Alternative Fuels Now

Does energy efficiency come at the cost of lower reliability? Or does reliability reduce energy efficiency?

Considering efficiency and security of power as a tradeoff may be the wrong perspective. The need for reliability can be driven by safety concerns (e.g. airport traffic control), social considerations (e.g. healthcare facilities) or an economic rationale (e.g. internet data centres). Once the need for reliability is established, it just becomes another energy service, or an aspect of an energy service that needs to be provided efficiently.

Typical subjects in this theme are:

• efficiency of a secure power infrastructure
• dip-resilience of inverter drives
• extra losses and risks due to harmonics
• efficiency of energy storage

Practical information

The webinar takes place on Friday, February 15 at 12h30 - 13h30 GMT+1 (Brussels).

The event will use the Adobe Connect webconferencing system that allows you to join the event at the single click of a button. At the time of the event, click http://eci.emea.acrobat.com/webinars/ to enter the webinar room and simply enter your name. No plug-in is required. Sound is over the internet, you you will need a headphone to participate (or a microphone and speakers in a private room).

Relevant links

• European UPS Guide
• Energy Storage in UPS application
• Advanced Flywheel storage; an alternative solution to Battery storage for UPS applications
• Software for K-Factor calculation
• Reactive power due to CFL lighting

The spotlight is zooming in on America as a champion in transforming road machines into green vehicles. But a small country with just 4.2 million cars has started the initiative ages ago and is now far ahead. With the help of a number of auto giants, Sweden is leading the ethanol drive - a scheme designed to put more green vehicles on the roads.

“Sweden has made a major commitment to ethanol,” Michael Wood, the United States ambassador to Sweden and a Flint native, said in an interview in Detroit.

How dedicated is Sweden? In 2006, the country started converting smuggled beer, wine and hard alcohol into biofuel used to run trucks and buses. In 2007, Sweden turned 180,000 gallons of alcohol into biofuel.

Some vodka distilleries are switching to ethanol production and some paper mills in northern Sweden are working to develop cellulosic ethanol, said Bo Andersson, a Swedish native and General Motors Corp.’s vice president for global purchasing.

Sweden has cuddled ethanol unlike any other country outside Brazil. By far, the Nordic nation is the most successful. As such, it could serve as a worthy model for America in its goal to slash foreign oil reliance.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and other Michigan officials are looking to Sweden for guidance and see the push for alternative fuels there and the transformation in various industries as something that could be emulated here. The governor made a trip to Sweden last year and has praised the country’s commitment to alternative energy. She said Michigan must follow suit and is planning a summit of Michigan and Swedish energy leaders later this year in Michigan.

Did you know it is possible to run your car on water on a totally safe and simple way? This technology has been available for more than 100 years, but many times big oil companies and laboratories have tried to hide and make it seem impossible.

There is one guy that has been over 10 years researching and putting into practice what he has learn in hundreds of manuals, book and reports secretly obtained. He has called this system “water for gas technology”.

The method recommend for powering your car with water will save you cost of fuel and will allow you to make your own low-cost hybrid car that will run on water and gas, saving you huge costs you would have spent using only gas.

In other words, there is a very easy to make - Hydrogen-On-Demand system where you are able to run your car on Hydrogen when you need it.

Please take into account that I am not saying you should build a car from scratch that will run on water. This system I am talking about is about constructing simple devices that will enable your car to run on water as well as gas, at the same time. You don’t have to alter your car make-up or get a new car. The technology I am talking about is very simple to make, and can work with almost any car or truck. It doesn’t matter if the car or truck is diesel or runs on regular gas.

It is a brand name for a family of diesel engines developed by DaimlerChrysler, but BLUETEC [or bluetec] is now also being used by Volkswagen, AG as it, too, begins to market its all new diesel offerings. Why is this important? Because DaimlerChrysler realizes that the world can benefit much more if automakers market common technology instead of going it alone. Will you be one of those motorists to purchase a bluetec powered Volkswagen?

