CleanTechnica

Is Al Costa pulling our leg? The CEO of Delaware-based Alkol Inc. says he has a system that will convert your car to run on E85 in about an hour.

“Flexing” your vehicle with the Alkol conversion system will allow you to use one of those high-ethanol pumps, which contain a mix of 85 percent ethanol, as opposed to the normal 10 percent mix in conventional gasoline. You won’t need a brand new shiny vehicle with one of those “Flex Fuel” badges either.

How does it work? Does it work? Is it like one of those quick-fix radiator sealer bottles that high school kids used to pour into their old jalopies?

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Industry juggernaut Waste Management is convinced there’s a future in sewage-to-biofuel, and to prove it the company has just joined with the largest refiner in the U.S., Valero Energy Corp., to blend wastewater “crude” into gasoline.  The two companies have invested in Terrabon LLC, which was formed in the 1990’s to commercialize three technologies including a biofuel process called MixAlco.  With a half-billion people (and counting) contributing to the feedstock in the U.S. alone, it looks like sewage could be the answer to the search for a truly sustainable biofuel.

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The economy is down, but here is another sign that green technology may be the way out of our economic dilemma. US clean energy patents hit a record high last quarter.
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Hundreds of thousands of tons of watermelons are tossed every year because they aren’t good enough for market. A new study finds that the juice from these watermelons could easily be used to create the biofuel ethanol and other helpful products.
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Midcromidas, Inc. has turned its green eye on wastewater, and it is seeing gold.  The company has developed a strain of microbes that can convert the carbon in wastewater into PHA (polyhydroxylalkanoate), a high performance plastic.  PHA biodegrades quickly in compost piles and landfills, but otherwise it behaves the same or better than conventional petroleum-based plastic.  It resists water and odor permeation, and it holds up under high temperature and exposure to sun.  As a sustainable alternative to petroleum as a plastics feedstock, wastewater could be setting the gold standard.

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Tested on the California/Nevada border, the Ecotricity Greenbird broke the land speed record for wind-powered vehicles.  The Greenbird clocked in at a top speed of 126.4 mph and maintained a speed of 126.2 mph for three seconds.  The previous record was 116mph.

The Greenbird is a collaboration between Ecotricity and engineer Richard Jenkins.  Ecotricity is an independent green electricity company based in the UK founded and owned by entrepreneur Dale
Vince.  Jenkins is the founder of the Windjet project and has a wide range of skills in engineering, design, piloting, and construction experience.  Both sides are innovative, experienced, and have a passion for wind energy as a solution for transportation and utilities.

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This post was written by Paul O’Callaghan, founding CEO of the Clean Tech consultancy, O2 Environmental Inc. and lecturer on Sustainable Energy at the BC Institute of Technology.
There was much furore recently surrounding the story ‘Joule Biotech comes out of stealth with sun-powered biofuel’.

The premise is that the technology can take solar energy and use it to convert carbon dioxide directly into fuel. A one stop-shop to soak up carbon dioxide and produce a biofuel.

Having dug into it a little, the conclusion I came to is that it’s not as radical as it sounds. It is basically directed photosynthesis: same principle as oil from algae, or biofuels. The overall efficiencies are likely to be 10 times lower than that from solar PV processes, but, in terms of where biofuels are heading, it is on the right track.

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Austrian scientists are putting the ‘fun’ in ‘fungus’ by forcing organisms which are usually asexual to have sex instead.

The hope is that the fungus would then be easier to breed, which would allow researchers to create organisms that are more efficient at degrading cellulose for the purpose of making biofuel.

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The distinctive “alligator tree,” or sweetgum tree, may hold the key to a more efficient process for making cellulosic ethanol from biowaste.  The sweetgum’s unusually rough bark gives it the reptilian nickname, and it is easily identifiable by the spike-festooned, gumball shaped seed cases hanging from its branches.  But what caught the attention of researchers from the University of Florida is invisible to the naked eye.

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Have you noticed how all sorts of high end resorts and hotels have started converting their chlorine pools to salt water? And it’s not just the health and hospitality industry that wants to figure out a way to purify their water without resorting to chemicals. Other industries, including the food and beverage, dairy, aquaculture and municipal drinking water providers need to ensure that the water they use contain no micro-organisms or pathogens of any kind. A company based in Israel, Atlantium has developed what may be one of the first industrial-grade solutions to water micro-organism purification without chemicals. Read the rest of this entry »