The heavy industry sector has declined significantly over the past 20 years. An oil refinery formerly operated in the city under several different owners (Caminol Oil Co. from 1932–1967, Beacon Oil Co. from 1967–1982 and Ultramar Oil Co. from 1982–1987) until it permanently closed in 1987 [http://www.energy.ca.gov/oil/refinery_history.html]. A tire manufacturing plant was built in 1962 by the Armstrong Rubber Co., which operated it until that company was purchased by the Italian manufacturer Pirelli, which eventually closed the factory in 2001. On December& 11, 2007, the Hanford City Planning Commission approved construction of a plant that is expected to produce 60& million gallons (227 million liters) of ethanol per year for use as a gasoline additive and alternative fuel for vehicles. Most of the feedstock will be corn shipped from the Midwest. The proposed plant would be operated by Great Valley Ethanol LLC and was expected to open in 2010. However, in March 2009, the president of Great Valley Ethanol stated that difficulty in obtaining financing and the low price of gasoline had delayed the opening.

The retail sector is growing with taxable sales of USD 414.7 million reported in 2002, up by 4.6% from 2001.

Major employers within the city of Hanford in 2006 included the Kings County government with 1,041 employees, the Adventist Health System with 857, the Hanford Elementary School District with 520, the Del Monte tomato cannery with 435 year-round and 1,500 seasonal employees and Marquez Brothers International, Inc., makers of Hispanic cheese and other dairy products. Many Hanford residents work for other nearby employers such as NAS Lemoore, the U.S. Navy’s largest master jet base located 15.5& mi (25& km) WSW of Hanford and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation which operates three state prisons in Kings County.

Hanford has not escaped the effects of the late 2000s recession. The unemployment rate in May 2010 was 13.4%, up from 8.8% in July 2008.

According to the United States Census Bureau, median household income in Hanford was USD 37,582 and 17.3% of the population was living below the poverty line in 1999, including 23.6% of those under age 18 and 6.0% of those age 65 or over. The median income for a household in the city was USD 37,582, and the median income for a family was USD 41,395. Males had a median income of USD 37,120 versus USD 25,971 for females. The per capita income for the city was USD 17,504.

The homeownership rate was 59% in 2000.

Hanford shopping

Hanford has variety of shopping including:

Hanford Mall-an indoor 625,580 feet mall complex anchor by Sears, Forever 21, JCPenney and Cinemark Movies 8.

Walmart Supercenter Plaza- which includes three restaurants, Sonic Drive-In, El Pollo Loco, and Farmer Boy Hamburgers.

Hanford Historic Downtown -which is home to unqiue restaurants, events, stores and small shops .

Michaels, Old Navy, Petsmart, Home Depot, Target, Lowe’s and Marshalls are among other retail outlets in Hanford.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Hanford, California, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Most cars on the road today in Brazil can run on blends of up to 25% ethanol, and motor vehicle manufacturers already produce vehicles designed to run on much higher ethanol blends. Most car makers in Brazil sell flexible-fuel cars, trucks, and minivans that can use gasoline and ethanol blends ranging from pure gasoline up to 100% ethanol (E100). In 2009, 90% of cars produced that year ran on sugarcane ethanol.

Brazil is the second largest producer of ethanol in the world and is the largest exporter of the fuel. In 2008, Brazil produced 454,000 bbl/d of ethanol, up from 365,000 in 2007. All gasoline in Brazil contains ethanol, with blending levels varying from 20-25%. Over half of all cars in the country are of the flex-fuel variety, meaning that they can run on 100 percent ethanol or an ethanol-gasoline mixture. According to ANP, Brazil also produced about 20,000 bbl/d of biodiesel in 2008, and the agency has enacted a three-percent blending requirement for domestic diesel sales.

The importance of ethanol in Brazil’s domestic transportation fuels market will only increase in the future. According to Petrobrás, ethanol accounts for more than 50 percent of current light vehicle fuel demand, and the company expects this to increase to over 80% by 2020. Because ethanol production continues to grow faster than domestic demand, Brazil has sought to increase ethanol exports. According to industry sources, Brazil’s ethanol exports reached 86,000 bbl/d in 2008, with 13,000 bbl/d going to the United States. Brazil is the largest ethanol exporter in the world, holding over 90% of the global export market.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Renewable energy in Brazil, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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It is important to note that these targets are for the hydrogen storage system, not the hydrogen storage material. Thus while a material may store 6 wt% H2, a working system using that material may only achieve 3 wt% when the weight of tanks, temperature and pressure control equipment, etc., is considered. System densities are often around half those of the working material.

In 2010, only two storage technologies were identified as being susceptible to meet DOE targets: MOF-177 exceeds 2010 target for gravimetric capacity, while cryo-compressed H2 exceeds more restrictive 2015 targets for both gravimetric and volumetric capacity (see slide 6 in ).