On the eve of the 2006 Los Angeles Auto Show, an announcement was made that Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, and Jeep would be jointly using the BLUETEC designation to describe their new diesel engines. Mercedes and Jeep are DaimlerChrysler {DCX} companies while Audi and VW belong to the Volkswagen Group.

The announcement was significant because it meant that a term that was reserved for DCX companies would also be picked up by Volkswagen and used to describe their engines even hough separate, but similar technology went into their respective development. The similarity of all bluetec engines is as follows:

Bluetec engines are highly fuel efficient, clean, and they meet all current US emissions requirements which happen to be some of the toughest in the world.

Bluetec engines incorporate various nitrogen oxide reduction systems to reduce pollution.
Bluetec engines have improved torque and reduce fuel consumption by 20 to 40 percent over comparable gas powered models.

Alternative energy research has led to the development of state of the art alternative energy sources for the home. One of the advantages of using alternative energy is that it is a renewable resource whereas our supply of coal and other fossil fuels is depleting. This advantage of renewable energy and alternative energies has many companies and people looking for different ways to power up.

Sometimes called renewable resources, alternative energy does not need fossil fuel or even the splitting of the atom to be produced. It is called renewable because the sources of it are constantly being produced. It does not cause the pollution that oil and gas cause. This kind of energy is not really new. What is new is that we now categorize these forms of energy as alternative energy.

The forms that alternative energy may take are fuel cells, geothermal energy, wind power, biomass, hydroelectric energy, solar energy and water energy such as wave and tidal energy.

*Fuel cells as a type of alternative energy is usually associated with electric cars, or hybrid cars. Electrochemical devices produce power through a chemical reaction. The primary benefit of fuel cells technology is that power is produced without the production of harmful pollutants. They are still very expensive to produce, however.

*Geothermal energy can be a powerful source of energy. It is ideal for small scale use to heat houses, businesses and small industry. On a larger scale, geothermal plants extract the heat from the earth and use it to create steam to power turbine engines.

Algae is a major renewable fuel which can be used to manufacture Biodiesel. One of the companies in New Zealand successfully developed a system for using sewage waste as a substrate for algae and then it produce bio-diesel. An alga is considered as the highest yield feedstock for biodiesel that can produce more enough oil compared to soybeans when grew in an acre.

Actual Biomass algae produced from field trials, which is conducted during the NREL’s aquatic species program. It is being converted using the actual oil content of the algae species grown in the specific program.

There are various advantages of producing biodiesel from algae, which include rapid growth of the plant. Using Algae Biodiesel gives high per acre yield. Algae biodiesel does not used to contain sulfur, toxic materials and it is highly biodegradable. There are some species, which are ideally suited for algae biodiesel production, because their high oil contents in some species.

Algae used to develop from small, singled celled organisms to cellular organisms, some algae have complex distinguished form. Algae can be easily seen at places like damp, bodies of water. Algae are common in terrestrial as well as aquatic environments. Like any other plants algae require three elements to spring up sunlight, carbon-di-oxide and water. Plant algae and some other bacteria convert sunlight to chemical energy, which process call as photosynthesis. Algae used to contain 2% and 40% of lipids or oils by weight. If algae have greater oil, it may results in lower yield annual food crops such as soybeans. Currently only 0.3% of the land of the US, it is getting utilized to produce enough biodiesel. Species of algae with up to 50% oil content have conclude that only 28000km land getting used to produce biodiesel. Unused desert land could be used for effective growing of algae.

Man started to use biomass for energy on the day that our ancestors discovered fire, and used it for cooking. Biomass is actually just another word for biological-mass. Biomass is anything that has been grown or has lived, except for fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas etc). Fossil fuels were of course created by the decay of living organisms many millennia ago in pre-history and are biomass in that sense, but these are not included within the term ‘biomass’ as used by renewable energy experts. Biomass takes many forms, some of the most well known are wood, straw, biowaste, wood chip, waste paper, organic slurries from the processing of foodstuffs, livestock farming, sewage treatment, chicken litter etc.

