate Change Act. However, organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund think Scotland can do even more, and that renewable energy could fulfill 60–143 percent of Scotland’s energy requirements by 2030.
Scotland seems to be keen on using wave energy to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Many other countries and universities are also interested in harnessing the power of the sea to meet their renewable energy needs. For their part, England, Norway, and Australia have reported success with oscillating water columns. In addition, the Scottish government and its partners recently launched Oyster, the largest working hydroelectric wave energy device in the world.
Turning Carbon Dioxide into a Resource
At the University of Minnesota’s Center for Biorefining, algae is grown in waste water to reduce carbon emissions. (image: biorefining.cfans.umn.edu)
Many people have carbon dioxide on the mind, and not just political leaders meeting in Copenhagen. Tom Levitt, in a post on the Ecologist, noted that any long-term plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions has to take into account the fact that, in the short term, carbon emissions will continue to rise. Skeptical of carbon capture and storage—which he equates to burying garbage in landfills—Levitt examines other possible means of turning this waste into a form of energy.
Carbon capture and storage—a process through which carbon polluted into the air from fossil-fuel burning power plants and the like is compressed and then buried deep within the Earth—is hailed as a potential breakthrough for reducing carbon emissions, but is worrisome to some scientists. Levitt points to an alarming statistic provided by authors Robert Kunzig and Wallace Broecker in Fixing Climate. The pair, who say carbon capture and storage will lead to landfills of a much more caustic and damaging nature than the garbage dumps we currently have, put the scenario in these sobering terms: “If the twenty-nine gigatons produced by the world’s fossil-fuel burning in a single year were liquefied and spread over Manhattan, they would bury the island to about the eighty-fifth floor of the Empire State Building.” Levitt also quotes Columbia University’s Frank Zeman, who works for the school’s Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, saying that using carbon capture and storage will create significant friction over the challenges surrounding its disposal.
