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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Adding a charred biomass material called biochar to glacial soils can help reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Studies by scientists with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are providing valuable information about how biochar-the charred biomass created from wood, plant material, and manure-interacts with soil and crops. As part of this effort, ARS scientists in St. Paul, Minn., are studying biochar activity in soils formed from glacial deposits. ARS Soil and Water Management Research Unit in St. Paul, found that amending glacial soils with biochar made from macadamia nut shells reduced a range of greenhouse gas emissions.

Biochar or terra preta is a charcoal like material created by pyrolysis of biomass. Biochar is under investigation as an approach to carbon sequestration via bio-energy with carbon capture and storage. Biochar thus has the potential to help mitigate climate change, via carbon sequestration. Independently, biochar can increase soil fertility, raise agricultural productivity and reduce pressure on forests. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon and can endure in soil for thousands of years.

After the researchers amended the soils with biochar at levels ranging from 2 to 60 percent, emission levels for the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide were suppressed at all amendment levels. But the suppression in nitrous oxide emission was notable only in soils amended with 20, 40 or 60 percent biochar.

The amended soils also had lower microbial production of carbon dioxide and lower volatilization rates for the pesticides atrazine and acetochlor. The scientists plan to follow these findings with new investigations on how volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in biochar affect soil microbe activity. As part of this work, they have already identified 200 different VOCs on some biochars.

Spokas and Baker also conducted the first study that documented the formation of ethylene, a key plant hormone that helps regulate growth, from biochar and soils amended with biochar. They found that ethylene production in biochar-amended, non-sterile soil was twice as high as ethylene production observed in sterile, biochar-amended soil.

This strongly suggests that soil microbes are active in this biochar-induced ethylene production. The scientists also believe ethylene might be involved in plants’ reaction to biochar additions, since even low ethylene concentrations produce various plant responses.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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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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If natural gas is a “bridge fuel,” what’s on the other side?

This question kept popping up in recent weeks as a series of reports predicted gas would become a growing part of the global energy mix in the coming decades. Gas, while cleaner burning than coal, still falls short of the low-emissions scenarios envisioned by world leaders, including President Obama.

The solution, according to some experts, is to siphon off and bury the carbon dioxide deep underground using a suite of technologies called carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS is typically seen as a way to redeem dirty coal, but that view is changing.

“CCS is not a coal technology at all, it is a greenhouse gas abatement technology,” said Julio Friedmann, the leader of the Carbon Management Program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Increasingly people are realizing that the long arc of climate mitigation really does require capture from natural gas plants.”

A viable, but flawed, technology
CCS is ideal for natural gas, Friedmann said, because many of the technologies have already been tested at gas plants. Gas emits a fraction of coal’s sulphur and particulates, which must be removed before the carbon is captured. In addition, he added, markets with a lot of natural gas power (think California) have high electricity prices to begin with, so the additional cost of CCS is more easily absorbed.

CCS actually works – it has been tested at several coal plants and at multiple industrial applications – but it has several knocks against it. For one, it’s expensive. Friedmann estimates current costs range from $80 to $100 per ton of carbon dioxide to retrofit a natural gas plant. CCS also reduces a plant’s energy output because the system needs power to operate.

Critics have also raised concerns about carbon dioxide leaking from CCS projects and contaminating groundwater, pointing to alleged leaks from a site in Saskatchewan. Subsequent studies and experts have refuted the leak claims and Friedmann said uncontrolled leak of carbon dioxide stored underground is extremely unlikely. Still, industry recognizes that the public must be sold on the benefits and safety of large-scale CCS.

Cost a barrier
Perhaps the biggest barrier to a large-scale pilot project has been the capital cost of installing CCS.

CCS has been most successfully used in places where the carbon dioxide can serve a purpose, such as injection into depleted oil wells to goose production, or must be removed for economic reasons. Norway, for example, has been a global leader in CCS, in part because of the country’s tax of $50 per metric ton of carbon makes projects economically feasible.

The oil company Statoil has been removing carbon dioxide from natural gas from the Sleipner field and pumping it 1,000 feet below the North Sea floor for 15 years. Also in Norway, the Technology Center Mongstad at Statoil’s Mongstad refinery will use two different types of CCS technology – chilled ammonia and an amine process – to capture 85 percent of carbon dioxide.

California utilities investigate CCS
Absent a tax on carbon, the U.S. will continue lagging behind in CCS for natural gas plants, though this too is changing.

A coalition of government labs, nonprofits and California utility companies, motivated by a law mandating greenhouse gas emission reductions of 25 percent by 2020, are investigating CCS. Those emissions reductions will have to come from gas plants, which provide about half of the state’s electric power, according to Rich Myhre, a spokesman for The West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB).

