New boreal forest biomass maps produced from radar satellite data

Boreal forest Having a large-scale boreal forest biomass inventory would allow scientists to understand better the carbon cycle and to predict more accurately Earth’s future climate. However, obtaining these maps has been wrought with difficulty – until now.

A new processing algorithm has been developed using stacks of images from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) on ESA’s Envisat satellite that allows for the retrieval of boreal forest biomass well beyond the levels that have been previously reported.

Biogas plant for biological wastes recycling

Ukrainian engineering company ZORG Ukraine has announced development of new waste-management solution for plants that produce alcohol. Biogas plant can reduce sanitary zone (distance from the enterprise to residential area) from 500m to 150m. In many cases such ecological issues are vital for some enterprises.

Out-of-date lagoons occupy lots of space and have bad smell. Biogas plant requires space that several times less if to be compared to lagoons and manure storages. Water in lagoons is bounded by colloid compounds hence evaporation is very faint. After treatment in biogas plant water is separated and easily vaporised.

Switchgrass produces biomass efficiently

Biomass feedstock nitrogen study compares four grasses; switchgrass is most efficient.

A USDOE and USDA study concluded that 50 million U.S. acres of cropland, idle cropland, and cropland pasture could be converted from current uses to the production of perennial grasses, such as switchgrass, from which biomass could be harvested for use as a biofuel feedstock. Economically viable production of a perennial grass monoculture from which substantial quantities of biomass are removed annually is expected to require nitrogen fertiliser.

Alternative energy trends in the U.K.

The United Kingdom's use of alternative energy sources is increasing at a rapid pace. While wind projects often receive the most media attention, several projects involving biofuels, biomass, and energy from waste are planned or already under way in the country.

This new trend is a welcome sign in the event of growing concerns over the perils of global warming. Industrial emission cut and reduced use of fossil fuels are two main ways of combating the global climate change.

Universities aim to provide sustainable biomass supply

Ensuring a sustainable supply of woody biomass for the state's first cellulosic ethanol plant is the goal of a research partnership between Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University, supported by Frontier Renewable Resources of Kinross, Mich.

MSU and Michigan Tech scientists are working together through the state-designated Feedstock Supply Chain Centre of Energy Excellence on four projects – developing a feedstock supply chain model, increasing the availability of sustainable biomass, improving biomass harvesting and hauling efficiency and building an outreach programme.

"Each project is led by two researchers – one from MSU and one from MTU – and is aimed at ensuring the environmental, economic and social sustainability of biofuels in Michigan," said Raymond Miller, MSU forest biomass development coordinator. Miller also serves as director of the Upper Peninsula Tree Improvement Centre, where woody biomass production research is conducted, and oversees forestry research at Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station properties in the U.P.

"Sustainability is a big part of this research," Miller continued. "The idea is to use Michigan biomass resources in a sustainable way to grow the renewable energy sector of the state's economy."

The research is supported by a USD2 million grant the Michigan Economic Development Corp. made in 2008 to the Mascoma Corp. Mascoma and J.M. Longyear are partners in Frontier Renewable Resources, which then provided funding to the universities.

"Frontier is committed to helping Michigan become an energy leader, create good-paying 21st-century jobs and reduce our dependence on imported fuels," said Frontier CEO Steve Hicks. "This important research funding assists us in our sustainable forest practices. Thanks to the tremendous support of Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her outstanding team, Frontier and the state of Michigan are in position to write the next chapter of our nation's energy future."

"Michigan Tech is delighted to be able to put our expertise in biomass-based fuel and renewable energy to work with Frontier Renewable Resources and Michigan State University, to ensure the economic and scientific success of this important alternative energy project," said David Reed, vice president for research at Michigan Tech. Reed played a key role in developing the research partnership.

"Michigan State and Michigan Tech have been working in partnership to encourage the development of Michigan's forest bioeconomy for almost two years," said Steve Pueppke, director of the MSU Office of Biobased Technologies and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. "We welcome this support, which allows us to expand the work we've begun and increase the scope of our efforts to the entire state."

