Could converting the huge amounts of garbage sitting in landfills around the world into biofuel be the answer to the growing energy crisis and a means of wrangling out-of-control carbon emissions?

Scientists in Singapore and Switzerland think so. Their research, published in Global Change Biology: Bioenergy, shows that by converting processed waste such as paper and cardboard into what is known as cellulosic ethanol, a second-generation biofuel, it would be easy to cut global carbon emissions by 80%.

Using data from the United Nation’s Human Development Index, the scientists estimated that 82.93 billion litres of cellulosic ethanol could be produced from the existing worldwide landfill. There’s certainly no shortage of urban waste to work with, unlike biofuel from crops which requires an increase in crop production which in turn has its own ecological costs.

Buy a dump, help the planet, turn a profit? Stranger things have happened.

Image: D’Arcy Norman

Date palm plantations line the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq. Once leading date exporters, they now rely heavily on the domestic market. But Iraq only consumes around half of the 350,000 tonnes of dates it produces annually, leaving around 150,000 tonnes of dates a year to be disposed of. Some are fed to animals. Many are left to rot.

Now, according to Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s, there is a third option – converting the unused dates to biofuel.

In a move that is more economically rather than environmentally motivated, the Prime Minister’s office issued a cabinet statement on Sunday announcing that a United Arab Emirates based company has received the go ahead to make biofuel from the dates.

Farming and agriculture is Iraq’s leading industry, but decades of sanctions, isolation and war have resulted in a poorly functioning agricultural sector.  This biofuel project, therefore, is seen as a new way to boost agricultural productivity.

How much date biofuel the UAE company will be able to produce is unknown, but any produced will initially be used domestically. If successful, it is expected that farmers will expand the date plantations, with any resultant biofuel being exported.

Image: Itinerant Tightwad

If you think that watermelons are only good as thirst quenchers during the hot summer months, think again.

Last year, watermelons made headline news when scientists announced that it can have a Viagra-like effect.

Now, studies conducted at the Oklahoma Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have proven that the simple sugars in watermelon juice can be converted to ethanol. But with each 20 pound watermelon only producing enough sugar to derive approximately seven-tenths of a pound of ethanol, it’s going to take a whole lot of watermelons to make enough biofuel to get anything moving.

This shouldn’t be a problem given that approximately 20 percent of all watermelons are left in the fields (due to blemishes or deformities) are usually destroyed when the field is cleared for new planting.

Is there no end to the get up and go power of the common watermelon?

Image: theilr

If you’re thinking about shifting to biomass-fuelled appliances, beware – they might not be as clean as you think.

It’s true that biomass is a renewable, and therefore technically green, fuel. It’s also part of the carbon cycle, as burning wood and any other plant matter releases carbon dioxide into the air.

The main ecological advantage between such fuels and fossil fuels is that with biomass, the carbon is continually cycling – it hasn’t been locked away underground, and it can theoretically be tracked, offset and generally kept going round without adding to our worries.

Britain’s Environmental Agency wants everyone to take a closer look at this assumption.

Under that overarching term “biomass” is a lot of room and while it’s true that the cleanest varieties produce just a few percent of emissions from coal, other types are much higher.

In a just-released report snappily titled “Biomass: Carbon Sink or Carbon Sinner,” it claims that digging up pasture land and growing energy-packed crops – such as rapeseed – and processing them as fuel can emit more greenhouse gases than burning fossil fuels.

The report suggests all biomass-producing companies should be under the same scrutiny as their eco-unfriendlier counterparts. Biomass is still the way forward – but as with the question of food or fuel, it’s a solution to our problems that still needs a lot of work. Blanket assumptions not welcome.

Image: johntrainor

Meet Colin Coon. He’s an ordinary high school senior with a not so ordinary senior project. Having spent the last year converting a 1980 Mercedes station wagon to run on vegetable oil, he has just taken off on a six week cross-country road trip. His goal – to make people more aware of alternative energy sources.

Now, not all high schools would be open to a student’s “Ëœsenior project’ involving a road trip of 8500 miles in a car that’s running on vegetable oil. But then, New Gate School in Sarasota, Florida isn’t exactly your ordinary, everyday school. One of only six Montessori-based secondary schools in the country, New Gate focuses not only on strong academics but also on encouraging students to create their own educational experiences by pursuing what interests, intrigues, and excites them.