Established technologies=

Compressed hydrogen

Compressed hydrogen is the gaseous state of the element hydrogen which is kept under pressure. Compressed hydrogen in hydrogen tanks at 350 bar (5,000 psi) and 700 bar (10,000 psi) is used for in hydrogen vehicles. Car manufacturers have been developing this solution, such as Honda or Nissan.

Liquid hydrogen

BMW has been working on liquid tank for cars, producing for example the BMW Hydrogen 7.

Slush hydrogen

Proposals and research

Hydrogen storage technologies can be divided into physical storage, where hydrogen molecules are stored (including pure hydrogen storage via compression and liquefication), and chemical storage, where hydrides are stored.

Chemical storage==

Metal hydrides

Metal hydrides, such as MgH2, NaAlH4, LiAlH4, LiH, LaNi5H6, and TiFeH2, with varying degrees of efficiency, can be used as a storage medium for hydrogen, often reversibly. Some are easy-to-fuel liquids at ambient temperature and pressure, others are solids which could be turned into pellets. These materials have good energy density by volume, although their energy density by weight is often worse than the leading hydrocarbon fuels.

Most metal hydrides bind with hydrogen very strongly. As a result high temperatures around 120 °C (248 °F) – 200 °C (392 °F) are required to release their hydrogen content. This energy cost can be reduced by using alloys which consists of a strong hydride former and a weak one such as in LiNH2, NaBH4 and LiBH4. These are able to form weaker bonds, thereby requiring less input to release stored hydrogen. However if the interaction is too weak, the pressure needed for rehydriding is high, thereby eliminating any energy savings. The target for onboard hydrogen fuel systems is roughly

Hydrogen carriers based on nanostructured carbon (such as carbon buckyballs and nanotubes) have been proposed. Despite initial claims of greater than 50 wt% hydrogen storage, it has generally come to be accepted that less than 1 wt% is practical.

Metal-organic frameworks

Metal-organic frameworks represent another class of synthetic porous materials that store hydrogen. In 2006, chemists at UCLA and the University of Michigan have achieved hydrogen storage concentrations of up to 7.5% weight in MOF-74. However, the storage was achieved at the low temperature of 77 K.. In 2009 researchers of the University of Nottingham reached 10 wt% at 77 bar (1,117 psi) and 77 K with MOF NOTT-112.

Clathrate hydrates

H2 caged in a clathrate hydrate was first reported in 2002, but requires very high pressures to be stable. In 2004, researchers from Delft University of Technology and Colorado School of Mines showed solid H2-containing hydrates could be formed at ambient temperature and 10s of bar by adding small amounts of promoting substances such as THF. These clathrates have a theoretical maximum hydrogen densities of around 5 wt% and 40& kg/m3.

Doped polymers

In 2006, a team of Korean researchers led by Professor Jisoon Ihm at Department of Physics and Astronomy of Seoul National University proposed a new material with the hydrogen storage efficiency of 7.6 percent based on first-principles electronic structure calculations for hydrogen binding to metal-decorated polymers of many different kinds. According to these researchers, hydrogen can be stored in a solid material at ambient temperatures and pressures by attaching a titanium atom to a polyacetylene. [http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/146855.html][http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000097000005056104000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=Yes]

Glass Capillary Arrays

A team of Russian, Israeli and German scientists have collaboratively developed an innovative technology based on glass capillary arrays for the safe infusion, storage and controlled release of hydrogen in mobile applications [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2006.11.017][http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2009.10.011]. The C.En [http://www.cenh2go.com] technology has achieved the US Department of Energy (DOE) 2010 targets for on-board hydrogen storage systems.

Glass microspheres

Hollow glass microspheres (HGM) can be utilized for controlled storage and release of hydrogen.

Keratine

Keratine, a compound found in bird feathers, has been found to be useful to increase the interior surface (and thus the hydrogen storage capacity) of tanks. The research stated that the use of carbonized chicken feather fibres would result in far lower manufacturing costs than other common hydrogen tanks on the market. The research was conducted by Richard Wool and Erman Senoz.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Hydrogen storage, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Examples of energy sources include:

* Fossil fuels

* Nuclear fuels (e.g., uranium and plutonium)

* Radiation from the sun

* Mechanical energy from wind, rivers, tides, etc.

* Bio-fuels derived from biomass, in turn having consumed soil nutrients during growth.

* Heat from within the earth (geothermal radiation)

The term net energy gain can be used in slightly different ways:

Non-sustainables

The usual definition of net energy gain compares the energy required to extract energy (that is, to find it, remove it from the ground, refine it, and ship it to the energy user) with the amount of energy produced and transmitted to a user from some (typically underground) energy resource. To better understand this, assume an economy has a certain amount of finite oil reserves that are still underground, unextracted. To get to that energy, some of the extracted oil needs to be consumed in the extraction process to run the engines driving the pumps, therefore after extraction the net energy produced will be less than the amount of energy in the ground before extraction, because some had to be used up.

