Ministry of Environmental Protection

http://www.environment.gov.il

Updated: 12/07/2011

In November 2011, the Ministry of Environmental Protection granted 250 million shekels to private entrepreneurs and local authorities for promoting the construction of twenty facilities for the treatment of organic waste and transfer stations for sorting throughout the country. These facilities are a vital and complementing link in the implementation of the separation of waste at source program which has been introduced in Israel.

In total, some 600 million shekels (about $165 million) will be invested in the construction of recycling and waste to energy facilities over the next three years (40% by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and 60% by entrepreneurs/local authorities). The facilities will treat some 8,000 tons of waste per day, about two-thirds of the daily quantity of municipal waste which is generated in Israel.

The facilities include two phases of waste treatment:

• Sorting of the waste into its different components in transfer stations, with recyclables going to material recovery facilities. This will increase the quantity of recycled materials and significantly decrease the quantity of landfilled waste.
• Treatment of the organic fraction of the waste (such as food remnants), constituting some 40 percent of the municipal waste, and its transfer to:

1. Compost facilities where the waste will be transformed into fertilizer for agriculture.
2. Anaerobic digestion facilities where the biodegradable waste will be fermented to produce biogas for the generation of electricity. The electricity produced in these facilities will be sold to the electricity grid under preferential tariffs.

The new facilities will provide for the treatment of the waste which is separated within the framework of the separation of waste into two streams project, which is spearheaded by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Some 31 local authorities have already joined the project and have received some 350 million shekels of aid for financing a municipal infrastructure which will make two dumpsters available for every resident, in his home and in the street.

The material recovery facilities and transfer stations will receive the waste, sort it and provide for its recycling, thereby saving some 900 million shekels worth of raw materials which were previously landfilled every year.

Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan: "The world already understands that waste is a raw material in and of itself. Investing in an industry which will implement the recycling revolution and will transform waste from nuisance to resource is an economic and environmental interest. Establishing a recycling and waste to energy market will prevent unnecessary exploitation of natural resources and raw materials, thereby significantly reducing the economic costs and environmental degradation that are finally borne by the consumer."

Separation of Waste at Source: Facts and Figures

• Some 12,000 – 14,000 tons of mixed waste which originate in local authorities are generated in Israel every day, totaling some 4.4 million tons per year.
• According to forecasts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the annual quantity of waste increases by 3%-5% every year.
• The quantity of organic waste produced in Israel is estimated at a million and a half tons per year, constituting some 40% of the weight of solid waste in Israel and 10% of its volume. Most of this waste originates in food products, fruits and vegetables, etc.
• According to the estimates of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, some 4,600 tons of municipal organic waste are generated in Israel every day. This waste has a high potential for the production of biogas in renewable energy facilities and for the creation of compost for soil improvement.

The advantages of a separation of waste into at least two streams program include environmental advantages due to the prevention of pollution, the decrease in the quantity of landfilled waste and the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. These environmental advantages are complemented by economic benefits due to the creation of new jobs in the recycling market, savings in resources and reduced costs associated with landfilling.

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Recycling

Separation of Waste at Source

Sivan 28, 5771, 30 June 11 12:23

by Elad Benari

(Israelnationalnews.com) An American company will help fund an Israeli company that uses microbial fuel cells to turn waste water into an energy source, Greenbang.com reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, Energy Technology Ventures, a joint venture of GE, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips, has decided to invest an undisclosed amount in the Israeli company Emefcy Ltd. This is Energy Technology Ventures’ first investment in a non-U.S.-based company and is also its first investment related to water.

Emefcy was founded in early 2008 by serial water technology entrepreneurs Eytan Levy and Ronen Shechter. The company is marked as one of the most promising water technology start-up companies and has received technology leadership awards such as The Guardian’s Cleantech 100, Global Water Technologies top 10, Artemis Top 50 and more.

