Officials in the USA’s State of South Carolina’s capital city are turning one man’s trash into a treasure of sorts — fuel that they’ll use to transport more trash.
Columbia city officials on Monday. Officials are encouraging Columbia residents to drop off their used cooking oil at the city’s public works department.
Midlands Biofuels, of Winnsboro, will collect the oil each week and convert it into fuel to power one of Columbia’s garbage trucks.
The program has two purposes:
- To cut down on the amount of grease dumped into the city’s sewer system. The grease caused 460 sewer spills last year, which dumped 2.1 million gallons of raw sewage into the community.
- To reduce the vehicle emissions of harmful pollutants that contribute to bad ozone, the kind that is formed at ground level by a mixture of chemicals in warm weather.
The program represents a baby step in both directions. It is only open to Columbia city residents, who make up less than half of the city’s sewer customers. And the biodiesel will run only one of the city’s 60 garbage trucks.
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Posted in Biodiesel, News
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The biodiesel industry is facing major challenges for the future which will, by and large, determine any future use of biodiesel as alternative fuel. These challenges will be the subject of discussion and debate at “The Future of Biodiesel in Europe”, a conference to be held in Brussels on September 27-28, 2010, and organized by Hart Energy Consulting and AGQM – Arbeitsgemeinschaft Qualitatsmanagement Biodiesel e. V. (German Association for Quality Management of Biodiesel reg. ASS).
At the conference, experts of the EU Commission will update the audience on the translation of the EU directives into the national legal systems, with a special emphasis on the renewable energy National Action Plans (NAPs) already submitted to the Commission, and the issue of sustainability, including comments on the ongoing public consultation on indirect land use change (ILUC).
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China has become the world’s third largest manufacturer of ethanol.
The increase comes after the Chinese government ramped up the production of ethanol from non-grain feedstocks including straws, cassava and bagasse.
The issue of food security led the government to curb the cultivation of first generation crops for use in biofuel production.
Most recently the nation has seen an ethanol plant come online in Guangxi, which processes 200,000 tonnes of cassava, and a 10,000-tonne straw-to-ethanol facility is due to begin construction next year.
Antarctica is a brutal place and plans to traverse it had better be accompanied by some well-thought-out preparations. This winter, explorers from the Moon-Regan Transantarctic Expedition team will set out on an attempt to examine the impact of global climate change. The 40-day, 3,600-mile jaunt will put the team of 11 researchers and their two vehicles through the ultimate cold-weather test. Hopefully, the team’s Lotus-designed Bio-Inspired Ice Vehicle (BIV) is up to the task.
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Scientists said today they have created a new biofuel made from whisky by-products which could be used to help power cars currently on the road.
Edinburgh Napier University has filed a patent for the product, which can be used in ordinary cars without any special adaptions.
The biofuel has been developed over two years by the university’s Biofuel Research Centre.
Posted in Bioethanol, News
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The USA is spending millions of dollars to find ways of turning everything from algae to lawn trimmings into fuel as President Obama promises to invest heavily in alternative fuels.
The departments of energy and agriculture will award $25 million to advance development of “technologies and processes” to produce so-called “next generation” biofuels that aren’t refined from food crops like corn. The announcement follows an agriculture department promise to loan $80 million to Range Fuels, a Colorado company that produces ethanol from wood chips, so it can build a refinery in Georgia.
“A robust biofuels industry – focused on the next-generation of biofuels – is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing our addiction to foreign oil and putting Americans back to work,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.
Japan Airlines will become the fourth airline in a year to use biofuel during a test flight tomorrow. The hour-long Boeing 747-300 flight will be powered by 50 per cent traditional jet fuel while the other half came from a biofuel blend.
The airline industry is developing second generation fuels from nonedible products, after fuels made from edible plants were criticised. Biofuel used in the latest flight at Tokyo airport was a mixture of camelina (a kind of flax), the flower jatropha and algae. Algae is seen as an especially promising material because ponds with a combined total acreage equal in size to Belgium would be enough to meet all demands from commercial airlines across the globe. Tomorrow’s test followed similar flights by Continental Airlines and Air New Zealand. The world’s first test flight using biofuel was conducted by Britain’s Virgin Atlantic Airways last February.
Posted in Bioethanol, News
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McDonald’s is to run its fleet of lorries on chip fat.
The fast food giant has pledged to recycle the cooking oil used in its restaurants to make environmentally-friendly biodiesel.
And it aims to use the fuel in all its 155 vehicles in the UK by next year.
McDonald’s said the move will save more than 1,650 tonnes of carbon every year – the equivalent of taking 2,424 family cars off the roads a year.
The cooking oil from its restaurants will be combined with rapeseed oil.
A trial by the group – underway for almost a year – has converted 150,000 litres to biodiesel and McDonald’s delivery vehicles have already been running on 95 per cent diesel and 5 per cent biodiesel.
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