The extraction energy can be viewed in one of two ways: profitable extractable (NEG>0) or nonprofitable extractable (NEG
Adapted from the Wikipedia article Net energy gain, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article Biofuel in Australia, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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John Shuttleworth died on March 29, 2009, at his home in Evergreen, Colorado, at the age of 71. (Backhome Magazine, issue 101, p.4)

The magazine was originally published in North Madison, Ohio and moved to Hendersonville, North Carolina later. It had a scrappy, no-frills style and appearance throughout the 1970s. ”Mother Earth News” embraced the revived interest in the back-to-the-land movement at the beginning of the 1970s, and combined this with an interest in the ecology movement and self-sufficiency. Unlike other magazines with ecological coverage, ”Mother Earth News” concentrated on do-it-yourself and how-to articles, aimed at the growing number of people moving to the country. As a result, the magazine thrived throughout the 1970s. There were articles on home building, farming, gardening, and entrepreneurism, all with a DIY approach, and the subject matter of the articles ranged widely into such subjects as geodesic domes, hunting, food storage, and even a regular column on amateur radio. Alternative energy was a frequent topic covered in the magazine, with articles on how to switch to solar power and wind power, and how to make a still and run your car on ethanol. A series of “Plowboy Interviews” was also a regular feature, which included interviews of environmental leaders and others. With its left of center perspective, ”The Mother Earth News” attracted a wide readership, not only of back to the landers but also others ranging from hippies, to survivalists, to suburban dwellers who dreamed of someday moving to the country, to long-time rural dwellers who found the DIY articles useful.

In March 1975. in the March-April issue of the Magazine, Issue No. 32, John Shuttleworth said in the second installment of the Plowboy Interview: “For at least 20 years now, I’ve been getting an increasingly uncomfortable suspicion that all the major nations of the world — capitalist and communist — suffer from the narrow delusion that only people, and people alone, have any rights on this planet. Further, that human wants, needs, and desires — seemingly the more capricious the better — should be instantly gratified. And further still, that this can always be done in a strictly economic frame of reference.

“In short, I think that we live in an unbelievably marvelous Garden of Eden. Surrounded by miraculous life forms almost without number. Kept alive by a mysteriously interwoven, self-replenishing support system that, with all our scientific ‘breakthroughs,’ we still do not understand.

“And yet, as favored as we are by all this real wealth, we somehow perversely prefer to spend almost all waking hours interpreting the sum total of this reality in terms of the narrow and distorted, strictly human-centered concept of money.”

In 1979 editor Bruce Woods and two other employees bought the magazine from the Shuttleworths. The Eco-Village, a 600 acre (2.4 km2) research center, was in full swing with vast experimental gardens, houses, and energy projects. Twenty thousand people each summer took ”Mother Earth News” seminars on everything from bee keeping to cordwood construction. A radio show shared the magazine’s philosophies on hundreds of stations nationwide and alternative-fuel vehicles carrying the ”Mother Earth News” logo criss-crossed the country.

The magazine flagged somewhat with the declining popularity of the back to the land movement in the early 1980s. Eventually, it was sold to the New American Company in 1986, who redesigned it with a much slicker image and repositioned it as “The Original Country Magazine.” A number of employees of ”Mother Earth News” left the magazine at this time to start ”BackHome Magazine”. New American stopped publishing its magazines, and sold them to Sussex Publishers in 1991 The magazine survived, and grew through the late 1990s and the first half-decade of the 21st Century. Sussex Publishers in New York City owned the magazine until 2001, when it was acquired by its current owners, Ogden Publications.

In 2010, the magazine celebrated its 40th anniversary. The February-March issue included articles from the magazine’s previous 40 years.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Mother Earth News, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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* Anaerobic digestion

* Composting

* Fuel cells

* Fuels for automobiles (besides gasoline and diesel)

** Alcohol (either ethanol or methanol)

** Biodiesel

** Vegetable oil

* Greywater

* Solar panels

** Silicon-based

** Photosynthetic “Gratzel cells” (Titanium dioxide)

* Landfill gas extraction from landfills

* Mechanical biological treatment

* Recycling

* Wind generators

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Alternative technology, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Joel Sheltrown was elected from the 103rd House District to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2004 and subsequently re-elected in 2006 and 2008. Over the three elections, Sheltrown has performed 15 points above the Democratic Party base in the 103rd House District. He is the only Democratic legislative candidate in Michigan history to win a majority of votes in Missaukee County, the second most Republican county in the state.

As a member of the Democratic majority in the Michigan House of Representatives, Joel Sheltrown was appointed to chair the House Tourism, Outdoor Recreation and Natural Resources Committee in 2007 and re-appointed in 2009. Sheltrown has focused the committee’s attention on economic development by increasing funding for promotion of Michigan’s tourism industry through the award winning Pure Michigan campaign and by supporting broader recreational opportunity and access. Joel Sheltrown was the primary sponsor of a new state law allowing All-terrain vehicles to access county roads. He organized a hunters’ coalition that won broader inclusion of crossbows in the archery deer hunting season.