Emefcy’s technology uses the principle of a fuel cell to generate electricity directly from the water. Its “electrogenic bioreactor” features an anaerobic anode chamber connected to a cathode chamber by an ion exchange membrane, produces electricity as organic matter in waste water decays and drives a current through the fuel cell.

This is different from other systems which use aerobic processes or anaerobic digestion to produce methane (natural gas) from the decomposition of organic material in waste water.

The technology generates electricity and also produces treated water as a by-product. The result transforms waste water treatment “from an energy-intensive, cost-intensive and carbon-intensive process, into an energy-generating and carbon-reducing process.”

Emefcy expects to apply its process initially for waste water treatment in the food, beverage, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

“We will use Energy Technology Ventures’ investment to continue development of our technology into full-scale commercial implementation by the end of this year for municipal and industrial wastewater treatment,” said Levy.

Energy Technology Ventures is a company which focuses on the development of next-generation energy technologies. It invests in and offers commercial collaboration opportunities to companies in the renewable power generation, smart grid, energy efficiency, oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear energy, emission controls, water and biofuels sectors. The three companies behind Energy Technology Ventures intend to help start-ups develop next-generation energy technology.

General Electric recently announced that it would be building a research and development center in Israel, its eighth in the country.

The new center, which will be built near its GE Healthcare subsidiary in Haifa, will focus on medical devices, water and CleanTech.

GE previously has worked with Israeli companies such as the Better Place electric car initiative as well as with companies dealing with medical devices and CleanTech.

www.IsraelNationalNews.com

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

Posted by Joanna Schroeder – January 4th, 2011

Reprinted from Domesticfuel.com

A $900,000 BIRD Energy grant has been awarded to Madison, Wisconsin-based Virent Energy Systems, Inc. and Isreal-based HCL CleanTech from the BIRD Foundation along with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Isreali Ministry of National Infrastructures. BIRD Energy is a program for the U.S. and Isreal to jointly develop renewable energy.

Virent and HCL have partnered on a $2.1 million project that combines HCL’s proprietary lignocellulosic conversion technologies that produce cost competitive non-food sugars with Virent’s BioForming technology that converts plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules similar to those now refined from petroleum. These sugars can then be used as chemicals or as “drop-in” fuels for cars, trucks, trains, and aviation that can be transported using existing pipelines.

“Economically converting plentiful cellulosic biomass into renewable, fungible hydrocarbon fuels and products will enable broad market acceptance and is the most realistic alternative to displace petroleum and create a clean energy transportation sector in the coming years,” said Lee Edwards, Virent CEO. “Virent has proven it can transform cellulosic, non-food sugars into environmentally superior hydrocarbon fuels with the same energy content and performance as petroleum fuels. “Utilizing HCL CleanTech’s cost-effective biomass hydrolysis technology to provide inexpensive cellulosic sugar feedstocks may be a key component of a complete and sustainable biofuels solution.”

The sugars will be processed at HCL CleanTech’s demonstration plant operating at Southern Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina and will then be sent to Virent’s facility in Madison, Wisconsin for conversion into biofuels and biochemicals.

“We expect to have the sugars ready for Virent before the New Year [2012] and are confident the integration with Virent and the leading biopolymer producer will create new opportunities in the bio-fuels and bio-products space,” said Eran Baniel CEO of HCL CleanTech.

As part of the BIRD project, HCL CleanTech will also provide pine sugars to a leading biopolymer producer for evaluating fermentation into hydrocolloids that historically are produced from cane or corn sugars for use in a broad range of personal care, food and beverage applications.

Bob Jansen, head of HCL CleanTech Engineering noted that the company built the demo unit at a size that will allow them to scale up directly to a small commercial facility. If all goes as planned, it will be integrated into a paper mill by the end of 2012.

