Renewable Energy Blog

The city of Rotterdam in Netherlands served as the host of the very first Formula Zero Kart Race. Formula Zero is a race of go-karts powered by fuel cells that aims to provide a zero-emission alternative to the highly-popular F1 race events since fuel cell emit only water vapor. In the future, Formula Zero aims to be a competition among various fuel cell technologies, but for now, all the participants used a single fuel cell technology from Hydrogenics.

The fuel cell technology used didn’t charge batteries like other similar technologies. Instead, it charged supercapacitors which store energy in between two conducting plates. The electricity produced is discharged more quickly to give the go-karts a quick start. Formula Zero held two events: a sprint event where karts were timed for a single lap and an endurance event where karts competed to complete six laps. The organizers’ aim is to race real cars using fuel cell technology by the year 2015.

Hopefully this will influence events such as Formula One. If we get the big guys behind environmental change and reduction of emissions then there influence on research and public opinion and behavior will stratospheric.

Keep it Green

Greencon.

Popular Mechanics has listed the seven next-generation biofuels that could hopefully bring an end to the food vs. fuel debate that plagues the biofuel industry. The article gives you an overview of each type and a list of companies or innovators that use the technology.The 7 types of biofuels listed are:

• Cellulosic Ethanol (Biological Method): This method uses enzymes to break down cellulose and bacteria or yeast to ferment the sugars. POET uses this method.
• Cellulosic Ethanol (Gasification Method): Wastes and other cellulose sources are blasted with heat in an anaerobic chamber to produce syngas. The resultant syngas is manufactured into ethanol. Coskata uses this method.
• Algal Biodiesel: Since algae is proven to propagate healthily, they’re grown inside bioreactors and fed carbon dioxide to produce the oil needed for biodiesel. An example company is Solazyme.
• Green Gasoline: Cellulosic feedstocks are turned into raw sugar which could be turned into gas or diesel.
• Biobutanol: Genetically-modified microorganisms ferment sugars into biobutanol. Dupont is an example company.
• Desiger hydrocarbons: Synthetic genes are swapped in microorganisms to turn simple sugars into gas, jet fuel, or diesel.
• Fourth-gen Fuel: Algae are genetically modified to excrete the oil produced instead or storing the oil in their walls. As such, the oil is easily harvested and manufacturers are saved the cost and energy associated with oil extraction. Synthetic Genomics uses this method.

Of course, this list doesn’t include other newly-discovered or yet-to-be fully-researched sources of biofuel such as kudzu and Jatropha among others.

The future is alternative fuels.

Keep it Green

Greencon

A new technology developed by the scientists of North Carolina State University and Agricultural Research Service can lead to the production of hydrogen from bacteria. In nature, nitrogen-fixing bacteria could live on some plant species’ roots and are responsible for converting nitrogen from the air into substances the plant could use. The bacteria aren’t able to reuse the hydrogen they produce, and hence, the product could be harvested for human consumption.

The scientists involved in this particular project have developed a selecting agent that’s able to identify the hydrogen-producing strains of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria without the need for genomic sequencing. It appears that the researchers are currently looking for interested organizations to license the technology. In the future, it could mean that hydrogen to be used as fuel and source of power could be produced using this “green” method

Alternative fuels are the only way to break our dependence on oil.

Keep Innovating

Regards,

Greencon.