CoolPlanet Energy Systems (CoolPlanet) is a Camarillo, California, company that is developing a “negative carbon” drop-in gasoline replacement fuel from biomass.

According to the company’s web site, the fuel is made using proprietary biomass fractionator technology, which extracts the useful carbons from biomass and leaves a solid carbon byproduct that can be sequestered. Even better, the sequestration entails burying the carbon byproduct in soil so it can be used as a fertilizer.

CoolPlanet owns several patent applications relating to its biofuel production processes, including two directed to the biomass fractionator technology.

U.S. Patent Application Publications Nos. 2010/0180805 and 2011/0177466 are related applications entitled “System and method for biomass fractioning” and directed to a biomass fractionator and method (Fractionator Applications).

An embodiment of a biomass fractionator includes a load and dump station shown in FIG. 2 below. Biomass is placed in a hopper (6) resting on a sliding gate valve (10). A transfer plate (11, 11A) is retracted to a fill position by a control bar (12, 12A).

While the transfer plate (11, 11A) is in the fill position, airlock door (15) is pushed down to the closed position, contacting pressure bulkhead (16) through guide slots (17), and transfer fill slots (18) are located in the hopper fill zone (19). The hopper sliding gate valve (10) is retracted to fill the transfer fill slots (18, 18A) with biomass.

The transfer plate (11, 11a) is then moved to the right and proceeds through airlock door (15) to a dump position. Entrained in the transfer lots (18, 18A), biomass is then free to fall through transfer opening (25) on to a biomass reaction compartment of discs or hinged plates (1, 2, 3) shown below.

According to the Fractionator Applications, the system effectively fractionates biomass pyrolysis products into various working streams of syngas.

U.S. Patent Application Publications Nos. 2011/0209386 and 2011/0212004, entitled “Method for making renewable fuels” and “System for making renewable fuels,” respectively (Fuel Processing Applications), seem to pick up where the Fractionator Applications leave off.

The Fuel Processing Applications are directed to systems and methods of converting biomass to renewable fuels including a series of processing stations and a series of catalyst channels comprising a dehydration catalyst, an aromatization catalyst, and a gas-upgrading catalyst. Volatile gases are routed through the catalysts, which react with the gases to produce renewable fuels.

Finally, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0257775, entitled “System and method for atmospheric carbon sequestration” (’775 Application), is directed to methods for carbon sequestration in which biomass is subjected to pyrolysis, and the resulting biochar and filtrate carbon are heated to form inert carbon. The ’775 Application also contemplates using the biochar as a capture element for the filtrate carbon.

Together, the Fractionator Applications, the Fuel Processing Applications, and the ’775 Application seek to protect CoolPlanet’s key systems and processes from different angles.

That protection may go global as well. According to Cleantech PatentEdge™, CoolPlanet has two international, or PCT, patent applications based on the Fractionator Applications and the ’775 Application.

Eric Lane is a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego and the author of Green Patent Blog. Mr. Lane can be reached at elane@luce.com.

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A new analysis calculates that vegetation in the world’s tropical regions stores about 229 billion tons of carbon, which is about 21 percent more carbon than previously believed.

Using remote sensing satellite data — including cloud-penetrating LiDAR — and field observations from forests, woodlands and savannas across Africa, Asia, and South America, researchers say they were able to create the first “wall-to-wall” map depicting carbon density.

According to their results, Brazilian rainforests store about 53.2 billion tons of carbon, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (22 billion) and Indonesia (18.6). “For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured,” said Alessandro Baccini of the Woods Hole Research Center the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The results could help improve the accuracy of reporting carbon emissions as part of the UN-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which provides incentives to developing nations to prevent large-scale deforestation.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Masdar Carbon, one of the five business units of Masdar, the Abu Dhabi national clean energy conglomerate, announced yesterday in Abu Dhabi that it is moving ahead with a carbon capture and sequestration facility that will capture nearly 1 million tons of CO2 annually at the Emirates Steel complex at Mussafah.

The CO2 feed stream from the Emirates Steel plant will be compressed, dehydrated and then pumped through 50km of pipeline and injected in an onshore field, operated by Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations.

Part of the collaboration between Masdar and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the carbon capture facility is part of a program to explore joint projects between the two firms to reduce the carbon footprint of the emirate. The UAE has the second-highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, mostly because of it’s energy-intensive industrial base and extreme climatic conditions.