Categories: Cellulosic, Ethanol, International, biofuels

Posted By Maurice Picow On December 6, 2009  In Cleantech, Science & Technology |

A Seambiotic algae farm grows biofuel

Seambiotic’s been teaming up with NASA ^[1] to to create a biofuel suitable for sending astronauts into space (?), and now this company is once again making news in a new venture with the China Goudian utility company ^[2] to grow micro algae for use as a biodiesel fuel to power electrical power stations all over China.

Founded in 2003, Seambiotic ^[3] develops and produces marine microalgae for the nutraceuticals ^[4] and biofuel industries by using flue gas from electric power plants.

Seambiotic’s success in utilizing an organic substance that is found in abundance in the world’s oceans and in fresh water sources as well, may one day solve much of the world’s energy needs as well as provide food products for the earth’s continuing increasing population.

The new venture with one of China’s largest utility companies, which operates more than 100 power stations, will build its first commercial farm on 12 hectares (30 acres) in Penglai, a city in Shandong Province ^[5].

The $10 million farm will utilize carbon dioxide being expelled from the power station in Penglai. It is expected to be operational some time in 2010.  On Seambiotic’s website, ^[6]the growth of microalgae requires an abundance of solar radiation in a wide range of temperatures. The algae is best grown in shallow ponds where both light and temperature play a part in the algae’s growth, they say, which is then “fed” by an abundance of carbon dioxide. In this case, by using the flue gases ^[7] from coal-burning power stations, which are abundant in China.

By utilizing the carbon dioxide that otherwise would escape into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming, these “greenhouse gases ^[8]” are channeled into the algae cultivation ponds to stimulate algae growth.

Algae as both a food source and as a bio fuel has been the subject of many projects all over the world, utilizing one of the earth’s most abundant plants that has been  supplying much of our oxygen as well as being food for marine life as part of their food chain.

Being able to utilize this natural wonder product to provide food products for both animals and human beings, as well as an environmentally cleaner bio fuel, may one day reduce or even eliminate the need for using oil and coal as a fuel source, as well as reduce the problems of global warming. This good news in advance of the Copenhagen climate change talks which begin this week.

Photo: ^[9]www.seambiotic.com ^[3]

::www.cleantech.com/news ^[10]

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One of the car maker’s oldest and largest plants is being converted to house clean tech companies

Andrew Donoghue, BusinessGreen 11 Sep 2009

A Ford car plant which was recently shut down as part of cost savings by the car maker is being converted into a facility for renewable energy companies.

The facility in Wixom, Michigan, which at the height of production had about 5,000 workers, closed in 2007 with the loss of 1,000 jobs. The site will now be converted into a business park for a series of renewable energy companies, which the backers claim could generate about 4,000 jobs.

Ford said it has been working with energy storage system provider Xtreme Power and solar panel maker Clairvoyant Energy, who will be the first companies to take up residency in the 320-acre site and its 4.7 million square feet of plant space. The two renewable energy providers have invested about $725m (£635m) to redevelop the site, with work expected to begin early next year and clean tech manufacturing expected to get underway in 2011.

“The Wixom Assembly Plant served Ford well for half a century and we wanted to ensure it served Michigan well into the future,” said Ford executive chairman Bill Ford. “Thanks to the collaborative efforts of two visionary energy companies and the leadership of state and local officials, we are transforming our Wixom facility into one of the largest renewable energy parks in the US. I can’t imagine a better way to use this facility – for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.”

Although Ford and the other companies involved discussed their role in developing the site, the backers also admit that state and local incentives were key to the project including refundable battery and photovoltaic tax credits, Michigan Economic Growth Authority employment tax credits, Renaissance Zone tax incentives and brownfield tax credits.

Xtreme Power systems, which develops technology to integrate renewable energy onto the electricity grid, will use more than one million square feet of the site.

“This move is significant on both ends of the spectrum,” said Carlos Coe, president and chief executive of Xtreme Power. “It underscores a significant shift toward the accelerated commercialisation and adoption of strategic renewable energy technologies, due in large part to the deepened commitment on the part of local, state and federal policymakers to support companies like ours.”