Joel Sheltrown is a centrist Democrat. He takes traditionally conservative stands on constitutional issues such as the right to life, the Second Amendment, personal feedoms and parental rights. Joel Sheltrown is a life member of the National Rifle Association. He is a supporter of the labor movement, public education and a progressive tax structure. He has been an advocate of a hybrid economic model pursuing both an active state role in job creation and job security and a passive role through the elimination of many regulations that hinder business growth. Sheltrown favors the elimination of the Michigan Business Tax and Michigan’s personal property tax and their replacement with either a state Value Added Tax or a progressive consumption tax.

In 2007, Joel Sheltrown led the successful effort to build a wide body aircraft hanger at the Oscoda-Wurtsmith Airport furthering development of the aviation industry in northern Michigan. He has also focused on alternative energy development including wind energy, biodiesel, ethanol production including wood cellulose based ethanol and cleaner coal technology. Joel Sheltrown is currently working on legislation to increase career technical education in Michigan to train workers for these emerging fields and legislation to provide for residential green energy production and efficiency municipal loans.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Joel Sheltrown, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Virtually every major global automaker has a presence in the area including technology and design centers. Oakland County’s ””Automation Alley”” has over 1,800 of world’s advanced technology companies.

There are about 4,000 factories in the area. The automotive headquarters for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) is in the suburb of Troy. OnStar and GMAC are a source for growth. In spite of foreign competition for market share, Detroit’s automakers have continued to gain volume from previous decades with the expansion of the American and global automotive markets. In 2008, an economic and financial crisis impacted global auto industry sales.

Since the early 2000s recession and the September 11, 2001 attacks, GM, Ford, and Chrysler have struggled to overcome the benefit funds crisis which followed an ensuing volatile stock market which had caused a severe underfunding condition in the respective U.S. pension and benefit funds (OPEB). Although manufacturing in the state grew 6.6 percent from 2001 to 2006, the high speculative price of oil became a factor for the U.S. auto industry during the economic crisis of 2008 impacting industry revenues. During this economic crisis, President George W. Bush extended loans from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds in order to help the GM and Chrysler bridge the recession.

In January 2009, President Barack Obama formed an automotive task force in order to help the industry recover and achieve renewed prosperity for the region. Through 2007, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler made independent efforts to restore fund pensions and had reached agreements with the United Auto Workers union to transfer the liabilities for their respective health care and benefit funds to a 501(c)(9) Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA) raising prospects for corporate turnaround plans. In spite of these efforts, the severity of the recession required Detroit’s automakers to take additional steps to restructure, including idling many plants. With the U.S. Treasury extending the necessary debtor in possession financing, Chrysler and GM emerged from ‘pre-packaged’ Chapter 11 reorganizations in June and July 2009 respectively. GM plans to issue an initial public offering (IPO) of stock in 2010. As of July 10, 2009, the new GM has over $40B in cash, with its debts reduced to $17B. The company’s reorganized long-term liability obligations of $48.8B include $24.4 B to be paid to the Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA) trust, $9 B to the U.S. and Canadian governments, and $15 B in liabilities to suppliers and other bills. GM is slated to pay $10 B to the VEBA trust in December 2009 which it may elect to pay from its pension fund, with the remainder being paid in increments from 2012-19. GM isn’t required to make contributions to its pension fund until 2013, but it may elect to if needed, since the company contribued $15.2 B to its pension fund in 2003. Stock market conditions can affect pension and benefit fund values which may affect the plans of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. In February 2009, GM’s combined pension fund had about $85 B in assets. Through April 2009, Ford’s strategy of debt for equity exchanges erased $9.9 B in liabilities (28 percent of its total).

Detroit’s automakers are designing future vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt flex fuel hybrid. In 2006, Ford announced a dramatic increase in production of its hybrid gas-electric models, Ford and GM have also promoted E-85 ethanol capable flexible-fuel vehicles as a viable alternative to gasoline. General Motors has invested heavily in all fuel cell equipped vehicles, while Chrysler is focusing much of its research and development into biodiesel. Two days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, GM announced it had developed the world’s most powerful fuel cell stack capable of powering large commercial vehicles. In 2002, the state of Michigan established NextEnergy, a non-profit corporation whose purpose is to enable commercialization of various energy technologies, especially hydrogen fuel cells. Its main complex is located north of Wayne State University. In August 2009, Michigan and Detroit’s auto industry received $1.36 B in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries which are expected to generate 6,800 immediate jobs and employ 40,000 in the state by 2020.

In 2008, General Motors’ global sales reached 8.36 million vehicles. The sales revenue from just one of Detroit’s automakers exceeds the combined total for the all of the top companies in many major U.S. cities. On quality, Cadillac outscored all other luxury automakers in two of three quality surveys by AutoPacific, Strategic Vision, and J.D. Power in 2003. Ford led all other automakers in the 2007 J.D. Initial Quality survey.