“Climate change is not a mirage,” Masdar Carbon Director Bader Al Lamki told me at the World Future Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi as we sat down to talk on Thursday.

“The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized CCS as a means to reduce carbon emissions,” and “the International Energy Agency clearly states that CCS is part of the answer for climate change mitigation.”

“The close collaboration between Masdar Carbon and ADNOC will ensure steady progress and the project will take us another step closer to implementing measures for the reduction of carbon emissions and contributing to Abu Dhabi’s clean energy initiatives,” said Al Lamki said.

Bader Al Lamki explained that successful carbon capture projects are anticipated to have a positive long-term economic impact on Abu Dhabi including economic growth, job creation and the development and export of CCS-related technology know-how.

“It will also decisively affirm our global status as a major developer of carbon abatement projects and technologies,” Al Lamki said.

Mandated by the Abu Dhabi government to drive cleaner fossil fuel energy and energy efficiency at an industrial level, monetizing emission reductions along the way, Masdar Carbon provides technical assistance, project management, carbon finance and emissions trading expertise to asset owners primarily in the oil and gas and power sectors in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

And as was announced earlier in the week by Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond in Abu Dhabi, Masdar will be partnering with Scotland, another small, oil-producing nation gunning to ramp up its renewable energy portfolio, to develop advancements in CCS technology, value chain applications, policy and deployment strategies for clean energy and CCS.

Article by Timothy Hurst, appearing courtesy Earth & Industry.

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A coal-powered plant in West Yorkshire has launched the UK’s largest carbon capture initiative, a pilot project expected to siphon off about 100 tons of carbon dioxide daily.

The equipment, which was added to the 200-megawatt Ferrybridge Power Station, will capture only 2.5 percent of the plant’s total emissions, but is a sign of some progress in a carbon capture and sequestration industry that has endured setbacks this year.

The project will not attempt to store the carbon, but instead test the CO2 scrubbing, or removal, phase of the process. Proponents hope it will represent a bridge between smaller-scale pilot projects and commercially viable CO2-capture technology.

UK officials this week postponed the investment of £1 billion into a full-scale pilot project, and earlier this year the most ambitious carbon-capture project at a U.S. coal-fired plant was shelved because of a lack of climate legislation and state support.

While carbon-capture technology is in its early stages — and remains cost-prohibitive on a commercial scale — advocates say it could become a critical option in reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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This week, as Vice Chairman of the Review Committee for the Zayed Future Energy Prize, I had the chance to assess firsthand many great examples of renewable energy and emissions reducing technologies and solutions from SMEs & NGOs, large corporations and individuals from around the world.

In fact I was very encouraged to see that in addition to energy efficiency and carbon reduction initiatives, quite a few of this year’s submissions were from influential groups or organizations that advocate green transparency among companies around the world. What’s more, companies – particularly the larger ones that have been shortlisted for the Prize – are already accounting for their carbon footprint and notably taking action to reduce the same.

This is encouraging, but there’s still a long way to go till we reach that green dream! There’s a significant gap between the potential for deployment and impact of carbon reduction technologies – particularly CCS – and where we are at today.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have the potential to achieve substantial reductions in global energy-related CO2 emissions, and dramatically slow down global warming – if deployed at a significant scale, in a timely manner and at competitive costs (essential to attracting firm and robust investments).

In fact, the International Energy Association (IEA) estimated that by 2050, CCS could reduce the total global energy-related CO2 emissions by 50%, and help meet the overall goal of keeping the global temperature increase below 2°C.

The technology and technical know-how exist. Whether it’s adding chemical scrubbers to existing coal or gas fired power plants, or building new plants that gasify the coal before burning it, or ‘carbon recycling’ (cap¬ture and process the CO2) for onward use in industrial and energy and power generation applications that create a ‘closed loop’ carbon cycle – it is evident that we have the knowledge and there is a diversified portfolio of advanced technologies available.

Back in 2008, the G8 group (which includes the U.S., Russia and Japan) made plans to launch 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects by 2010 with ‘broad deployment’ of the technology by 2020. Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that governments worldwide committed some $22.5 billion to support CCS since the beginning of 2008.

