Advanced BioFuels USA

by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest)  … What was a nationwide celebration and peaceful demonstrations for environmental reform in the U.S. by some estimated 20 million Americans, Earth Day events have now expanded to over 193 countries and more than a billion people every year.

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The top 5 CO2 producing countries in the world are China, the U.S., India, Russia, and Japan, and according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists, levels of CO2 reached a startling record in February of this year…earlier in the year than expected making it even rarer and unexpected.

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While deforestation, agriculture and fossil fuel use are the primary sources of CO2, some say don’t bother playing the blame game since we can’t change the past, we can only change the future.

So let’s talk about that. What are we doing? What else can we do?

Carbon negative crops

Some people celebrate Earth Day by planting a tree, but how about planting hemp or miscanthus instead? Both are considered carbon negative crops and very promising for biofuels, bioplastics, biochemicals, and many other biobased products for today’s world.

Hemp, which can be used for ethanol, biodiesel, and more, “remediates the soil it grows in, which basically means that it cleans the soil by extracting numerous pollutants and heavy metals from contaminated soil,” according to Green Camp. “It was even used in Chernobyl to reduce radioactivity.”

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As for miscanthus, it sounds almost as good as hemp in terms of CO2 benefits. It only “needs cultivation, planting and weed control – once in at least 15 years – perhaps 25 years – plus harvesting and loading on a truck every year from year 2 onwards,” according to Miscanthus NZ. 

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There’s the usual carbon capturing folks we usually think of like LanzaTech, who say “no carbon left behind,” but there are other newcomers and carbon go-getters out there giving us hope too.

There’s Oberon Fuels which makes DME and methanol from various methane and carbon dioxide sources, using its proprietary small-scale process. They are facilitating the growth of the DME transportation industry by converting biogas and other hydrocarbon rich waste streams to higher valued commodities such as DME.

Opus 12 developed a device that recycles CO₂ into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels. Their technology bolts onto any source of CO₂ emissions, and with only water and electricity as inputs, transforms that CO₂ into some of the world’s most critical chemical products. 

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As reported in the Digest in 2017, ExxonMobil is putting some R&D time and money investment into carbon capture technologies as well. And Shell has said they are going carbon negative with their commercial-scale deal with SBI that gives them access to a fuel that emits minus 14 grams of CO2 per megajoule of energy, instead of the usual 94 grams of CO2 that petroleum fuel emits.

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Proton Power developed carbon-negative, low-cost hydrogen power.

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BIOCON-CO2 aims to re-use excess CO2 produced from the iron, steel, cement and electric power industries to create value-added chemicals and plastics. This will be achieved by developing a versatile range of conversion techniques using low-energy biological systems such as anaerobic microorganisms, aerobic microorganisms and enzymes to produce key chemical products including industrial acids and alcohols.

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Just last week, University of Queensland researchers said they created a carbon negative way of generating power from biofuels that does not produce GHG gases at all. Using gasification, they say their method becomes carbon negative when combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) methods.

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Ohio State devised a process that under certain circumstances can convert coal, shale gas and biomass into electricity or syngas, while consuming carbon dioxide at the same time. In some cases, the technology not only consumes the full amount of carbon dioxide it produces, but also additional carbon dioxide from outside sources – and that’s the carbon negative moment.

Argonne National Labs GREET model is showing that under certain circumstances R-CNG produced from anaerobic digestion of food waste is net-carbon negative over its lifecycle, including production, use and avoided emissions. That means making and using it actually results in lower atmospheric GHG than if the fuel were never made or used. READ MORE

A climate change solution slowly gains ground (Washington Post)

Hemp, Inc. Reports Oklahoma Next to Allow Commercial Production of Industrial Hemp (Hemp, Inc.)

Is Carbon Capture Storage About to Have its Day? (Leaders in Energy)

Energy Matters’ Carbon Capture – Special report

Cost to capture carbon emissions directly from the air:

• Current average cost (in 2018): $600/ton.
• Venture capital profitable ROI target: $100/ton.

Carbon capture companies leading the field:

• Carbon Engineering (Canadian company with Bill Gates as an investor)
• Climeworks (just signed a deal with Coca Cola)
• Global Thermostat (says it has broken the $150/ton barrier)

To see top investors (individual and corporate-strategic) in carbon capture visit the AES website newsfeed.

Proposed Congressional funding: A bill in the US Congress would mandate that the DoE spends up to $5.2 billion through fiscal 2024 to fund carbon capture RD&D.

– Best articles about carbon capture in Energy Today, the AES e-magazine:

• Klaus Lackner’s Once Wacky Idea
• The Potential Pitfalls of Sucking Carbon from the Atmosphere
• The Fuzzy Math of Carbon Capture
• What Does 45Q Mean for Carbontech?

Excerpt from Washington Post:  Over the past several years, the firms have vied to make technological progress. The cost of carbon capture has fallen from $600 a ton to as low as $100 a ton — and lower if a cheap or free source of heat or energy is available.

Federal subsidies are just as important. New U.S. federal tax credits provide as much as $50 for every ton of carbon dioxide captured and stored underground in well-sealed geological formations.

Oil companies can use the credits to pay for turning captured carbon dioxide into transportation fuels, essentially recycling the CO2. That would help Big Oil meet California regulations requiring lower amounts of carbon in motor fuels.

And the oil giants can also claim a $35-a-ton credit for enhanced oil recovery — injecting carbon dioxide into the ground to increase well pressure and boost oil production in old fields like the Permian Basin in West Texas. Oil companies currently extract natural carbon dioxide from natural reservoirs before pumping it back into the ground.

The federal tax credits, known as 45Q credits, were slipped into the 2018 federal budget in the wee hours of Feb. 9, 2018, after a nine-hour government shutdown. It attracted support from both parties, with leading roles played by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), whose state relies heavily on oil, gas and coal production, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has spoken almost weekly on the Senate floor about the urgency of climate change and the danger of burning fossil fuels.

One reason they agree: It’s politically more appealing to give away money through a tax credit than it is to impose a carbon tax that takes money away. A carbon tax is levied on the carbon content of hydrocarbon fuels such as coal, oil or natural gas that emit carbon dioxide and it raises prices for products such as gasoline or electricity.

Environmentalists are divided on the tax credits. Most want to bury captured carbon dioxide in geological formations underground rather than using it to produce more fossil fuels.

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But of the 65 million tons of carbon dioxide that is pumped underground in the United States every year, about 60 million tons is for enhanced oil recovery, said Sally Benson, co-director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy. And demand is growing.

Whitehouse said “at this point, the only revenue proposition for carbon capture is enhanced oil recovery.” READ MORE