The area includes a variety of manufacturers and is an important component of U.S. national security. U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) is headquartered in Metro Detroit together with Selfridge Air National Guard Base. The region has important defense contractors such as General Dynamics. The area is home to Rofin-Sinar, a leading maker of lasers which are used for industrial processes. On June 27, 2009, General Electric announced plans to build a new $100 M center for advanced manufacturing technology and software, in Van Buren Township in Wayne County, expected to employ 1,200 people providing a pay range of $100,000 per year.

With its major port status, the city’s infrastructure accommodates heavy industry. Marathon Oil Company maintains a large refinery in Detroit, expanded to refine oil sands from Canada. Lafarge’s cement distribution facility constructed at the city’s Springwells Industrial Park in 2005 includes North America’s largest cement silo.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Economy of metropolitan Detroit, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The fuels that are easiest to burn cleanly are typically liquids and gases. Thus liquids (and gases that can be stored in liquid form) meet the requirements of being both portable and clean burning. Also, liquids and gases can be pumped, which means handling is easily mechanized, and thus less laborious.

First generation biofuels

‘First-generation biofuels’ are biofuels made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil or animal fats using conventional technology. The basic feedstocks for the production of first generation biofuels are often seeds or grains such as sunflower seeds, which are pressed to yield vegetable oil that can be used in biodiesel, or wheat, which yields starch that is fermented into bioethanol. These feedstocks could instead enter the animal or human food chain, and as the global population has risen their use in producing biofuels has been criticised for diverting food away from the human food chain, leading to food shortages and price rises.

The most common biofuels are listed below.

Bioalcohols

Biologically produced alcohols, most commonly ethanol, and less commonly propanol and butanol, are produced by the action of microorganisms and enzymes through the fermentation of sugars or starches (easiest), or cellulose (which is more difficult). Biobutanol (also called biogasoline) is often claimed to provide a direct replacement for gasoline, because it can be used directly in a gasoline engine (in a similar way to biodiesel in diesel engines).

Ethanol fuel is the most common biofuel worldwide, particularly in Brazil. Alcohol fuels are produced by fermentation of sugars derived from wheat, corn, sugar beets, sugar cane, molasses and any sugar or starch that alcoholic beverages can be made from (like potato and fruit waste, etc.). The ethanol production methods used are enzyme digestion (to release sugars from stored starches), fermentation of the sugars, distillation and drying. The distillation process requires significant energy input for heat (often unsustainable natural gas fossil fuel, but cellulosic biomass such as bagasse, the waste left after sugar cane is pressed to extract its juice, can also be used more sustainably).

Ethanol can be used in petrol engines as a replacement for gasoline; it can be mixed with gasoline to any percentage. Most existing car petrol engines can run on blends of up to 15% bioethanol with petroleum/gasoline.

Ethanol has a smaller energy density than gasoline, which means it takes more fuel (volume and mass) to produce the same amount of work. An advantage of ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is that it has a higher octane rating than ethanol-free gasoline available at roadside gas stations which allows an increase of an engine’s compression ratio for increased thermal efficiency.

In high altitude (thin air) locations, some states mandate a mix of gasoline and ethanol as a winter oxidizer to reduce atmospheric pollution emissions.

Ethanol is also used to fuel bioethanol fireplaces. As they do not require a chimney and are “flueless”, bio ethanol fires are extremely useful for new build homes and apartments without a flue.

The downside to these fireplaces, is that the heat output is slightly less than electric and gas fires.

In the current alcohol-from-corn production model in the United States, considering the total energy consumed by farm equipment, cultivation, planting, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides made from petroleum, irrigation systems, harvesting, transport of feedstock to processing plants, fermentation, distillation, drying, transport to fuel terminals and retail pumps, and lower ethanol fuel energy content, the net energy content value added and delivered to consumers is very small. And, the net benefit (all things considered) does little to reduce un-sustainable imported oil and fossil fuels required to produce the ethanol.

Although ethanol-from-corn and other food stocks has implications both in terms of world food prices and limited, yet positive energy yield (in terms of energy delivered to customer/fossil fuels used), the technology has led to the development of cellulosic ethanol. According to a joint research agenda conducted through the U.S. Department of Energy, the fossil energy ratios (FER) for cellulosic ethanol, corn ethanol, and gasoline are 10.3, 1.36, and 0.81, respectively.

Many car manufacturers are now producing flexible-fuel vehicles (FFV’s), which can safely run on any combination of bioethanol and petrol, up to 100% bioethanol. They dynamically sense exhaust oxygen content, and adjust the engine’s computer systems, spark, and fuel injection accordingly. This adds initial cost and ongoing increased vehicle maintenance. As with all vehicles, efficiency falls and pollution emissions increase when FFV system maintenance is needed (regardless of the fuel mix being used), but is not performed. FFV internal combustion engines are becoming increasingly complex, as are multiple-propulsion-system FFV hybrid vehicles, which impacts cost, maintenance, reliability, and useful lifetime longevity.

Even dry ethanol has roughly one-third lower energy content per unit of volume compared to gasoline, so larger / heavier fuel tanks are required to travel the same distance, or more fuel stops are required. With large current unsustainable, non-scalable subsidies, ethanol fuel still costs much more per distance traveled than current high gasoline prices in the United States.