The reality today is quite a different one compared to three years ago: one fifth of the world’s CCS projects have been delayed or canceled according to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

The odds appear to be stacked against CCS, but as with any new wide-reaching technology, this is due – to a large extent – to the fact that there’s currently no precedent to follow in this new emerging sector, no global operational framework adopted yet (no explicit policy that sets limits, and hence a price tag, on greenhouse gas emissions), and there’s a high degree of experimentation that comes with that.

Still, with all its challenges, no other technology comes close to matching the potential of CCS in the fight against global warming. The most pressing issues for CCS are in the research, development and demonstration (RD&D) & policy making area. The completion of several larger-scale demonstration plants over the next few years is critical for CCS to gain market share and become commercially viable.

How will we get there?

The climate crisis requires that we act now. For every five years of inaction, there’s an extra gigatonne of gas emissions waiting to be reduced.

The CCS industry stands to benefit from the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which can potentially stimulate growth and provides additional incentives for CCS projects around the world to become economically feasible.

No doubt, this is a prolific time for energy technologies. I think the critical factor lies in stronger collaboration and commitment between all the parties involved: governments and the private sector, the companies developing alternative carbon-capture approaches and the ones creating the infrastructure intended to sequestrate the carbon dioxide.

This is precisely what the Zayed Future Energy Prize aims to fuel globally: collaboration and a community of innovation, knowledge and best practice sharing.

I am a passionate supporter of the Prize and I am proud that the UAE has committed to taking a leadership role in renewable energy and sustainability, its role in the CCS sphere is particularly notable as the potential for the deployment of such technologies is tremendous, here and around the world.

I firmly believe that over the next few years CCS will emerge as an economically attractive technology for mitigating carbon emissions on a large scale, and I’m looking forward to hearing over the coming years about more and more new CCS solutions from the Zayed Future Energy Prize – the world’s stage for future energy innovations!

Article by Bader Al Lamki, Director of Masdar Carbon

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Researchers say the soils and sediments of the Ganges-Brahmaputra basin are able to store carbon for thousands of years, a fact they warn could portend increased rates of carbon dioxide emissions as such vulnerable regions are exposed to the effects of climate change.

Using radiocarbon dating, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found that organic carbon can remain for 500 to 17,000 years, despite extraordinarily high rates of physical erosion and sediment transport within the basin that drains the Himalayas.

Downstream, within the Gangetic floodplain, the carbon resides from 1,500 to 3,500 years. The longer the carbon remains within the soil, the longer it is kept out of the atmosphere, said Valier Galy, a WHOI researcher and one of the authors of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

But as rising temperatures destabilize soils and “ancient” carbon stored within the Ganges basin and elsewhere in the world, this could lead to more carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere, further hastening warming.

In another new study, researchers at Rice University suggest that a massive release of methane from under the Arctic seafloor could have triggered a major climate shift 56 million years ago.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Carbon sequestration is the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is the process of carbon capture and storage, where carbon dioxide is removed from flue gases, such as on power stations, before being stored in underground reservoirs. There are also natural sequestration processes such as the ocean. Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels. The lack of a settled legal framework that balances private property rights while maximizing the public good ultimately hinders the large-scale commercial deployment of geologic carbon sequestration, according to research by A. Bryan Endres, a professor of agricultural law at the University of Illinois.

In order to justify the extensive up-front capital investment by firms, issues with the property rights of the subsurface pore space that would permanently house the captured carbon dioxide must be resolved first, says A. Bryan Endres, a professor of agricultural law at Illinois.

“You have a new technology that requires a lot of upfront capital investment, but you don’t have a legal framework for how you’re going to be able to implement this technology with regard to property rights,” said Endres, who also is the director of the university’s European Union Center. “What’s unique about property rights is they’re usually pretty well settled, and yet here we are dealing with a situation where ownership isn’t quite so clear. That’s a key question, because a firm isn’t going to invest money in a carbon sequestration plant before they are confident about who owns the area underneath.”

According to the study, published in the University of Illinois Law Review, ownership of the pore space at the depths necessary for permanent geologic carbon sequestration is still an open question in the vast majority of states.

“Right now, only Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota have assigned the property rights of the pore space to the surface property owner,” Endres said. “While that might make good political sense, I don’t think that makes good policy sense because it creates a patchwork of small land-holdings. With carbon sequestration, the geology is going to determine the limits, not some grid-based property system. This is why we need to have legislative involvement to clarify the situation.”