For its part, Clairvoyant Energy says it will have the capacity to produce more than 2.5 million solar panels a year at the Wixom site, which the company claims could equate to the need for one large coal plant every year.

“Clairvoyant Energy is fully energised to respond to the call to create the green jobs of tomorrow – today,” said David Hardee, chief executive of Clairvoyant Energy.

The Wixom Assembly Plant was one of Ford’s largest and oldest manufacturing sites, producing 6.6 million vehicles during its 50 years of operation. Production began in 1957 when Wixom became Lincoln Division’s new national headquarters and the sole producer of all vehicles for the Lincoln Division.

“Over the years, Wixom Assembly produced the Lincoln Continental, Town Car, LS, Mark VI, VII and VIII, as well as the Ford Thunderbird and Ford GT,” Ford said in a statement.

In May, Ford announced that it would invest $550m in converting a Michigan plant currently used to manufacture SUVs into a factory specialising in small, fuel-efficient cars that will also produce its first electric vehicle.

Documentary film maker Michael Moore covered the plight of sacked Michigan car workers in his 1989 film Roger and Me.

Permalink: http://www.businessgreen.com/2249323
This article was printed from the BusinessGreen.com web site

BY TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER, May 31, 2009

In downtown L’Anse in the Upper Peninsula, a dormant 50-year-old coal plant smokestack is operating again. Instead of coal, the L’Anse Warden Electric Co. plant creates electricity and steam by burning biomass, such as old railroad ties, recycled tires and sawmill waste.

The biomass plant is the first such plant to open in Michigan since the state passed a requirement for renewable energy last fall.

Next month, its owners will start paying farmers to plant hybrid trees that eventually will become fuel.

The Warden plant, which opened in November but will become fully operational this week, produces enough energy to power 20,000 homes and provides steam to a nearby factory that makes ceiling tiles.

Its owners hope to convert three more coal plants in the region to biomass — in White Pine, Marquette and Escanaba.

It’s part of a move by small companies and utilities to burn wood instead of coal, and it’s becoming a booming business in northern Michigan.

— By Daniel Gorelick, Science Planet, 22 April 2009

Guest Blogger

Chaitan Khosla and Harmit Vora

Stanford University

Fossil fuels account for 95 percent of world energy usage. Consumption of coal, petroleum, and natural gas has increased significantly over the last several decades, as have carbon dioxide emissions, the primary reason for global climate change.

The implications of climate change have stimulated significant efforts to discover and commercialize renewable sources of energy that have zero or reduced net carbon dioxide emissions. Finding replacements for gasoline has received significant attention in the United States, where the transportation sector consumes the most energy. Biofuels, liquid fuels derived from renewable plants, have been viewed as prime candidates to replace gasoline.

Commercialized Biofuels

The two predominant biofuels on the U.S market today are corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel. Corn ethanol has drawbacks that might hurt its long-term chances in the biofuels market. It is not as energy-rich as gasoline – a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol can’t be distributed using existing infrastructure because it has different chemical properties than gasoline. Unless significant modifications are made to current automobiles, ethanol can only be used in low percentage blends with gasoline.

The other major biofuel, biodiesel, is derived from lipids (fat) in plant seeds. Biodiesel’s biggest barrier to widespread use is the availability of raw material. A recent study showed that if all the plant (and even animal lipids) in the United States were dedicated to produce biofuels, the amount of biofuel produced would be less than five percent of the total volume of liquid fuels consumed each year.

The raw material for both corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel is food crops, so increasing production could create challenging impacts on global food markets.

Advanced Biofuels: cellulosic ethanol and algal biodiesel

Cellulosic ethanol is a well-publicized new biofuel that can be produced from non-food crops (cellulose is a carbohydrate found in all plants). Cellulosic ethanol produces 300 percent more energy than is used in its production, a significantly better energy yield than corn ethanol or soybean biodiesel, but it shares the inherent energy and distribution disadvantages of corn ethanol.