Methanol is currently produced from natural gas, a non-renewable fossil fuel. It can also be produced from biomass as biomethanol. The methanol economy is an interesting alternative to get to the hydrogen economy, compared to today’s hydrogen production from natural gas. But this process is not the state-of-the-art clean solar thermal energy process, wherehydrogen production is directly produced from water.

Butanol is formed by ABE fermentation (acetone, butanol, ethanol) and experimental modifications of the process show potentially high net energy gains with butanol as the only liquid product. Butanol will produce more energy and allegedly can be burned “straight” in existing gasoline engines (without modification to the engine or car), and is less corrosive and less water soluble than ethanol, and could be distributed via existing infrastructures. DuPont and BP are working together to help develop Butanol. E. coli have also been successfully engineered to produce Butanol by hijacking their amino acid metabolism.

Green diesel

Green diesel, also known as renewable diesel, is a form of diesel fuel which is derived from renewable feedstock rather than the fossil feedstock used in most diesel fuels. Green diesel feedstock can be sourced from a variety oils including canola, algae, jatropha and salicornia in addition to tallow. Green diesel uses tradional fractional distillation to process the oils, not to be confused with biodiesel which is chemically quite different and processed using transesterification.

“Green Diesel” as commonly known in Ireland should not be confused with dyed green diesel sold at a lower tax rate for agriculture purposes, using the dye allows custom officers to determine if a person is using the cheaper diesel in higher taxed applications such as commercial haulage or cars.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is the most common biofuel in Europe. It is produced from oils or fats using transesterification and is a liquid similar in composition to fossil/mineral diesel. Chemically, it consists mostly of fatty acid methyl (or ethyl) esters (FAMEs). Feedstocks for biodiesel include animal fats, vegetable oils, soy, rapeseed, jatropha, mahua, mustard, flax, sunflower, palm oil, hemp, field pennycress, pongamia pinnata and algae. Pure biodiesel (B100) is the lowest emission diesel fuel. Although liquefied petroleum gas and hydrogen have cleaner combustion, they are used to fuel much less efficient petrol engines and are not as widely available.

Biodiesel can be used in any diesel engine when mixed with mineral diesel. In some countries manufacturers cover their diesel engines under warranty for B100 use, although Volkswagen of Germany, for example, asks drivers to check by telephone with the VW environmental services department before switching to B100. B100 may become more viscous at lower temperatures, depending on the feedstock used. In most cases, biodiesel is compatible with diesel engines from 1994 onwards, which use ‘Viton’ (by DuPont) synthetic rubber in their mechanical fuel injection systems.

Electronically controlled ‘common rail’ and ‘unit injector’ type systems from the late 1990s onwards may only use biodiesel blended with conventional diesel fuel. These engines have finely metered and atomized multi-stage injection systems that are very sensitive to the viscosity of the fuel. Many current generation diesel engines are made so that they can run on B100 without altering the engine itself, although this depends on the fuel rail design.

Since biodiesel is an effective solvent and cleans residues deposited by mineral diesel, engine filters may need to be replaced more often, as the biofuel dissolves old deposits in the fuel tank and pipes. It also effectively cleans the engine combustion chamber of carbon deposits, helping to maintain efficiency. In many European countries, a 5% biodiesel blend is widely used and is available at thousands of gas stations. Biodiesel is also an ”oxygenated fuel”, meaning that it contains a reduced amount of carbon and higher hydrogen and oxygen content than fossil diesel. This improves the combustion of fossil diesel and reduces the particulate emissions from un-burnt carbon.

Biodiesel is also safe to handle and transport because it is as biodegradable as sugar, 10 times less toxic than table salt, and has a high flash point of about 300 F (148 C) compared to petroleum diesel fuel, which has a flash point of 125 F (52 C).

In the USA, more than 80% of commercial trucks and city buses run on diesel. The emerging US biodiesel market is estimated to have grown 200% from 2004 to 2005. “By the end of 2006 biodiesel production was estimated to increase fourfold [from 2004] to more than 1 billion gallons”.

Vegetable oil

Straight unmodified edible vegetable oil is generally not used as fuel, but lower quality oil can be used for this purpose. Used vegetable oil is increasingly being processed into biodiesel, or (more rarely) cleaned of water and particulates and used as a fuel.

Also here, as with 100% biodiesel (B100), to ensure that the fuel injectors atomize the vegatable oil in the correct pattern for efficient combustion, vegetable oil fuel must be heated to reduce its viscosity to that of diesel, either by electric coils or heat exchangers. This is easier in warm or temperate climates. Big corporations like MAN B&W Diesel, Wartsila and Deutz AG as well as a number of smaller companies such as Elsbett offer engines that are compatible with straight vegetable oil, without the need for after-market modifications.

