NewNergy

Carbon Sciences Inc. , the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other fuels, announced today that representatives of oil refineries expressed a high level of interest in the company's technology at the ACI Downstream CO2 & Energy Efficiency Forum held December 3-5 in Istanbul, Turkey.

This breakthrough technology for transforming CO2 to hydrocarbons fits refineries' needs in today's environmentally conscious world. Instead of emitting hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and face potential legal and economic penalties, oil refineries can use our technology to transform their CO2 streams directly into fuel building blocks. These building blocks can then be used in their existing refinery processes to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other portable fuels -- without using additional crude oil.

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Labels: co2, gasoline

A Scottish invention with the potential to revolutionise consumer energy conservation is set for further inroads into the mass market in 2009, according to energy and management consultant Accenture.

The "smart meter", the brainchild of Scots telecoms engineer Eric Beattie, was originally conceived as using communications equipment to interact with prepayment meters to allow customers to top-up their meter remotely. But,Smart meters currently undergoing consumer trials throughout the UK, are seen as a potentially revolutionary aid to carbon reduction, as they allow householders and businesses to monitor closely in real time how much energy they are currently consuming and at what cost.

As the energy industry faces up to ever-deeper cuts in carbon emissions over the coming decades, the installation of smart meters in customers' homes is becoming increasingly important because of its potential to change consumers' behaviour and reduce energy consumption.In Italy, around 24 million smart meters have already been installed, and France and the Nordic countries are also making "an announcement a month" on the continued roll-out.

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Labels: co2, inventions

Biochar was first created and used thousands of years ago to help plants grow. Researchers have found that this charcoal-like substance traps carbon and is a renewable source of fuel. Nine countries are pouring research dollars into the charcoal-like substance to see if it can sequester carbon, improve the soil and produce biofuels all at once—on an economically competitive scale. Could this ancient fertilizer really put a dent on global warming?

Biochar is different from the dry charcoal that you'd burn in a grill: It is produced by heating plant waste to 400 to 500 degrees C in the absence of oxygen—a process known as low-temperature pyrolysis—which makes a substance that has a greater number of smaller pores than charcoal. (The better to trap carbon dioxide with.)

The process used to make biochar is a closed, sustainable one: Biomass is fed into the oxygen-free burners and turned into the char. The gases that are released during the reaction is then captured and converted into electricity (from combustible gases) or biofuel, while the remaining char is safe to throw directly into the soil. Biochar does the rest of the work underground. The substance improves the ground's composition and fertility by locking in water and nutrients, thereby reducing the need for fertilizers while boosting crop yields. It also stores the carbon from the plant materials that made it— around 50 percent of the carbon produced from converting biomass into biochar can be trapped—and traps even more carbon from decomposing plants in the soil.

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Labels: biomass, co2, renewable

U.S. Forest Service Scientists are providing online software that can show users how much carbon dioxide (CO2) an urban tree in California, US, has sequestered in its lifetime and the past year.

Known as ‘The Tree Carbon Calculator’, the software is free and programmed in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that provides carbon-related information for a single tree in one of six California climate zones.

It is the only tool approved by the California Climate Action Registry’s Urban Forest Project Reporting Protocol for quantifying carbon dioxide sequestration from tree planting projects.Users enter information such as a tree’s climate zone, species name, size or age. The program then estimates how much carbon dioxide the tree has sequestered in the past year and its lifetime. It also calculates the dry weight of the biomass that would be obtained if it were removed.

The Tree Carbon Calculator automatically calculates power plant reductions using emission factors for local utilities. Using the software, McPherson and his colleagues measured the size and growth of 5,000 trees in the six climate zones to determine how much carbon dioxide the trees sequestered and stored.

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Labels: climate-change, co2

Toyota Motor Corp plans to provide, for the third year in a row, home-use fuel cell cogeneration units as part of a government project to verify the practical use of CO2-reducing stationary fuel cells.

The municipal-gas-fueled 1-kW home-use fuel cell cogeneration units—which generate electricity and capture waste heat for household heating—are to play a role in the continuing Large-Scale Stationary Fuel Cell Demonstration Project of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Twenty-four of the units will be provided to project participant Toho Gas Co., Ltd. (Toho), which will install them in homes in three central-Japan prefectures (Aichi, Gifu and Mie) to collect data toward commercialization. The government project, which was originally scheduled to conclude on March 31, 2008, is now expected to run until the end of March 2009.

Full report here - Home-Use Fuel Cell Cogeneration Project

Labels: co2, electricity, homes

Toyota Motor Corp plans to provide, for the third year in a row, home-use fuel cell cogeneration units as part of a government project to verify the practical use of CO2-reducing stationary fuel cells.

The municipal-gas-fueled 1-kW home-use fuel cell cogeneration units—which generate electricity and capture waste heat for household heating—are to play a role in the continuing Large-Scale Stationary Fuel Cell Demonstration Project of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Twenty-four of the units will be provided to project participant Toho Gas Co., Ltd. (Toho), which will install them in homes in three central-Japan prefectures (Aichi, Gifu and Mie) to collect data toward commercialization. The government project, which was originally scheduled to conclude on March 31, 2008, is now expected to run until the end of March 2009.

