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Increasing whiskey production can save the environment

August 21, 2010

By-products from distilling whiskey produce a biofuel with 30% more power output than ethanol !

Using samples from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian, researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a method of producing biofuel from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills, and “draff”, the spent grains. The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gives 30% more power output than the traditional biofuel ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention. Butanol is superior to ethanol — with 25 – 30% t more energy per unit volume. The biofuel can also be introduced to unmodified engines with any gasoline blend, whereas ethanol can only be blended up to 85 percent and requires engine modification.

Read more:http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100817/scottish-scientists-develop-whisky-biofuel

Professor Martin Tangney, who directed the project said that using waste products was more environmentally sustainable than growing crops specifically to generate biofuel. “What people need to do is stop thinking ‘either or’; people need to stop thinking like for like substitution for oil. That’s not going to happen. Different things will be needed in different countries. Electric cars will play some role in the market, taking cars off the road could be one of the most important things we ever do.”

“The production of some biofuels can cause massive environmental damage to forests and wildlife. So whisky powered-cars could help Scotland avoid having to use those forest-trashing biofuels,” said Dr Richard Dixon, of WWF Scotland.

“DRINK IT and then DRIVE IT” has a nice ring to it and  is something I could enjoy supporting.

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Ethanol more damaging to the Gulf than BP oil spill

August 8, 2010

Supposed environmental solutions often create new problems.

Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production

While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf.

Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the algae dies, it settles to the ocean floor and decays, consuming oxygen and suffocating marine life.

Known as hypoxia, the oxygen depletion kills shrimp, crabs, worms and anything else that cannot escape. The dead zone has doubled since the 1980s and is expected this year to grow as large as 8,500 square miles and hug the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas.

The gulf dead zone is the second-largest in the world, after one in the Baltic Sea. Scientists say the biggest culprit is industrial-scale corn production. Corn growers are heavy users of both nitrogen and pesticides. Vast monocultures of corn and soybeans, both subsidized by the federal government, have displaced diversified farms and grasslands throughout the Mississippi Basin.

“The subsidies are driving farmers toward more corn,” said Gene Turner, a zoologist at Louisiana State University. “More nitrate comes off corn fields than it does off of any other crop by far. And nitrogen is driving the formation of the dead zone.”

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Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Environment, Science | 2 Comments »

Eureka!! Turning Off the Air Conditioning Helps Save Fuel

June 29, 2010

The wonders of what now passes as SCIENCE (no doubt peer-reviewed).

Science Daily reports on major insights resulting from a study by “Empa – a Research Institute of the ETH Domain” on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN).

This ground-breaking study shows that Automobile air conditioning systems do not run “free of charge.” The article reminds us that Car air conditioning systems require energy to compress the cooling agent, and the greater the degree of cooling required the more energy (i.e. fuel) they use.

This is good strong stuff. I need more coffee.

The article continues. The study, the results of which have just been published in the scientific journal “Environmental Science and Technology,” shows that the fuel consumption of the test vehicles with air conditioning systems in operation increases with rising ambient air temperature and humidity, reaching a value of some 18 per cent on a typical Swiss summer day with an air temperature of 27 degrees and relative humidity of 60 per cent.

Wow!

This highly significant peer-reviewed, CO2 related (what else) paper is referenced as:

Martin F. Weilenmann, Robert Alvarez, Mario Keller. Fuel Consumption and CO2/Pollutant Emissions of Mobile Air Conditioning at Fleet Level – New Data and Model Comparison. Environmental Science & Technology, 2010: 100608141025002 DOI:

What is not reported is how much this nonsense cost. But since it has CO2 in the title it must be worth every penny.

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Mining Super Tax scrapped? Perhaps sanity will return

June 24, 2010

The backlash against the mining super tax proposed in Australia I referred to here in an earlier post seems to have contributed to the exit of the Australian Prime Minister.

The Australian reports

Stocks, dollar rise on Rudd’s exit

AUSTRALIAN financial markets have reacted positively to the Labor leadership spill, with expectations new Prime Minister Julia Gillard will overhaul the controversial resource super-profit tax (RSPT).

“We understand that Gillard is a supporter of the RSPT, the current proposal following the Henry Review was largely drafted by Rudd and Swan,” Ms Ong said.

“Given the backlash from the business community and limited public support, the new leadership team is a good excuse to change the RSPT in its current form.

“We expect the new PM to announce a watered down version of the RSPT in the coming weeks. The most likely changes will probably be to the uplift the rate, tax rebate on losses over the investment life of projects, and concessions for particular commodities although we would not rule out any tinkering to the proposed 40 per cent rate of tax.

“There is also the outside chance that the RSPT is dumped all together. This, however, would be poor long term macro policy as political survival dictates.”

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Home made Fusion reactors at room temperature!!

June 23, 2010

Whatever next??

Cold fusion was a bust so it now moves to room temperature.

I note that investors are being sought but I think I’ll pass.

But Good Luck to Mr. Suppes anyway.

Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC

Mr Suppes, 32, is part of a growing community of “fusioneers” – amateur science junkies who are building homemade fusion reactors, for fun and with an eye to being part of the solution to that problem.

He is the 38th independent amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from a homemade reactor, according to community site Fusor.net. Others on the list include a 15-year-old from Michigan and a doctoral student in Ohio.

The fusion reactor in the Brooklyn warehouse

Mr Suppes has spent the last two years perfecting his reactor

“I was inspired because I believed I was looking at a technology that could actually work to solve our energy problems, and I believed it was something that I could at least begin to build,” Mr Suppes told the BBC.

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Wind stops wind power…..

June 20, 2010

It is sometimes overlooked that the difficulty to store electric energy can make wind and solar power – even if they were competitive enough not to be subsidised – impractical.  Energy storage is still a major barrier to be overcome in the use of renewable power.

The economics of the subsidy mechanisms can lead to strange distortions which in turn can lead to extremely lucrative but ridiculous situations such as:

  1. solar plants using electricity from the grid to produce electricity for the grid since the subsidy makes it worth-while
  2. the intermittent nature of the power leading to inter-connection instabilities which lead to owners being paid not to produce power
  3. wind power – as in this article today – having to shut down when there is insufficient load
  4. solar plants using natural gas at night to heat up the heat transfer medium (oils or molten salts) which then generates steam and runs the steam turbine to produce electricity.

Firms paid to shut down wind farms when the wind is blowing.

A general view of Europe's biggest onshore wind farm, Whitelee Windfarm on the outskirts of Glasgow

Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing. Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK’s energy needs in the future. They claim that the ‘intermittent’ nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.

Solar and Wind power have still some way to go before they are anywhere near commercial.

But the area of research which could probably do with more funding is that of energy storage but it is probably not fashionable enough. Instead of subsidising the owners of renewable energy plants (note that the subsidy rarely reaches the consumer), it might be better to conduct more R & D for the storage and recovery of electrical energy.

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Posted in Energy, Environment | 3 Comments »

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