Miller's research and the Feedstock Supply Chain Centre of Energy Excellence also are supported by the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.

Biomass-powered Volvo trucks to test drive in Europe next year

Photo: VolvoThe trucks to reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 95 per cent

Volvo Trucks will begin field tests in Europe next year of heavy trucks powered by bioDME, a biomass fuel the company said has long-term potential to replace 50 per cent of diesel now used in European trucking.

The tests, which will use a 13-liter engine, are a joint effort that includes the European Union and transport companies that want to gauge the potential of DME, di-methyl ether, to power vehicles.

Volvo said bioDME as a fuel could reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 95 per cent for a combination of high energy efficiency and reduced emissions. Black liquor, a by-product of the pulp and paper industry, is the material that is used to create bioDME.

“Behind the wheel, it’s business as usual,” said Mats Franzén, product manager, engines, at Volvo Trucks. “Performance and driving properties are exactly the same as in the diesel variant. The difference and the major benefit with bioDME lies in its low carbon dioxide emissions.”

A total of 14 Volvo FH Euro 5 trucks will use the fuel during tests between 2010 and 2012 at four locations in different parts of Sweden. A standard 440-horsepower D13 engine, with modifications to engine-management computer software and the injection system, is being used for the test. Supplier Delphi worked with Volvo to modify the injectors.

“The field test will last three years and the subsequent evaluation will determine whether the project will lead to full-scale industrial production,” said Claes Nilsson, president, Volvo Trucks Europe Division. “We feel that bioDME offers considerable potential.”

The first field-test truck was displayed on Sept. 18 in Piteå, the Swedish city where bioDME will be produced.

Successful tests could lead to bioDME being used to replace diesel on 50 per cent or more of European trucks by 2030, the company said.

Preem, a Swedish fuel company, is building fueling stations, allowing the test vehicles to be used for regular service in both local and regional markets.

An added benefit of biomass, Volvo said, is low emission of particulates and nitrogen oxides, permitting the use of a less complex system for aftertreatment of exhaust gases.

Higher torque is obtained at start-up by using biomass stored in a pressurised, liquid form. Because it has lower energy content than diesel oil, larger tanks will be used on the test vehicle, Volvo said.

60 megawatt biomass power plant to come up in U.K.

A new 60-megawatt (MW) biomass-fuelled power plant will be built at a disused site in Tilbury Docks, Essex, in southeast England. The U.K. government granted permission for the project on August 27.

The proposed power plant, which will be powered by biomass and solid recovered fuel derived from domestic and commercial/industrial waste, will provide enough power for about 100,000 homes. Tilbury Green Power Limited, a subsidiary of Express Energy Holdings (Birmingham, England), will be the owner of the facility. Proposals to construct power stations with a capacity greater than 50 megawatts (MW) require the consent of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband.

The combined heat and power plant will supply electricity to the national grid and provide heating to local businesses in the future. The plant should be up and running by 2012.

Carbon emissions from the plant will be just 20 per cent of emissions associated with conventional fossil-fuel-fired power generation and landfill gases. Tilbury Green Power estimates that the plant will save up to 4.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.

"If we are to tackle climate change, we must reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and also make use of renewable sources of fuel," said Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt, following the granting of permission. "This power station will achieve both those objectives by turning waste into energy and using biomass, which will also contribute to delivering the U.K.'s renewable energy targets. In addition, the three-year construction of the plant will require up to 380 jobs at its peak and up to 120 jobs once it is operational."

In the planning application, Tilbury Green Power maintained that the site at the docks is ideally suited for the power plant, as the location will allow the estimated annual requirement of 300,000 tonnes of biomass to be delivered by barge in 30,000-tonne loads.
The biomass will comprise woodchips, with about 90 per cent coming from the United States and Europe and the remaining 10 per cent from the U.K. Within three to five years, the company expects that 90 per cent of the biomass will be sourced from the U.K.