More from here - Home-Use Fuel Cell Cogeneration Project

Labels: co2, electricity, fuel-cells

HTC Purenergy announced a new CO2 Capture cost reduction breakthrough - the Thermal Kinetics Optimization process. TKO will be added to the existing base Purenergy CCS CO2 Capture System and will substantially reduce the energy requirements of capturing CO2 from post-combustion coal and natural gas power plants.

The TKO process improves the CO2 Capture System through heat recovery, thermal balancing and optimized process flow. The primary advantage of this newly patented system is that it directly reduces the largest single cost of CO2 capture - the use of power plant steam - to a ratio of below 1 unit steam required to 1 unit CO2 captured.

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Labels: co2, coal, costs, environment, fossil-fuels

Breakthrough in battle to curb greenhouse gases

A team of scientists has developed a highly energy-efficient method of converting waste carbon dioxide into chemical compounds, marking a breakthrough in the fight to cut greenhouse gases. The team from Newcastle University estimates that the technology has the potential to use up to 48 million tonnes of waste carbon dioxide per year.

The method developed by the team led by Michael North, a professor of organic chemistry, converts waste carbon dioxide into cyclic carbonates. Cyclic carbonates are widely used in the manufacture of products including solvents, paint-strippers, bio-degradable packaging as well as having applications in the chemical industry. They also have the potential for use in the manufacture of a new class of efficient anti-knocking agents in petrol.

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Labels: co2, greenhouse-gases

Chemists at UCLA Design the Least Dense Crystals Known to Man for Applications in Clean Energy

13 Apr 2007

Chemists at UCLA have designed new organic structures for the storage of voluminous amounts of gases for use in alternative energy technologies.

The research, to be published on April 13 in the journal Science, demonstrates how the design principles of reticular chemistry have been used to create three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks, which have high thermal stability, high surface areas and extremely low densities.

The covalent organic frameworks, or COFs (pronounced "coffs"), one of these new classes of materials, are the first crystalline porous organic networks...Some of the biggest energy & environment challenges have been finding ways to store hydrogen for use as a fuel, to use methane as an alternative fuel, and to capture and store carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks. The research team believes COFs are uniquely suited for all these applications because of their functional flexibility and their extremely light weight and high porosity.

Read the full report from here @ Technology News Daily

Labels: co2, hydrogen, methane, research

UK push for biofuels may harm environment, campaigners say

19 Mar 2007 bbj.hu

A UK plan to help tackle global warming by increasing the use of biofuels such as palm oil and rapeseed may do more harm to the environment than good,
environmental campaign groups said.

Fuel suppliers will have to ensure that from April 2008 a certain percentage of their sales come from biofuels, under a UK Department for Transport program. The proposal could see businesses producing biofuels by destroying rainforests and wetlands, threatening endangered habitats and species and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, according to Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The groups said the government should tighten rules to ensure biofuel producers meet minimum standards on greenhouse gas emissions, and establish "environmental audits” of the entire life-cycle of the fuel, from cultivation through transportation to combustion.

Read the full report from here @ BBJ, Hungary

Labels: climate-change, co2, environment

Europe Tightens CO2 Standards with Two Directives

The European Commission has proposed two directives to combat CO2 emissions from cars.

The first proposal will force carmakers to cut CO2 emissions from new cars by 18% by 2012. Carmakers would be responsible for getting emissions down to 130 grams of CO2 per kilometer (g/km) through technology improvements.

The second proposal, which updates a fuel-quality directive from 1998, outlines new fuel-quality standards that aim to achieve, by 2020, a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions throughout the whole product life cycle.

Read the full report from here @ The American Chemical Society web page

Labels: climate-change, co2, environment

Breakthrough Carbon Capture Technology That Turns Wastewater to Resource

Press release

Sydney based greentech company Geo-Processors Pty Limited announced the completion of development of a breakthrough Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology following successful initial process trials.

The technology - identified as Carbon Capture and Products Recovery (CCPR) system - enables efficient capture of CO2 from ambient air or point-sources and then conversion to mineral byproducts for industrial use or recycling.

Central to this technology is the use of massive volumes of bicarbonate-rich water produced as waste water by oil/gas production, coal mining and coal power stations and desalination processes - currently a source of environmental concerns and operational costs.

Read more from this press release @ IPD Group

Labels: co2, environment

PermaLink - Breakthrough Carbon Capture Technology Turns Wastewater to Resource posted by Ecacofonix : 8:50 PM  0 Comments

Total Launches the First Integrated CO2 Capture and Geological Sequestration Project in a Depleted Natural Gas Field in SW France

Press release

February 12, 2007

Total announces the launch of a pilot CO2 capture and sequestration project in the Lacq basin in southwestern France. The project, which leverages a technique considered among the most promising in the fight against climate change, calls for up to 150,000 metric tons of CO2 to be injected into a depleted natural gas field in Rousse (Pyrenees) over a period of two years as from end-2008.

Read the full press release here @ OilVoice

Labels: climate-change, co2