One of the most immediate challenges with commercialization of cellulosic ethanol is that cellulose and a related carbohydrate, hemicellulose, are difficult, and hence expensive, to break down into the simple sugars required for ethanol production. Thus, improving the efficiency of the initial cellulose processing steps is key to making this and other biofuels economically feasible.

There is interest in using microscopic algae to produce biodiesel. While providing the benefits in energy density and engine compatibility of biodiesel, it may not suffer from the same supply issues because simple sugars (and potentially cellulose) can be used as a starting material. Algae are also better stores of oils than plant seeds.

There have been increasing efforts to genetically engineer well-known organisms, such as the bacteria E. coli, to produce novel biofuels efficiently. Researchers have hijacked E. coli’s biosynthetic pathway for the amino acid valine to produce isobutanol, a more energy dense, less volatile alcohol than ethanol. Our own research has focused on theproduction of energy-dense fuels using the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in E. coli.

Long-promised cellulosic ethanol is in modest production, but hurdles remain.

By Mark Clayton | The Christian Science Monitor/ February 13, 2009

Scotland, S.D.

With one foot planted in a pile of corn cobs, Mark Stowers explains how agricultural waste, transformed into ethanol, will turbocharge the US economy, boost its energy security, and help save the planet, too.

This holy grail of biofuels, called cellulosic ethanol, has been “five years from commercialization” for so long that even Dr. Stowers admits it’s become a joke.

But now the research director for POET, the nation’s largest ethanolmaker, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., says that despite bad economic news and major obstacles, cellulosic’s time is near. Other scientists agree.

Corn-based ethanol, which many critics argue does not do enough to slow climate change, is nearing US production limits. In Washington, cellulosic ethanol is gaining political traction. And cellulosic technology seems ready for prime time – at last.

‘Cellulosic ethanol is real’

The proof, Stowers says, lies inside a nearby windowless, high-roofed single-story metal building. Filled with a maze of pipes and vats, this $8 million test facility is a miniature cellulosic ethanol plant that pumps out 20,000 gallons a year of nearly clear alcohol extracted from cobs like the ones beneath his feet.

“This pilot plant shows cellulosic ethanol is real – that the technology is here,” Stowers says. “Ultimately, cellulosic will allow us to make significant inroads to replacing oil for our nation’s gasoline needs.”

The 2007 Energy Inde­pen­dence and Security Act Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) calls for boosting production of biofuels to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022 – about 15 billion gallons of it corn ethanol, the rest cellulosic. (By contrast, the US produced about 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol last year.) That would replace about one-fifth of the nation’s gasoline needs without displa­cing current crops.

But looking forward, biofuels could play a far larger role. By 2030, biofuels may reach 60 billion gallons, according to a new report released Feb. 10 by Sandia National Laboratory. That would require 480 million tons of biomass, including 215 million tons of dedicated energy crops like switchgrass. Such fuel crops would require 48 million acres of what is now pasture or idle land, the report says.

Such a shift would slash annual US tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions by 260 million tons a year – about equal to the emissions from 45 coal-fired power plants. Cellulosic ethanol feedstock crops would require little or no irrigation, a big advantage over corn. The cost: about $250 billion, the same or less than that of boosting US oil production by the same amount.

One-third of nation’s needs by 2030?

With a few key technology improvements, the United States could do even better, creating up to 90 billion gallons of ethanol by 2030, enough to meet one-third of the nation’s transportation fuel needs, Sandia found. In that scenario, about 75 billion gallons would be cellulosic fuel. Just 15 billion gallons a year would come from corn, the report said.

Getting there will be a huge challenge. The handful of pilot cellulosic plants in the US produce maybe 1 million gallons a year. Production would have to be ramped up a thousandfold to meet the 2013 federal goal of 1 billion gallons. That seems unlikely, given the economy’s tailspin.