Vegetable oil can also be used in many older diesel engines that do not use common rail or unit injection electronic diesel injection systems. Due to the design of the combustion chambers in indirect injection engines, these are the best engines for use with vegetable oil. This system allows the relatively larger oil molecules more time to burn. Some older engines, especially Mercedes are driven experimentally by enthusiasts without any conversion, a handful of drivers have experienced limited success with earlier pre-”Pumpe Duse” VW TDI engines and other similar engines with direct injection. Several companies like Elsbett or [http://www.wolf-pflanzenoel-technik.de/ Wolf] have developed professional conversion kits and successfully installed hundreds of them over the last decades.

Oils and fats can be hydrogenated to give a diesel substitute. The resulting product is a straight chain hydrocarbon, high in cetane, low in aromatics and sulfur and does not contain oxygen. Hydrogenated oils can be blended with diesel in all proportions Hydrogenated oils have several advantages over biodiesel, including good performance at low temperatures, no storage stability problems and no susceptibility to microbial attack.

Bioethers

Bio ethers (also referred to as fuel ethers or oxygenated fuels) are cost-effective compounds that act as octane rating enhancers. They also enhance engine performance, whilst significantly reducing engine wear and toxic exhaust emissions. Greatly reducing the amount of ground-level ozone, they contribute to the quality of the air we breathe.

Biogas

Biogas is methane produced by the process of anaerobic digestion of organic material by anaerobes. It can be produced either from biodegradable waste materials or by the use of energy crops fed into anaerobic digesters to supplement gas yields. The solid byproduct, digestate, can be used as a biofuel or a fertilizer.

* Biogas can be recovered from mechanical biological treatment waste processing systems.

:Note:Landfill gas is a less clean form of biogas which is produced in landfills through naturally occurring anaerobic digestion. If it escapes into the atmosphere it is a potential greenhouse gas.

* Farmers can produce biogas from manure from their cows by getting a anaerobic digester (AD).

Syngas

Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is produced by partial combustion of biomass, that is, combustion with an amount of oxygen that is not sufficient to convert the biomass completely to carbon dioxide and water. Before partial combustion the biomass is dried, and sometimes pyrolysed. The resulting gas mixture, syngas, is more efficient than direct combustion of the original biofuel; more of the energy contained in the fuel is extracted.

* Syngas may be burned directly in internal combustion engines or turbines. The wood gas generator is a wood-fueled gasification reactor mounted on an internal combustion engine.

* Syngas can be used to produce methanol and hydrogen, or converted via the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce a diesel substitute, or a mixture of alcohols that can be blended into gasoline. Gasification normally relies on temperatures >700°C.

* Lower temperature gasification is desirable when co-producing biochar but results in a Syngas polluted with tar.

Solid biofuels

Examples include wood, sawdust, grass cuttings, domestic refuse, charcoal, agricultural waste, non-food energy crops (see picture), and dried manure.

When raw biomass is already in a suitable form (such as firewood), it can burn directly in a stove or furnace to provide heat or raise steam. When raw biomass is in an inconvenient form (such as sawdust, wood chips, grass, urban waste wood, agricultural residues), the typical process is to densify the biomass. This process includes grinding the raw biomass to an appropriate particulate size (known as hogfuel), which depending on the densification type can be from 1 to , which is then concentrated into a fuel product. The current types of processes are wood pellet, cube, or puck. The pellet process is most common in Europe and is typically a pure wood product. The other types of densification are larger in size compared to a pellet and are compatible with a broadrange of input feedstocks. The resulting densified fuel is easier to transport and feed into thermal generation systems such as boilers.

A problem with the combustion of raw biomass is that it emits considerable amounts of pollutants such as particulates and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). Even modern pellet boilers generate much more pollutants than oil or natural gas boilers. Pellets made from agricultural residues are usually worse than wood pellets, producing much larger emissions of dioxins and chlorophenols.

Notwithstanding the above noted study, numerous studies have shown that biomass fuels have significantly less impact on the environment than fossil based fuels. Of note is the U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory, Operated by Midwest Research Institute Biomass Power and Conventional Fossil Systems with and without CO2 Sequestration – Comparing the Energy Balance, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Economics Study. Power generation emits significant amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs), mainly carbon dioxide (CO2). Sequestering from the power plant flue gas can significantly reduce the GHGs from the power plant itself, but this is not the total picture. capture and sequestration consumes additional energy, thus lowering the plant’s fuel-to-electricity efficiency. To compensate for this, more fossil fuel must be procured and consumed to make up for lost capacity.

Taking this into consideration, the global warming potential (GWP), which is a combination of , methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, and energy balance of the system need to be examined using a life cycle assessment. This takes into account the upstream processes which remain constant after sequestration as well as the steps required for additional power generation. firing biomass instead of coal led to a 148% reduction in GWP.

A derivative of solid biofuel is biochar, which is produced by biomass pyrolysis. Bio-char made from agricultural waste can substitute for wood charcoal. As wood stock becomes scarce this alternative is gaining ground. In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, biomass briquettes are being marketed as an alternative to charcoal in order to protect Virunga National Park from deforestation associated with charcoal production.

