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Study: better to burn biomass to power electric cars than to make ethanol

Corn ethanol promoters, get out your keyboards. You've got another dragon to slay. A new study has found that it is more efficient to straight-up burn plant material to generate electricity and then charge up electric vehicles than to make ethanol for those vehicles. Professor Elliot Campbell at the University of California Merced was lead author of a study that looked at the most efficient way to power transportation vehicles from biomass. The headline numbers: "biomass converted into electricity produced 81 percent more transportation miles ... Read more →

The stuff of nightmares: Biomass-fueled autonomous robot Jeremy Korzeniewski

Cyclone Power Technologies, which we've previously featured for its engine that runs on waste heat, has recently been awarded a contract to build the first stages of an Energetically Autonomous ...

Audi R10s to run on blended GTL/BTL diesel at Le Mans Sam Abuelsamid

Ever since the debut of the Audi R10 in 2006, the mighty diesel-powered sports cars have been running on a gas-to-liquid (GTL) diesel fuel supplied by Shell. For the 2008 running of the 24 hours of ...

Project BioReGen: Planting trees to recover a damaged ecosystem Xavier Navarro

The project BioReGen is a very interesting plan developed on abandoned industrial estate in the north-east of England (Durham County). Basically, the project recovers polluted land by planting ...

Oklahoma State working on sweet sorghum ethanol process Jeremy Korzeniewski

Ethanol is in the middle of a flux right now, with the common corn-based ethanol being by far the most available source of the alternative fuel. The future of ethanol is cellulosic, but the ...

Pine trees hold out hope for biofuels; research underway 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Take a walk down your street, or almost any street in America. What you will find are "stick-built" houses made mostly from softwoods. An important softwood is the pine tree, which is very commonly used in construction. The reason pine is often selected is because it grows very quickly and grows ...

Making biofuels with small, fast reactors located close to biomass sources 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Researchers at the University of Minnesota are working on a new method to create syngas from biomass which can then be burned directly to make electricity or converted to many different liquid fuels that we use today. There are already processes being used to create syngas, but this particular one ...

Another car that is made from biomass ... wood 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

This is the second vehicle that we've shown you which is made almost entirely of biomass. The first one was undoubtedly cool and used hemp materials for the bodywork. That car ran on ethanol and would be a first class ride for the right person, and it was capable of 150 miles per hour. This one, on ...

Mascoma Corp to build cellulosic ethanol plant in Michigan 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

And now, what many of our readers have been waiting for: cellulosic ethanol. As can be seen from the comments on posts dealing with ethanol production, many people want to take food, specifically corn, out of our gas tanks and back into ourselves. A new plant has been proposed by the ...

Range Fuels building the Nation's First Commercial Cellulosic Ethanol Plant 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Cellulosic ethanol is the next step in making a definitive replacement for foreign oil. The reality is becoming ever closer, now in large part due to Range Fuels. The State of Georgia has just awarded them a permit to build the first plant to employ their patented technology to produce 100 million ...

New chemical process could reduce the cost of producing fuels from biomass 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Finding a way to reduce the cost of effectively and cheaply producing fuels from biomass waste is what some consider something of a "holy grail" when it comes to biofuels. If there was a fuel that was cheaper than petroleum-based fuel that people could put in their tanks which would not have any ...

Aussie conference questions biomass / food trade-off 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Bioenergy Australia, a government-industry forum to foster and facilitate the development of biomass for energy, liquid fuels, and other value-added bio-based products recently put on The Bioenergy Australia 2006 – A Growth Opportunity for Energy and the Environment Conference. Presentations ...

"Amazing" - the year that was, in biomass terms 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

2006 was a year that saw "amazing strides" in the biomass industry, says Jetta Wong, agriculture and energy policy analyst with the EESI's Agriculture and Renewable Energy program (why, with a name like that, could she not have been an auto industry analyst?). New laws to promote biofuels, more ...

Xethanol Juices Ethanol From Orange Peel 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

Xethanol Corporation and Renewable Spirits, LLC have teamed up to build a citrus peel based pilot ethanol production facility in Florida. The pilot plant should be able to produce up to 50,000 gallons / 190,000 litres of ethanol in the upcoming citrus harvesting season alone, later expanding to ...

Study: 100 million acres of farmland needed to produce 25 percent of nation's energy needs 2 years ago on Autoblog Green

About 100 million acres of cropland would have to be dedicated to biomass sources such as switchgrass to produce 25 percent of the country's energy in 2025. That comes from a University of Tennessee study that also said such a move would generate $700 billion in new economic activity. The study ...

Canadian company developing portable bio-oil refinery 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Co.) radio program Quirks and Quarks recently did a segment on making fuels from biomass. They discussed the traditional ethanol from corn process, but then focused on alternatives that can use other types of biomass, like agricultural and forestry waste. As we know, ...

Hydrogen production could come from cooking oil 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

Team at Leeds University is perfecting a method to extract hydrogen from cooking oil and other possible sources, such as scrap tires and waste oil. In simple terms, the fuel is reacted with steam to release hydrogen from both. The process was invented 10 years ago but not made public until 1999. Now ...

Weed = biofuel source 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

The cardoon is a thistle related to the artichoke and thus is known as the 'artichoke thistle'. It is found in such countries as Argentina, Australia, and United States and is considered a weed. In 2005, Europe launched the BIOCARD research project to look into using cardoon as a biofuel source. ...

Venture capital for alternative fuel company Virent Energy Systems 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

Virent Energy Systems, a University of Wisconsin-Madison spin-off, just secured an additional $7.5 million in venture funding. The company is developing what they call aqueous phase reforming, which allows sugars from biomass to be reformed into usable fuels and materials. The process can produce ...

Union of Concerned Scientists give a detailed primer on biomass 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

A small-town paper near where I grew up in Michigan recently published a long and detailed explanation on biomass energy. I poked around online a bit and found out it was taken from the Union of Concerned Scientists and, since the entire thing is available online, I thought I'd pass it along to ...

"Huge" potential for alternative fuels in Florida 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

Think Florida and you think orange juice, right? Well, in the processing of orange juice there is a lot of leftover peel and pulp. These materials are just one of the many sources of biomass for alternative fuels like ethanol available to Florida, according to this article in the Lakeland-area ...

USDA grants $4.2 million to turn biomass into fuel, reduce fire hazard 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

In a good news, bad news sort of story, the USDA announced yesterday that they awarded almost $4.2 million worth of grants to companies who are working to turn woody biomass into affordable, useable fuel. The USDA defines woody biomass as “trees, woody plants, limbs, tops, and needles that ...

Quick green fuel dictionary 3 years ago on Autoblog Green

If you’re new to the whole biofuel world, there may be a lot of terminology that you’re reading but not understanding. To that end, here’s a glossary of words we’ll be using regularly on AutoblogGreen, and what we mean when we use them. Stick around, and you’ll know ...


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