WESTCARB has begun a one-year study of the costs and engineering challenges associated with retrofitting California natural gas plants for CCS, Myrhe said. But he conceded that utilities are not yet ready to go ahead with an installation.

As Friedmann, who is involved in the WESTCARB project, said: “The more we look at CCS the smaller the risks look and the better the technology looks. That’s not the same as having solved these problems.”

Article appearing courtesy Txchnologist.

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Biochar is charcoal type created by the pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from ordinary charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage. As much as 12 percent of the world’s human caused greenhouse gas emissions could be sustainably offset by producing biochar. That’s more than what could be offset if the same plants and materials were burned to generate energy, concludes a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications. Biochar could sequester carbon in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years.

Biochar is a high carbon, fine grained residue which today is produced through modern pyrolysis processes. Pyrolysis is the direct thermal decomposition of biomass in the absence of oxygen to obtain an array of solid (biochar), liquid (bio-oil) and gas (syngas) products.

For their study, the researchers looked to the world’s sources of biomass that are not already being used by humans as food. For example, they considered the world’s supply of corn leaves and stalks, rice husks, livestock manure and yard trimmings, to name a few. The researchers then calculated the carbon content of that biomass and how much of each source could be used for biochar production.

With this information, a mathematical model was developed that could account for three possible scenarios. In one, the maximum possible amount of biochar was made by using all sustainably available biomass. Another scenario involved a minimal amount of biomass being converted into biochar, while the third offered a middle course. The maximum scenario required significant changes to the way the entire planet manages biomass, while the minimal scenario limited biochar production to using biomass residues and wastes that are readily available with few changes to current practices.

The study found that the maximum scenario could offset up to the equivalent of 1.8 billion metric tons of carbon emissions annually and a total of 130 billion metric tons in the first 100 years. Avoided emissions include the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The estimated annual maximum offset is 12 percent of the 15.4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions that human activity currently adds to the atmosphere each year. Researchers also calculated that the minimal scenario could sequester just under 1 billion metric tons annually and 65 billion metric tons during the same period.
Instead of making biochar, biomass can also be burned to produce bioenergy from heat. Researchers found that burning the same amount of biomass used in their maximum biochar scenario would offset 107 billion metric tons of carbon emissions during the first century. The bioenergy offset, while substantial, was 23 metric tons less than the offset from biochar.

However, the team also added that a flexible approach including the production of biochar in some areas and bioenergy in others would create optimal greenhouse gas offsets. Their study showed that biochar would be most beneficial if it were tilled into the planet’s poorest soils, such as those in the tropics and the Southeastern United States.

Those soils, which have lost their ability to hold onto nutrients during thousands of years of weathering, would become more fertile with the extra water and nutrients the biochar would help retain. Richer soils would increase the crop and biomass growth — and future biochar sources — in those areas.

This is all new technology. Biochar has been found or used in the Amazonian soils. Pre-Columbian Amazonian natives are believed to have used biochar to enhance soil productivity and made it by smoldering agricultural waste. European settlers called it Terra Preta de Indio.

Biochar can be used to hypothetically sequester carbon. In the natural carbon cycle, plant matter decomposes rapidly after the plant dies, which emits CO2; the overall natural cycle is carbon neutral. Instead of allowing the plant matter to decompose, pyrolysis can be used to sequester some of the carbon in a much more stable form. Biochar thus removes circulating CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in a stable soil form, making it a carbon-negative process.

There is still much to learn about this process which shows so much potential.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Global Warming is caused by several factors such as the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. One solution to the problem is to capture the carbon dioxide before it enters the atmosphere, and instead, deposit the CO2 into the ground. However, up to this point, scientists have been unable to effectively track how it might move underground. The desire is to get the CO2 in place and not have it move elsewhere and potentially cause problems. Now, with the advent of Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT), developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), tested by the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB), and funded by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, sequestration of greenhouse gases may expand.

ERT technology is similar to computer tomography scan. It takes images of soil resistivity which allows scientists to determine the soil’s properties, such as temperature, saturation, and soil type. Tomography is imaging by sectioning through the use of energy waves. It can be applied to other fields such as radiology, archaeology, oceanography, and astrophysics.

SECARB conducted its ERT experiment at the Cranfield Oilfield near Natchez, Mississippi. The project will test over one million tons of CO2 in underground formations at a depth of 10,000 feet, the deepest application of ERT technology to date.

ERT uses vertical electrode arrays set up in a cross-well arrangement. Four-electrode measurements are taken to monitor changes in the distribution of electrical resistance within the underground formation. Since the CO2 at the Cranfield site has resistivity five times greater than its surroundings, the ERT system can determine where the CO2 is, and in what speed and trajectory it is moving.

“We can image the CO2 plume as the fluid is injected,” said geophysicist Charles Carrigan, the LLNL lead on the ERT project. “What we’ve seen is a movement of the plume outward from the injection well into the geologic formation used for storage.”