Second generation biofuels

Supporters of biofuels claim that a more viable solution is to increase political and industrial support for, and rapidity of, second-generation biofuel implementation from non-food crops. These include waste biomass, the stalks of wheat, corn, wood, and special-energy-or-biomass crops (e.g. Miscanthus). Second generation (2G) biofuels use biomass to liquid technology, including cellulosic biofuels. Many second generation biofuels are under development such as biohydrogen, biomethanol, DMF, Bio-DME, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, biohydrogen diesel, mixed alcohols and wood diesel.

Cellulosic ethanol production uses non-food crops or inedible waste products and does not divert food away from the animal or human food chain. Lignocellulose is the “woody” structural material of plants. This feedstock is abundant and diverse, and in some cases (like citrus peels or sawdust) it is in itself a significant disposal problem.

Producing ethanol from cellulose is a difficult technical problem to solve. In nature, ruminant livestock (like cattle) eat grass and then use slow enzymatic digestive processes to break it into glucose (sugar). In cellulosic ethanol laboratories, various experimental processes are being developed to do the same thing, and then the sugars released can be fermented to make ethanol fuel. In 2009 scientists reported developing, using “synthetic biology”, “15 new highly stable fungal enzyme catalysts that efficiently break down cellulose into sugars at high temperatures”, adding to the 10 previously known. The use of high temperatures, has been identified as an important factor in improving the overall economic feasibility of the biofuel industry and the identification of enzymes that are stable and can operate efficiently at extreme temperatures is an area of active research. In addition, research conducted at TU Delft by Jack Pronk has shown that elephant yeast, when slightly modified can also create ethanol from non-edible ground sources (e.g. straw).

The recent discovery of the fungus Gliocladium roseum points toward the production of so-called myco-diesel from cellulose. This organism was recently discovered in the rainforests of northern Patagonia and has the unique capability of converting cellulose into medium length hydrocarbons typically found in diesel fuel. Scientists also work on experimental recombinant DNA genetic engineering organisms that could increase biofuel potential.

Scientists working in New Zealand have developed a technology to use industrial waste gases from steel mills as a feedstock for a microbial fermentation process to produce ethanol.

Second, third, and fourth generation biofuels are also called advanced biofuels.

Third generation biofuels

Algae fuel, also called oilgae or third generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae. Algae are low-input, high-yield feedstocks to produce biofuels. Based on laboratory experiments, it is claimed that algae can produce up to 30 times more energy per acre than land crops such as soybeans, but these yields have yet to be produced commercially. With the higher prices of fossil fuels (petroleum), there is much interest in algaculture (farming algae). One advantage of many biofuels over most other fuel types is that they are biodegradable, and so relatively harmless to the environment if spilled. Algae fuel still has its difficulties though, for instance to produce algae fuels it must be mixed uniformly, which, if done by agitation, could affect biomass growth.

The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require only 15,000 square miles (38,849 square kilometers), which is roughly the size of Maryland, or less than one seventh the amount of land devoted to corn in 2000.

Algae, such as ”Botryococcus braunii” and ”Chlorella vulgaris” are relatively easy to grow, but the algal oil is hard to extract. There are several approaches, some of which work better than others. Macroalgae (seaweed) also have a great potential for bioethanol and biogas production.

Ethanol from living algae

Most biofuel production comes from harvesting organic matter and then converting it to fuel but an alternative approach relies on the fact that some algae naturally produce ethanol and this can be collected without killing the algae. The ethanol evaporates and then can be condensed and collected. The company Algenol is trying to commercialize this process.

Fourth generation biofuels

A number of companies are pursuing advanced “bio-chemical” and “thermo-chemical” processes that produce “drop in” fuels like “green gasoline,” “green diesel,” and “green aviation fuel.” While there is no one established definition of “fourth-generation biofuels,” some have referred to it as the biofuels created from processes other than first generation ethanol and biodiesel, second generation cellulosic ethanol, and third generation algae biofuel. Some fourth generation technology pathways include: pyrolysis, gasification, upgrading, solar-to-fuel, and genetic manipulation of organisms to secrete hydrocarbons.

* GreenFuel Technologies Corporation developed a patented bioreactor system that uses nontoxic photosynthetic algae to take in smokestacks flue gases and produce biofuels such as biodiesel, biogas and a dry fuel comparable to coal.

* With thermal depolymerization of biological waste one can extract methane and other oils similar to petroleum.

Hydrocarbon plants or petroleum plants are plants which produce terpenoids as secondary metabolites that can be converted to gasoline-like fuels. Latex producing members of the Euphorbiaceae such as ”Euphorbia lathyris” and ”E. tirucalli” and members of Apocynaceae have been studied for their potential energy uses.

Green fuels

However, if biocatalytic cracking and traditional fractional distillation used to process properly prepared algal biomass i.e. biocrude, then as a result we receive the following distillates: jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, etc.. Hence, we may call them third generation or green fuels.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Biofuel, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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