biomass

Put Your Leftovers in Your Car

- Adam Clare

wow!It seems like that neat engine, which is powered by trash, in that car from Back to the Future is almost real! Researchers at UC Davis have found a way to turn leftovers from meals into biogas that can be used to generate electricity or make fuel. That in itself is not revolutionary, what is though, is that they found an effective (cheap) way to do this on a large scale.

The machine will use leftovers from restaurants to make energy, thus making it also a waster-diversion program to boot.

“The Biogas Energy Project is the first large-scale demonstration in the United States of a new technology developed in the past eight years by Ruihong Zhang, a UC Davis professor of biological and agricultural engineering. The technology, called an “anaerobic phased solids digester,” has been licensed from the university and adapted for commercial use by Onsite Power Systems Inc.”

Pig Poo + Distillation = Pigoline

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Since it is Friday and we try to cover more ridiculous news, here is a gasoline made from pig poo.

A NASCAR feul specialists has found a way to take run of the mill pig waste and turn it into a high-octane adventure! Dean Gokel says he can produce 110 octane “pigoline” that is indistinguishable on a molecular level from petroleum-based additives.

“Here’s how it is supposed to work: First, he prepares the waste, turning it “into the consistency of a milkshake,” and then pumps it into the reactor. The hogs, kindly, do much of the hard work, breaking food into the big carbon-based molecules found in manure. Gokel’s process fractures long carbon chains and ring structures into chemicals closer to gasoline, such as C10 or better yet, C8 (basically, octane). Those smaller molecules are distilled off as a vapor, which is collected and eventually used as a fuel additive. The amines–nitrogen products–left behind can then be packed off and sold as commercial chemicals. Gokel is only running five-gallon batches, but there is no significant waste from it. The process takes about three hours.”

Brazil and India Defend Nature

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Last year India saw that biopiracy was damaging to the country and they reacted by documenting every plant and will release an encyclopedia of all the plants. They are specifically recording how these plants are used in traditional medicine in India, making it much harder for large foreign corporations to proclaim the use of plants as their idea.

Brazil is now doing something similar:

“Brazil has published a list of more than 5,000 generic terms from the Portuguese language related to Brazilian plant biological diversity to raise awareness and prevent further misuse of trademarks that hinder Brazilian exports.

The Brazilian government has been, and is, involved in a number of trademark disputes with companies that, for example, take a name of a fruit in Brazilian Portuguese and trademark it to get exclusive rights to commercialise it under that name in a certain country or region.”

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