Carbon comes in handy in producing fuel!

A soil bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha has a natural tendency, whenever it is stressed, to stop growing and put all its energy into making complex carbon compounds. Now scientists at MIT have learnt a trick by which they have fooled the bacteria into making fuel instead.

They've tinkered with its genes to persuade it to make fuel -- specifically, a kind of alcohol called isobutanol that can be directly substituted for, or blended with, gasoline. In its natural state, when the microbe's source of essential nutrients (such as nitrate or phosphate) is restricted, it will go into carbon-storage mode, essentially storing away food for later use when it senses that resources are limited.

What it does is take whatever carbon is available, and store it in the form of a polymer, which is similar in its properties to a lot of petroleum-based plastics. By knocking out a few genes, inserting a gene from another organism, and tinkering with the expression of other genes, the team of scientists were able to redirect the microbe to make fuel instead of plastic.

While the team is focusing on getting the microbe to use CO2 as a carbon source, with slightly different modifications the same microbe could also potentially turn almost any source of carbon, including agricultural waste or municipal waste, into useful fuel!

The team has demonstrated success in modifying the microbe's genes so that it converts carbon into isobutanol in an ongoing process. In continuous culture, substantial amounts of isobutanol was obtained. Now, the researchers are focusing on finding ways to optimize the system to increase the rate of production and to design bioreactors to scale the process up to industrial levels.

That's something -- getting the oldest (and original) inhabitants of the planet to spin gold from straw, no fairy tale! In this case, the straw was making things too hot for the planet!

Biofuel process

A new process for converting municipal waste, algae, corn stalks and similar material to gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is showing the same promise in larger plants as it did in laboratory-scale devices, the developers reported at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on August 20. Moving steadily toward having multiple demonstration-scale facilities in operation by 2014, with each facility producing a range of 3,500-17,500 gallons of fuel a day from non-food plant material, the process holds promise.

The technology, termed Integrated Hydropyrolysis andHydroconversion  (IH2), has been developed by the Gas Technology Institute (GTI). Next will be the designing of commercial-scale facilities that could produce as much as 300,000 gallons per day from the same kinds of feedstocks. The technology involves use of internally generated hydrogen and a series of proprietary catalysts, which jump-start chemical reactions that otherwise would happen slowly or not at all.

The process uses as its raw material, or "feedstock," virtually any kind of non-food biomass material -- including wood, cornstalks and cobs, algae, aquatic plants and municipal solid waste ― and produces gasoline, jet fuel or diesel fuel.

GTI is currently operating two pilot plants to test and refine the process. Both use wood, corn stalks and leaves or algae. The smaller plant has a capacity of just one pound of biomass per hour, and can produce 72-157 gallons of fuel per ton of dry, ash-free feedstock, depending on feedstock type. The second plant can handle more than 100 pounds of biomass per hour and is designed to operate continuously, like a commercial facility.

With transport accounting for a major chunk of emissions, any alternative cleaner is welcome.

Biofuels still hold promise

Environmental concerns, high oil prices, and limited resources are just some of the factors that will help push biofuel consumption to 135 billion gallons by 2018, according to a new report from Global Industry Analysts. The value of the global biofuels market in 2011 was $83 billion. Global government support in research and development (R&D), production, public policy, and the push to use it in transportation industries is also providing some important underlying support for biofuels growth. Asia is expected to show some real growth potential, increasing by a compound annual growth rate of 28.8% during the reporting period.

Next-generation biofuels, including second and the third generation biofuels, which are currently under development, are predicted to offer more benefits when compared to first generation biofuels. These include cellulosic ethanol, BTL from solid biowaste, and renewable diesel, to name a few. However, these will take a decade before reaching the stage of commercialisation. With the process of conversion of cellulose into sugars for fermentation being quite difficult, research is underway for developing microbes, enzymes, and fungi that could breakdown different types of cellulose into sugars.

One must remember though that all this presupposes a stable climate and good crop. The corn debacle this time in the US is expected to push food prices up and will also affect any objective to derive biofuel. These are where uncertainties in the system will decide the growth, rather than technology alone!

Electric skies

Aircraft are the new frontier in electric vehicles, according to a new study. More energy-dense batteries, lighter components and more efficient power electronics are making plug-in airplanes a reality. In what is a record manned electric air speed of 202.6 mph in a 16 minute flight was achieved recently.

Though only small companies and entrepreneurs are currently making fully electric airplanes, larger manufacturers such as Boeing Co. and Airbus are investigating how to electrify portions of aircraft operations as the push for bigger, faster and farther yields to cheaper, quieter and greener. Among the tweaking being tried is the auxiliary power unit in commercial aircraft. The device, usually located in the tail, is a generator that provides electricity to the plane when it's on the ground and gives power to start the main engines. It usually runs off a small turbine, but airline manufacturers are developing battery and fuel cell auxiliary power units to reduce their emissions and curb fuel use on the ground.