Of the six commercial-scale cellulosic biofuel plants funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), two have bowed out. Another smaller-scale project supported by DOE, a partnership between Lignol Energy of Vancouver and Calgary-based Suncor, withdrew Feb. 9.

Not on track at the moment

As of right now, “we’re not on track” to produce 1 billion gallons of biofuel annually by 2013, says Thomas Foust, biomass technology manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. “Obviously, the credit crunch and recession have put dampers on and delayed commercial plants. But a number of companies are still pursuing it very vigorously. We’re doing the same.”

Next year, the POET company will begin construction of its first 25-million-gallon commercial-scale cellulosic plant dubbed “Liberty” in Emmetsburg, Iowa, Stowers says.

The DOE is paying for 40 percent of the $200 million facility, expected to open in 2011. After that, POET plans to “bolt on” similar corn-cob-munching cellulosic factories at its 26 conventional corn-based ethanol production facilities, he says.

Not to be outdone, Range Fuels, a Broomfield, Colo., company, last month won an $80 million loan guarantee from the US Department of Agriculture for the nation’s first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, now under construction in Soperton, Ga. It aims to begin production next year.

‘Blend wall’ may crimp ethanol

To succeed, cellulosic will have to buck not only low oil prices, the credit crunch, and recession, but also uncertain demand – thanks to the “blend wall.”

The RFS today requires refiners to blend into gasoline about 14 billion gallons of ethanol – about 10 percent of US gasoline consumption. But with ethanol production capacity near that level now, cellulosic producers may not find many buyers – unless the national blend mandate for ethanol is raised to 15 percent or higher, which is what ethanol producers and farmers would like.

“The blend wall has a huge potential impact on cellulosic ethanol development,” Foust says. “The No. 1 issue is a stagnant economy. But next to that, the issue that won’t resolve itself is the blend wall.”

Some environmental groups worry that this means traditional corn-based ethanol will benefit more than environmentally friendly cellulosic. Others say older vehicles’ emissions systems will be damaged by a higher percentage of alcohol in fuel, thus worsening air pollution.

Low oil prices hurt ethanol

“We can’t afford to play fast and loose with Clean Air Act protections,” says Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental activist group.

Another huge hurdle is cost-competitiveness. Cellulosic ethanol requires a more complex process that uses costly enzymes. At present, a gallon of cellulosic ethanol costs about $2.25 a gallon to produce: That’s 40 to 50 cents more than corn ethanol and 75 cents more than gasoline. But under Sandia’s projections, cellulosic ethanol’s retail cost could fall to just $1.72 a gallon without any incentives or taxes and still be competitive with gasoline – if oil costs $90 per barrel.

But with a barrel of crude now selling for roughly $40, it’s difficult for cellulosic or even corn ethanol to compete. Still, POET, Foust, and others are looking ahead to when the global economy stabilizes and oil bounces back to around $90 a barrel.

Economy’s long shadow hurts, too

Recession and the credit crunch are the deepest shadows over cellulosic development, Foust says. Of the 20 or so investment banks that financed billions in corn-ethanol development over the past decade, only five are still in business. And with oil cheap and ethanol demand weak, investor appetite for more ethanol production is tepid.

That may change. The new stimulus bill has $500 million allocated for the development of “leading edge biofuels.”

Besides economics, critical environmental concerns remain. Key among them: Which method is the most environmentally friendly?

Environmentalists like Mr. Greene aren’t eager to support cellulosic ethanol unless it can be proved that the impact from its development – including US and EU policies – is a clear plus for the environment.

Larger climate impact must be weighed

By law, “advanced biofuels” like cellulosic ethanol must be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as producing at least 60 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline does. Mr. Stowers and others are optimistic that that’s a slam-dunk.

But what about the climatic impact of biofuels as the result of crop shifts and land-use change worldwide? What would be the impact if farmers plow under marginal grasslands and forests to grow switchgrass? How much agricultural waste can be collected from farm fields before the result is more erosion?