Colin not only converted the car but also raised over $6000 for the trip and has been in contact with many small restaurants on his route to ask them to donate vegetable oil for the cause.

Along the way, Colin will be speaking at schools and spreading the word that there are other ways to get around besides using fossil fuels.

Want to come along for the ride? Then head on over to Colin’s Green Machine and enjoy the trip.

Images: Paraflyer, My Sun Coast

Imagine capturing the CO2 people exhale and converting it into biofuel to power diesel vehicles and heating systems. It’s all part of an experiment that’s taking place at the Liverpool John Lennon Airport in the UK.

The Eco-Box, designed by scientists from Origo Industries, works by capturing CO2 through a photo-bioreactor. This CO2 becomes feedstock for algae which then produces a biomass that can be refined and converted into green fuel.

The Eco-Box carbon recycling system was installed at the airport in January, with a goal of harnessing 24,000 during its pilot program. Once that’s shown to be successful, the experiment will aim for expansion, with an ultimate goal of establishing a 289,000 gallon system which would provide approximately 800 gallons of biofuel a day.

If successful, the Eco-box could have significant impact on how companies manage carbon emissions and obtain fuel. Just imagine, with all the hot air the pundits expend, they’d finally earn their keep!

(source)

Image: Aaron Wagner

Hundreds of years ago, it used to eat the bottoms of sailing ships. Now, it could help keep the bio-energy industry afloat.

It’s called the gribble. A marine isopod with a taste for wood (think woodlouse), the four-spotted variety called Limnoria quadripunctata used to burrow through the hulls of wooden ships, causing no end of grief for medieval sailors. In fact, lore holds Christopher Columbus was stranded in Jamaica for a year after his ship suffered a particularly nasty gribbling.

But gribbles have just made the transition from pest to scientific marvel. Studies undertaken by the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products in the University of York, England, are investigating exactly how the gribble’s stomach is able to break down the complex polysaccharides in cellulose into sugars that can be fermented. The end product would be an energy-packed liquid biofuel – in other words, a potential replacement for gasoline.

The gribble’s digestive enzymes are unlike any seen in animals before, and experts hope that by replicating them a new generation of super-efficient biofuels could result. The technology is unlikely to alleviate the food or fuel crisis (our money is on algae) but it’s yet another remarkable example of how the natural world has already solved a problem that had us stumped…even if it is a little hard to be bested by a woodlouse.

image: mike baird

Last year Virgin Atlantic ran a Boeing 747-400 from London to Amsterdam using an aviation fuel mix containing coconut oil biofuel. Undoubtedly a triumph of technical engineering, it was also labeled “high-altitude greenwash” by environmentalists. The problem was a familiar one.

“If Virgin would power its entire fleet with biofuel, it would have to use about half of the UK’s arable land.”

- Jos Dings, European Federation of Transport and the Environment

Last week, a Continental Boeing 737-800 took a 90 minute flight with the help of something far more promising – algae. It’s the hottest fuel of the future, a creature thriving in hostile, even toxic, conditions and yielding enormous quantities of energy. Most importantly, it doesn’t grow on land – so the problem of food verses fuel disappears. Impressively, the fuel under trial doesn’t require any expensive modifications of aircraft technology and acts like standard aviation fuel at extreme temperatures. It all sounds a little too good to be true.

But is the money going into the right kind of aviation technology? A few days ago, Inhabitat featured the gorgeous design of the Aeolus helium-filled airship. No emissions, no noise to disrupt the biophony, and the second most common element in the universe filling its sail. (Or maybe helium isn’t the best choice. The world has remained leery of hydrogen-filled aircraft ever since the Hindenberg disaster of 1937. George Monbiot makes a good case for rediscovering hydrogen airships at The Guardian).

There’s no denying how green airship technology is – yet a 40-hour transatlantic crossing might be a bitter pill to swallow, and there’s a world of difference between weathering a storm in an airship and powering over it in a plane. Perhaps that’s where hybrid airships come in.

For now, jetting around on pond slime sounds a fine idea.

Image: OiMax

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