Another target is electrifying how planes move on the ground. Most aircraft taxi using thrust from their engines. At low speeds, this is tremendously inefficient; jet engines on an airliner can use 5 megawatts of energy, but a comparable electric drive system would use 2 kilowatts while producing no pollution and minimal noise. Boeing and Airbus are experimenting with electric landing gear that allow aircraft to turn, taxi and reverse on their own power without a truck to push the plane back from the gate. These systems can also integrate regenerative braking so that the energy from slowing a landing aircraft could charge batteries.

But yes, as a new technology, there are the hurdles. For instance, storing the electrons needed to power an airplane also carries its own unique risks, as poorly cooled high-technology batteries can catch fire or explode. Well, for a race that has come a long way from flintstones and bullock carts, nothing seems impossible.

Be set for more extreme weather

A new statistical analysis by NASA scientists has found that Earth's land areas have become much more likely to experience an extreme summer heat wave than they were in the middle of the 20th century. The research was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The statistics show that the recent bouts of extremely warm summers very likely are the consequence of global warming, according to lead author James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

Hansen and colleagues analyzed mean summer temperatures since 1951 and showed that the odds have increased in recent decades for what they define as "hot," "very hot" and "extremely hot" summers.

In 1988, Hansen first asserted that global warming would reach a point in the coming decades when the connection to extreme events would become more apparent.  In the new study, the GISS team did not focus on the causes of temperature change. Instead the researchers analyzed surface temperature data to establish the growing frequency of extreme heat events in the past 30 years, a period in which the temperature data show an overall warming trend.

Such anomalies were infrequent in the climate prior to the warming of the past 30 years, so statistics let us say with a high degree of confidence that we would not have had such an extreme anomaly this summer in the absence of global warming, says Hansen.

Other regions around the world also have felt the heat of global warming, according to the study. Global maps of temperature anomalies show that heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico in 2011 and in the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe in 2010 fall into the new "extremely hot" category. Studies have already shown that increased temperatures can affect crop yields ranging from rice, wheat, corn, maize, etc. Price rise. Food scarcity. This in turn can affect global politics in a big way. But sadly this is one Bengal tiger in the room that does not scare any of us! The word of science is simply not enough to scare most of us. That is where, as environmentalist David Orr says, scientists need to speak out the truth, however depressing it be. We need more Hansens to shake us out of our lethargy.

Sunlit

When millions of Indians were in the dark, those in remote parts unaccessed by the grid had a different story thanks to solar power. And that's what economist Jeremy Rifkin meant when he said, India is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy sources and, if properly utilized, India can realize its place in the world as a great power. 'Political will', he said is what holds the key.

Solar panel prices have dropped by over 50% during the past year, and those of the supporting hardware — including cables, connectors, inverters — will continue to drop at a slower rate. Overall, system prices now are practically at “grid parity” — the price per unit of electricity is comparable to the price of coal-based power.

But, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is mostly focused on using solar energy, like any other fuel source, to feed the grid. Solutions that feed power to the grid are important, but they only augment an over-stressed grid. They do not help the millions without any grid power. Distributed generation, rooftop panels or community grids are ignored.

Clean energy technologies are seeing unprecedented innovations. Bloomberg New Energy Finance studies show the patent growth in this space has accelerated so much that, around 2005, clean energy patents surpassed the patents generated in all other technologies combined. India can be a part of this innovation boom, but for this it is felt that the government must get out of the way. Do you agree? Will political will take the leap? Should the government keep out?

Sustainable Games

The London Olympics could well be a trend-setter in sustainability. The 80,000 seat main stadium was constructed with less than half the steel used in comparably sized stadiums, making it the lightest Olympic Stadium to date. It includes more than a third recycled contents!
Coming to the 14 million odd meals that will be served during the Games, caterers like McDonald's are to source food to high environmental, ethical and animal welfare standards. Then there is BMW's Olympic fleet, including 200 electric vehicles and 400 bicycles. The automaker has achieved its target of ensuring the London Olympics Games' fleet does not exceed average emissions of 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer, while also pioneering the use of zero emission technologies.

The Olympic Delivery Authority plans to reduce waste in construction and demolition. More than 90 percent of demolition waste is expected to be reused or recycled and at least 90 percent of construction waste was to be diverted from landfill. And guess what, Coca-Cola has promised to turn all plastic bottles discarded at Olympic sites into 80 million new drinks bottles.

Seven years and £11 billion in the making, the London 2012 Olympic Park is yet another story in natural tales. Two million tonnes of contaminated soil have been washed, 5km of riverbanks cleaned up and 35 bridges built. Six thousand two hundred trees, 9,500 shrubs, 63,000 bulbs, 250,000 wetlands plants and 766,000 grasses and ferns have been planted. Stretching almost half a mile, the long wide strip of gardens along the existing canal are divided into four climatic zones, each reflecting the ecology and planting of the area. The plants, originally from Europe, Asia, Southern Hemisphere and North America are now part of the UK garden!

The apartments in the Athletes' Village represent the UK's first substantial housing development to be built to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4… In a promise of smart technology, energy giant EDF unveiled a real-time energy monitoring system that has been deployed at some of the most high-profile venues. The public can now track energy use at the facilities online as the games take place!The spirit counts. Let’s hope the message is taken seriously.