The land-use question over corn-based ethanol has fired debate since last summer, when one study found diversion of US corn production for fuel had cut US corn exports. That, in turn, caused developing nations to plant more corn, a shift that may have negated the advantage of corn ethanol over gasoline in terms of its overall impact on global warming.

Now the same debate is likely to erupt for cellulosic ethanol, not only for its potential effect on food prices but also its net impact on climate.

Food crops vs. fuel crops

“One of the points often made in favor of cellulosic ethanols,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental activist group, “is that the feedstocks for it, like switchgrass, would be grown on marginal land. But if it is that profitable on marginal land, ima­gine how profitable it would be on prime crop land. There’s nothing to stop it from happening.”

The EPA, charged with evaluating the carbon footprint of cellulosic ethanol to determine if it meets the 60 percent threshold, has done a preliminary land-use impact evaluation. But those tentative results haven’t been released because the methodology is being refined, experts say.

“Indirect land-use impacts is a new analysis area that’s very tough, from a modeling and data point of view,” says Wallace Tyner, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. “But we’re making progress. Within the next year we are going to narrow the bounds considerably.”

Getting ethanol feedstock right is key

All of this leaves NRDC’s Greene wanting government to take a slower, closer look at potential cellulosic feedstocks like switchgrass, miscanthus, poplar, and other crops in order to get federal policy toward cellulosic right from the start.

“The refining technology is obviously a challenge that will succumb to American innovation,” he says. “But getting the feedstock right is key. If we mow down corn to put in switchgrass, well, you’ve got that food versus fuel trade-off again.”

Harvesting agriculture “wastes” for biofuels also raises critical questions and needs closer analysis. POET, for instance, gets high marks from Greene for its careful evaluation of the impact of removing corn cobs from farm fields, which the company and others say appears to deduct only about 2 to 3 percent of the nutrients.

Even so, it turns out most corn stover – which is everything but the corn kernel (stalk, leaves, and cobs) – is badly needed for soil enrichment and to prevent erosion.

Crop waste helps fields, too

“A portion of the [corn] stover can be made available as feedstock for bioenergy purposes,” say Douglas Karlen, research leader for soil and water quality at the National Soil Tilth Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

Harvesters would have to be outfitted with software to gauge exactly how much corn stover was taken from the field, he says.

“There’s not a blanket or uniform amount,” Dr. Karlen says. “It has to vary not only by farm, but within an individual field. The amount taken has to vary because the land varies.”

Search for substitute to petroleum-based products led to innovation

By Bryn Nelson, Columnist MSNBC,  Dec. 22, 2008

Just in time for Christmas, German researchers are ramping up a manufacturing technique for making intricate Nativity figurines, toys, and even hi-fi speaker boxes from a renewable and surprisingly versatile source: liquid wood.

The bio-plastic dubbed Arboform, derived from wood pulp-based lignin, can be mixed with hemp, flax or wood fibers and other additives such as wax to create a strong, nontoxic alternative to petroleum-based plastics, according to its manufacturers.

Crude oil is the basis of the chemical for plastics, said Norbert Eisenreich, a senior researcher and deputy of the directors at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology in Pfinztal, Germany. As the price of crude oil increases, he said, so does the price of plastics — and the interest in finding replacements.

The growing list of health concerns linked to plastic ingredients, such as heavy metals and softeners known as phthalates, also has increased the impetus to find a good substitute for manufacturing toys and other products.

The institute began looking for alternatives to oil-based products in the mid-’90s, said Eisenreich. To decrease the dependence on oil, however, any alternative material would need to be relatively abundant. Lignin, he said, offers an ideal candidate because tens of millions of tons are often discarded as a byproduct of the papermaking process.

The idea for liquid wood grew from this realization: “Why not compose material out of the waste of this paper-making?”