In July, MGT Power (London) received the go-ahead to build the 295-MW Tees biomass plant at Teesport. The GBP500 million (USD811.3 million) project will supply power to about 600,000 households, generating about the same amount of electricity per year as a 1,000-MW windfarm. The facility will be operational by 2012. For additional information, see related news item from July 21, 2009 - U.K. Government Approves 295-Megawatt Biomass-Based Power Plant.

60 megawatt biomass power plant to come up in U.K.

A new 60-megawatt (MW) biomass-fuelled power plant will be built at a disused site in Tilbury Docks, Essex, in southeast England. The U.K. government granted permission for the project on August 27.

The proposed power plant, which will be powered by biomass and solid recovered fuel derived from domestic and commercial/industrial waste, will provide enough power for about 100,000 homes. Tilbury Green Power Limited, a subsidiary of Express Energy Holdings (Birmingham, England), will be the owner of the facility. Proposals to construct power stations with a capacity greater than 50 megawatts (MW) require the consent of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband.

The combined heat and power plant will supply electricity to the national grid and provide heating to local businesses in the future. The plant should be up and running by 2012.

Carbon emissions from the plant will be just 20 per cent of emissions associated with conventional fossil-fuel-fired power generation and landfill gases. Tilbury Green Power estimates that the plant will save up to 4.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.

"If we are to tackle climate change, we must reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and also make use of renewable sources of fuel," said Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt, following the granting of permission. "This power station will achieve both those objectives by turning waste into energy and using biomass, which will also contribute to delivering the U.K.'s renewable energy targets. In addition, the three-year construction of the plant will require up to 380 jobs at its peak and up to 120 jobs once it is operational."

In the planning application, Tilbury Green Power maintained that the site at the docks is ideally suited for the power plant, as the location will allow the estimated annual requirement of 300,000 tonnes of biomass to be delivered by barge in 30,000-tonne loads.
The biomass will comprise woodchips, with about 90 per cent coming from the United States and Europe and the remaining 10 per cent from the U.K. Within three to five years, the company expects that 90 per cent of the biomass will be sourced from the U.K.

In July, MGT Power (London) received the go-ahead to build the 295-MW Tees biomass plant at Teesport. The GBP500 million (USD811.3 million) project will supply power to about 600,000 households, generating about the same amount of electricity per year as a 1,000-MW windfarm. The facility will be operational by 2012. For additional information, see related news item from July 21, 2009 - U.K. Government Approves 295-Megawatt Biomass-Based Power Plant.

Bioelectricity promises more 'miles per acre' than ethanol

Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass? Researchers writing in the online edition of the May 7 Science magazine say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80per cent more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.

"It's a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had really asked it before," says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. "The kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, but the overlap is in the area of maximising efficiency and minimising adverse impacts on climate."

Field, who is also a professor of biology at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment, is part of a research team that includes lead author Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment. The researchers performed a life-cycle analysis of both bioelectricity and ethanol technologies, taking into account not only the energy produced by each technology, but also the energy consumed in producing the vehicles and fuels. For the analysis, they used publicly available data on vehicle efficiencies from the US Environmental Protection Agency and other organisations.

Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. For example, a small SUV powered by bioelectricity could travel nearly 14,000 highway miles on the net energy produced from an acre of switchgrass, while a comparable internal combustion vehicle could only travel about 9,000 miles on the highway. (Average mileage for both city and highway driving would be 15,000 miles for a biolelectric SUV and 8,000 miles for an internal combustion vehicle.)

"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles," says Campbell. "Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."

The researchers found that bioelectricity and ethanol also differed in their potential impact on climate change. "Some approaches to bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches can help fight climate change," says Campbell. "For these beneficial approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making electricity than making ethanol."

The energy from an acre of switchgrass used to power an electric vehicle would prevent or offset the release of up to 10 tons of CO2 per acre, relative to a similar-sized gasoline-powered car. Across vehicle types and different crops, this offset averages more than 100 per cent larger for the bioelectricity than for the ethanol pathway. Bioelectricity also offers more possibilities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through measures such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could be implemented at biomass power stations but not individual internal combustion vehicles.