Like air transport, carbon sequestration should be thought of as a public good — one that has the added potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb global climate change.

“It makes more sense to treat it as you would airspace for an airplane, in that it belongs to the state and they can decide who’s going to access it,” Endres said. “It would be a much more efficient system if the state had ownership of it.”

Endres notes that there’s also the potential for states to generate a significant amount of revenue from carbon sequestration, either through an auction or a royalty system.

While this isn’t necessarily the silver bullet to reverse carbon dioxide emissions, Endres says it’s one of many ready-made and already available tools that could slow the growth rate of global climate change.

“This is a technology that will allow us to utilize natural resources like coal while also shrinking its carbon footprint,” he said. “So it’s important to get this framework in place so the industry can really take off, because now you just have a lot of speculation, experimental labs and pilot projects. This is something that needs to get developed sooner rather than later.”

The question of legal rights will be a sharply debated issue for decades still. Both sides will use the facade of property right for their own positions.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has selected four projects for continued research into developing carbon capture technologies, with the goal of achieving 90 percent carbon dioxide removal.

While existing carbon capture technologies require enormous amounts of energy — adding as much as 80 percent to the cost of electricity for a new coal plant and significantly reducing the efficiency of the operation — federal officials hope new advancements will reduce that to no more than 35 percent.

According to the department’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE), the $67 million commitment over four years will focus on advanced solvent-based, post-combustion carbon capture technologies, which could provide the most near-term benefits since they can be added to existing power plants.

The projects, managed by the FE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, include a pilot project that uses an amine-based process being developed by Linde LLC; carbon absorber retrofit equipment being tested at a Colorado Springs power plant by the Neumann Systems Group, Inc.; and waste heat integration methods being developed by Southern Company and the University of Kentucky Research Foundation.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a rule to advance the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies, while protecting American health and the environment. CCS technologies allow carbon dioxide (CO2) to be captured at stationary sources – like coal-fired power plants and large industrial operations – and injected underground for long-term storage in a process called geologic sequestration.

The proposal is consistent with recommendations made by President Obama’s interagency task force on CO2 sequestration and helps create a consistent national framework to ensure the safe and effective deployment of technologies that will help position the United States as a leader in the global clean energy race. Last week’s proposal will exclude from EPA’s hazardous waste regulations CO2 streams that are injected for geologic sequestration in wells designated for this purpose under the Safe Drinking Water Act. EPA is proposing this exclusion as part of the agency’s effort to reduce barriers to the use of CCS technologies.

Carbon capture and storage, alternatively referred to as carbon capture and sequestration, is a means of mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming. The process is based on capturing carbon dioxide from large point sources, such as fossil fuel power plants, and storing it in such a way that it does not enter the atmosphere. It can also be used to describe the scrubbing of CO2 from ambient air as a geoengineering technique. Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO2 is a relatively new concept. The first commercial example was Weyburn in 2000.

Various forms have been conceived for permanent storage of CO2. These forms include gaseous storage in various deep geological formations (including saline formations and exhausted gas fields), liquid storage in the ocean, and solid storage by reaction of CO2 with metal oxides to produce stable carbonates.

Based on review of existing regulatory programs, EPA’s proposal concludes that the management of CO2 streams under the proposed conditions does not present a substantial risk to people’s health or the environment, provides regulatory certainty to industries considering the use of CCS technologies, and encourages the deployment of CCS technologies in a safe and environmentally protective manner.

The proposed rule is complementary to previous EPA rulemakings, including final rules under the Clean Air Act that require reporting by facilities that capture or inject CO2 streams, and Safe Drinking Water Act regulations that ensure the wells used for geologic sequestration of CO2 are appropriately sited, constructed, tested, monitored, and closed.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Breeding crops with deeper roots could significantly reduce atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and make crops more drought resistant, according to a study by a researcher at the University of Manchester.

Reporting in the journal, Annals of Botany, professor Douglas Kell calculated that breeding crops whose roots extend 2 meters underground, rather than the 1-meter roots common to many crops, could double the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere.

Kell reported that creating crops and plants with deeper and bushier roots would also lead to more water and nutrient retention and produce more sustainable plant yields as the world warms and droughts increase in water-stressed regions.

“This doubling of root biomass from a nominal 1 meter to 2 meters is really the key issue,” said Kell.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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