Scientists have constructed two monitoring wells of more than 10,000 feet in depth at the Cranfield site. The ERT system installed is capable of withstanding over 250 degrees Fahrenheit and 5,000 psi of pressure. It takes 10,000 measurements per day which Carrigan and his team can access remotely.

At this point, the ERT system seems to be performing its job well to capture images of the underground CO2 plume. However, human intelligence is still required to analyze the findings. This can be a difficult task, even with the proper equipment. Uncertainties in reservoir structure and unknown multiphase fluid processes are not easy factors to incorporate. The goal in the end is to ensure that the underground storage of CO2 is operating properly. What good is it to capture the carbon only to find it leaking out of the ground in two years?

According to Carrigan, the hope is to start applying ERT systems to commercial CO2 underground storage sites. This type of technology is vital for the future of carbon sequestration. Power companies will be employing these systems as they look to reduce their carbon footprint.

Article by David A Gabel appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

photo: A. Belani

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While coal-fueled power plants are directly responsible for roughly one-third of our CO2 emissions, the DOE indicates that coal is expected to dominate our domestic power generation at least for the next 25 years.  Globally, the increased demand for coal-fueled electricity will translate into a 57% rise in related CO2 emissions by 2030 according to the IEA.

One technology that attempts to solve the CO2 emissions crisis is carbon capture and storage, or CCS. Generally speaking, CCS captures the CO2 emissions from coal power plants and other industrial sites and injects the CO2 into underground porous rock formations in hopes of permanent sequestration.

Both the coal industry and the Obama administration endorse CCS.  Obama supported $3.5 billion for CCS of the $787 billion Stimulus Package and has made CCS a cornerstone of renewable energy policy.

“To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we must accelerate our efforts to capture and store carbon in a safe and cost-effective way. This funding will both create jobs now and help position the United States to lead the world in CCS technologies, which will be in increasing demand in the years ahead,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu a few weeks ago.

Of course, the coal industry has a vested interest in promoting “clean” energy solutions that provide for continued use of and dependence on coal. But is CCS an optimal cleantech solution?

It’s expensive – conventional coal-fired plants are not configured to support the CCS solution. No CCS plants currently exist on a large commercial scale.  Plants that would readily support CCS by converting coal into gaseous form to allow capture of the CO2 emissions before gas is burned are very costly.

The CCS process is energy intensive itself – adding upwards of a 30% energy penalty to the production of electric power.  Thus, CCS perversely compounds the carbon problem it is intended to correct.

Further, questions remain as to the permanence and safety of sequestration.  Though generally not regarded as a toxic substance (apart from climate change impacts), CO2 if released into groundwater or the atmosphere can have harmful if not deadly effects. Most CCS experts agree that up to 20 demonstrations to test the technology would be required to ensure that safety concerns are addressed adequately, adding to the expense and delay of CCS commercial deployment.

CCS may be creating more jobs, but is this the best way to deal with coal’s effect on climate change?  What is the opportunity cost of CCS?  By pursuing CCS and our continued reliance on coal, are we making an investment that would better be made on technologies that themselves are clean?

[photo: flickr/davipt]

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A colleague of mine said to me recently, “No energy is clean energy.”

Which got me thinking. Of course, Clean Coal comes to mind. And people love to say that “No coal is clean,” and “Clean Coal is an oxymoron.”

OK, OK. It’s not the best marketing term I’ve ever heard. There is a U.S. Department of Energy program that uses the term, and that program has funded gasification and carbon sequestration projects. So there is such a thing, whatever you want to call it. How about “Clean(er) Coal”?

Then I thought about wind. Big, majestic, white turbines … cutting up birds that fly into them. Whoops. That’s not very clean.

But you can lessen the impact of bird kills by making sure you don’t site turbines along migratory bird paths. Even the Audubon Society has come out in support of well-positioned wind.

Which brings me to radar — some bird-friendly technology now in the works.

Alternative Energy News reports that a new wind farm in Texas, operated by a Spanish firm, is using radar technology developed by a Florida firm called DeTect Inc. How’s that for collaboration?

The radar, much like a cop scanning the highway, looks for approaching birds, analyzes weather conditions and shuts down the turbines if necessary. The blades are reactivated once the flock has passed.

The radar is in use here, according to AEN, because the wind farm was constructed on the Central Flyway, a main route for migratory birds. Environmental groups are skeptical.

What do you think? Is using radar technology to save birds OK? Even if the technology is needed due to bad planning?

This radar could help spur more wind development and remove a barrier to breeze power. DeTect also makes bird deterrent devices for wind farms, including bioacoustics and propane cannons, according to the company’s Web site.

Bird kills are a controversial subject, so let’s hear it.

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