While the results of the study clearly favor bioelectricity over ethanol, the researchers caution that the issues facing society in choosing an energy strategy are complex. "We found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues: transportation and climate," says Lobell. "But we also need to compare these options for other issues like water consumption, air pollution, and economic costs."

"There is a big strategic decision our country and others are making: whether to encourage development of vehicles that run on ethanol or electricity," says Campbell. "Studies like ours could be used to ensure that the alternative energy pathways we chose will provide the most transportation energy and the least climate change impacts."

The Power of Switchgrass

Some motorists are old enough to remember the days when you could pump gasoline at a cost of USD1 a gallon. Those days are long gone, probably never likely to return.

KauschBut don’t say that to Dr. Albert Kausch a world-renowned researcher at University of Rhode Island, who has a goal – to produce a USD1 a gallon fuel to power motor vehicles.

The fuel won’t be gasoline but ethanol, a form of alcohol that burns more cleanly than gasoline and produces fewer emissions including carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas that is contributing to climate change.

Ethanol is already blended with gasoline in low percentages to reduce dependence on foreign oil. In this country, most of the ethanol is produced from corn and critics of the practice, which is subsidised by a 51-cent per gallon tax credit, say the process suffers from a “net negative energy balance” – in short, the amount of energy it yields is significantly lower than the amount of energy needed to produce it when compared to other alternatives. Some of the common alternatives for production of ethanol are sugar and soy. Yet another alternative is switchgrass, a prairie perennial that once covered vast amounts of the country from Buffalo to Denver on relatively marginal land.

President Bush mentioned switchgrass as a potential source of ethanol in his State of the Union addresses in 2006 and again this year.

Kausch says it has great potential and with his Project Golden Switchgrass, he is out to develop a genetically modified switchgrass that will produce more bang for the energy buck.

“Switchgrass is a great solution,” he says, noting that because the grass can grow on marginal lands, it will not compete for food crop lands. The grass also has an extensive root system and a stand should last 20 years.

Among the goals of the project is the development of a switchgrass that is both sterile (a gene has been developed to that end already) and resistant to herbicides. Ideally the developed grass will also be drought, salt and cold tolerant. Kausch plans on having field trials on the modified grasses in two years.

Kausch also intends to develop highly efficient enzymes that are capable of breaking down the cellulose in the switchgrass, a key step in the production of ethanol. These new, novel and highly efficient enzymes, developed through biotechnology, will replace the low efficiency, fungal enzymes that are currently used in the process of cellulose breakdown. He’s pursuing this endeavor with a group of Brown University scientists.

Switchgrass that is available commercially today is capable of producing ethanol for about USD2.70 a gallon, says Kausch, adding that if the genetically modified switchgrass project is a success, the cost could come down to USD1 a gallon.

While there are ethanol blends available now, greater and more efficient production of ethanol will make it possible to run motor vehicles on 100 percent ethanol, provided that engine manufacturers can develop or modify engines to operate at that level.

Not everyone is in as much love with switchgrass. An oil industry newsletter, the Oil Drum, published in 2006, threw cold water on the switchgrass solution. The newsletter contended that to produce more biomass, the grass would have to be fertilised, that planting switchgrass on marginal land will not produce as much biomass as is predicted, that stands of the perennial need to be reseeded every

10 years and that if the seeds are genetically modified someone will have them patented and thus they will be more expensive to buy. Harvesting and transporting the plant material to ethanol plants will be cost factors as well, the newsletter stated.

But the published criticism against using switchgrass was not absolute. The publication admitted its analysis of the situation “may be applicable in the near term only. Before long, currently unanticipated developments in bioengineering and nanotechnology may lead to entirely new ways of processing biomass…” The article concluded with a warning that alternative fuels may be the long-term answer but that there is a short term crisis if oil production has indeed reached its peak and “there is likely to be significant turmoil and hardship in the interim.”

Despite such criticisms, Kausch is optimistic about success.

“Everyone in the project feels (developing a new switchgrass) can be more cost effective, both the lowland and upland varieties,” he says. “We are right at the starting gate and we’re going to rev things up.”