I guess that most of us can think of a hundred or more examples of biomass with a little thought, and they can all be burnt, or fermented and digested to provide energy. They all contain energy from the sun, which was bound up into their carbon chemistry while they were alive, and that energy can be released for man’s use without increasing the net additional carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) burden on our planet, as long as we continually replant, breed and re-grow replacement biomass sources in place of those we use. So biomass can also be grown as a crop for use as fuel. If the biomass is to be grown it will need to be selected to be of high calorific value (give of lots of heat when burnt), grow fast, need little fertilizing or watering, require low power requirements during growing and be cheaply harvested.

As we look to alternative energy sources for our power hungry world, geothermal energy is getting attention. Here is a brief overview of geothermal energy.

There are many different types of energy available to power our world. For years, people have used the power of burning fossil fuels, such as coal (also used to produce steam power) to create energy. In recent times, there has been a shift to using renewable resources to create the energy we need. These resources include hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, biomass energy and geothermal energy. While many people know about the first four of these resources, geothermal energy is less well-known.

The word geothermal comes from two Greek words, “geo” and “therme”. These words mean “earth” and “heat”, which pretty much describes what geothermal energy is. Geothermal energy is energy that comes from the heat of the Earth, deep underground. The Earth’s core, where chemical reactions create massive amounts of heat, is 4,000 miles below the Earth’s surface. In this core, temperatures can reach up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and this extreme heat can be used to produce energy.

While these are the basics of geothermal energy, there are many other parts in the process to make this sort of energy usable. We can’t tap directly into the Earth’s core to receive this heat, for many reasons. So instead, people must create systems that harness the residual heat that is in the magma (molten rock) under the Earth’s crust. This heat is able to be used by tapping into the water reservoirs that are within the magma – these water stores can reach up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Think of Old Faithful in Yellowstone.

Introduction

An Anaerobic Digestion system which is suitable for processing mixed (black bag) waste has been developed from technology first developed in Israel.

It recovers resources from waste while producing renewable energy and helping to reduce carbon emissions.

The ArrowBio process has been developed through a series of pilot and demonstration plants to a level ready to be used commercially in many countries, and is best described as a water-based mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facility, with energy recovery.

ArrowBio’s process has been developed in such a way that it can either be used as a stand-alone solution or in conjunction with other technologies. For example it can be built within sustainable energy parks to provide a source of energy for the park, as well as recycled materials for further processing. The recycled materials are re-used as feedstock by the other businesses based within the park to create a variety of products.

Two Stage Anaerobic Digestor

ArrowBio sets out to fully recover and wash the recyclable elements of the waste, so it should be favoured by environmental groups which tend to object to alternative processes which handle mixed waste, like incineration, on the basis that the ability of incineration to handle mixed wastes reduces the necessity to separate and recycle, and that the flu gas can contain toxic chemicals. The argument is also that incineration makes it too easy to neglect recycling, so it should not be used. None of these objections apply to Anaerobic Digestion.

Natural gas now provides 23 percent of all energy consumed in the world. Before the second half of the 20th century it was just dismissed as a useless byproduct of oil production. It is the only fossil fuel that is clean-burning, composed of various hydrocarbon gases, mostly methane. Actually, the main products of the combustion of natural gas are carbon dioxide and water vapor which are the same compounds we exhale when we breathe. Virtually, no ash or particulate matter are released. Natural gas is non-toxic, not poisonous or harmful to humans.

It fuels electric power generators and heats homes and offices more efficiently than oil. It also can be used as a raw material in many consumer products, one being the increasingly popular plastics. Because it is the cleanest-burning conventional fuel, it is environmentally friendly producing lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions than the heavier hydrocarbon fuels, coal and oil. Since it is so efficient, natural gas has historically been one of the most economical energy sources.

The International Energy Agency predicts that natural gas demand will grow by more than 67 percent through 2030. The range of applications include: industrial power, heating for both commercial buildings and residential homes, and transportation vehicles. Because of the relatively simple makeup of natural gas, there are fewer toxic and carcinogenic emissions from vehicles running on natural gas. Substantial reserves exist to meet the growing demand of natural gas. World natural gas reserves are estimated to exceed 6,000 trillion cubic feet, and significant natural gas volumes are yet to be discovered.