Liquid wood, Eisenreich said, combines the high stability and good acoustical properties of wood with the injection-molded capabilities of plastic.

Woodworking, by contrast, can yield intricate figurines but is an arduous, time-consuming process. “Now you make only one complex mold,” he said, “and you can do mass-production. You can make figures.”

In paper mills, wood is typically separated into its three main components: lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose.

Lignin, which tends to give paper a brownish hue, can be used for lower-quality newsprint but is most often separated out with a sulfite- or sulfate-based pulping process prior to the production of high-quality paper.

By mixing that discarded lignin with fibers and wax, Tecnaro, a spin-off German company, has refined a technique for producing plastic-like pellets. Under high-pressure conditions, Eisenreich said, the composite material behaves like melted plastic, allowing it to be injected through a nozzle into a mold and made into a wide range of forms.

Beyond the nine Nativity figurines crafted in collaboration with German toy manufacturer Schleich, the Arboform material has been fashioned into everything from loudspeaker boxes and car parts to golf tees and ballpoint pens.

Customers can even buy liquid wood watches on the company’s Web site, where it reports a current capacity of 300 tons annual output of its biomaterial, but adds that the amount “can be increased easily.”

To make the material more toy-friendly, researchers dramatically reduced the high sulfur content typically associated with the separation of lignin from wood’s other fibers. Eisenreich said a range of processes are widely available for separating lignins without the need for sulfur chemicals.

The institute’s solution, he said, was to use high-pressure hydrolysis (with nothing more than water, high temperature and high pressure) to yield water insoluble lignin. The resulting material maintains its stability even if exposed to water or saliva.

The Arboform material also can be broken into pieces and recycled as a filler. Though it can’t be re-melted, he said, it can be burned just like wood.

Giving cast-off lignin a second look
Terry Collins, leader of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Green Science in Pittsburgh, Pa., said in an e-mail that the German liquid wood manufacturing process “sounds very encouraging indeed,” though he warned that as “with all potentially green alternatives, devils can lie in the details.”

Collins, a professor of chemistry, said that if he was advising Tecnaro on the commercial potential of Arboform, he would recommend a variety of toxicity assays and include a reasonable amount of analysis of the compounds in the extracts from a representative set of wood sources.

“Over time, I would be asking for ever more sophisticated analyses,” he said, “and if the product is to become a major one that children will be exposed to, I would like to see multigenerational animal studies done on appropriate extracts to develop good evidence that developmental disruption is unlikely to be associated with the products.”

So far, Eisenreich said, commercial interest in liquid wood applications has been stronger in Europe than in the United States, though he hopes a shift toward more environmentally friendly solutions in the U.S. may help boost interest here as well.

When crude oil topped $100 dollars per barrel, “this was the best situation for this company,” he said, noting that the accompanying rise in the price of plastics led to multiple new orders for Tecnaro’s test products.

With lignin widely available throughout North America, he said the liquid wood manufacturing process could provide a compelling new use for a home-grown raw material.

Robert Norris, leader of the Polymer Matrix Composites Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said the effort to find more renewable replacements for petroleum-based products similarly led his group to investigate the use of lignin as a precursor for carbon fiber.

Lignin can be spun into a fiber, he said, “and you burn off everything but the carbon to achieve a higher stiffness and strength from the carbon fibers.”

Lignin is an attractive source because it is relatively cheap and contains a high percentage of carbon.

Although increased efficiencies in the papermaking process have cut back on lignin waste, the biomaterial is still widely seen as having little value apart from fuel.

But as paper companies begin to feel more pressure from importing wood, Norris said, they’re looking at new uses for lignin that could boost its value beyond even that of their primary paper products, providing a new opportunity for manufacturers of carbon fibers or liquid wood to make their case. Ditto for a slew of other companies.

According to the Lignin Institute, a trade association of lignin manufacturers in North America, “Lignin uses have expanded into literally hundreds of applications — impacting on many facets of our daily lives.”

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URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28283260/