Tag: diesels

Biofuels in Europe: Part 1

  • The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's cellulosic ethanol plant. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The US government is spending
millions of dollars to build bio-energy
plants. They’ll turn everything from
wood chips to algae into energy. But
these facilities are years behind what
they are already doing in Europe –
especially in Germany. In the first
part of our three-part series on biofuels
in Europe, Sadie Babits takes us to one
German plant that makes green energy
on a massive scale:

Transcript

The US government is spending
millions of dollars to build bio-energy
plants. They’ll turn everything from
wood chips to algae into energy. But
these facilities are years behind what
they are already doing in Europe –
especially in Germany. In the first
part of our three-part series on biofuels
in Europe, Sadie Babits takes us to one
German plant that makes green energy
on a massive scale:

We’re in Eastern Germany where crews work on what looks like brew vats.

(construction sound)

These monster tanks remind me of vats for brewing beer, except these vats will brew energy from fermenting rye, manure and bacteria.

“Basically, we’re standing here in front of the biogas and bio fertilizer production area. The big fermenter is for the biogas production.”

Oliver Lutke is our tour guide. He’s really a chemical engineer for Verbio. The company is one of Germany’s largest commercial producers of biofuels. Lutke’s been involved in turning this ethanol facility into a plant that makes ethanol and biogas. That’s methane.

“We convert everything into energy by using biological processes. This combination biogas and bioethanol production plant isn’t existing in the world.”

That’s what Verbio claims anyway. The company buys grain from some four-thousand farmers in the region. The grain gets turned into biogas and ethanol. Verbio then turns the minerals from making these biofuels into fertilizer.
That goes back to the farmers for their crops.

“We’re closing the loop to the farmer converting all the carbon to energy and the minerals going back to the farmers as fertilizer which is growing the plants used to extract the energy.”

Lutke says the company has the technology to make this industrial sized plant profitable. That baffles skeptics because it costs a lot to make green energy. You have to buy the grain. And the actual process of turning that grain into fuel can be really inefficient. By the time you’ve made one gallon of biofuel, that gallon of oil is cheaper.

Jan Liebetrau isn’t convinced Verbio has the answer. He researches bioenergy and its potential in Germany.

“If you put lots of energy into the system and you get bioethanol you’re putting more energy in than you get out.”

So making bio ethanol costs energy, which defeats the whole purpose of producing it in the first place. Lutke doesn’t see it that way. He says Verbio has the technology to make biofuels without losing energy. And because the company’s process is more efficient, Lutke says they’ve cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

“We emit 200,000 tons and the plants we are using will eat off 180,000 tons and that’s a closed cycle.”

It’s not perfect, but there’s less greenhouse gas being released than, say, from an oil refinery. Lutke is convinced bio energy will play a big role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Germany, and Europe for that matter, have become leaders on this. Germany wants to be the first industrialized nation to be powered entirely by renewable energy – a goal Germany could reach by 2050, well ahead of the U.S.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Squeezing More Oil Out of Soybeans

  • Recently, scientists completed a big-picture map of soy's basic genetic make-up. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Bio-diesel is supposed to make
big-rigs and trucks run cleaner.
But to make enough biodiesel on
the cheap, we’ll need to get more
oil out of soybeans. Shawn Allee says we could be one step
closer to fixing that:

Transcript

Bio-diesel is supposed to make
big-rigs and trucks run cleaner.
But to make enough biodiesel on
the cheap, we’ll need to get more
oil out of soybeans. Shawn Allee says we could be one step
closer to fixing that:

Tom Clemente is a kind of true-believer in biodiesel. He studies plant biology at the University of Nebraska. Clemente says the problem is, we use pricey soy-bean oil to make biodiesel.

“The downside is there’s just not enough of the oil to really make a dent on petroleum.”

Clemente figures scientists can manipulate genes inside soy beans to boost oil content, but no one knew exactly where the genes are. Recently, though, scientists completed a big-picture map of soy’s basic genetic make-up. Clemente hopes that’ll speed up development of oily soy beans – just for biodiesel.

“Really getting a bio-based sustainable fuel from some sort of cropping system, the production’s going to have be really up there.”

Clemente hopes we get enough biodiesel to clean up the nation’s dirtiest vehicles, such as construction equipment and city buses.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Ethanol Goes to Court in Cali

  • California regulators want car fuels to come from sources that create fewer greenhouse gas emissions. That means corn-based ethanol will soon get a kind of penalty in California's fuel market. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The US government is steadily
increasing the amount of ethanol
used in our gasoline supply.
But Shawn Allee reports
that effort’s hit a roadblock
in the country’s largest gasoline
market:

Transcript

The US government is steadily
increasing the amount of ethanol
used in our gasoline supply.
But Shawn Allee reports
that effort’s hit a roadblock
in the country’s largest gasoline
market:

California regulators want car fuels to come from sources that create fewer greenhouse gas emissions. That means corn-based ethanol will soon get a kind of penalty in California’s fuel market.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council say ethanol should be at a disadvantage. The NRDC’s Roland Hwang says when we grow corn for fuel, farmers overseas plant more corn.

“Someone’s going to cut down a rain forest or convert pasture land or grass land to grow more food. Unfortunately, converting that land will lead to very dramatic increases in global warming pollution.”

Hwang wants the ethanol industry to stop using food crops for fuel.

Ethanol makers are not taking California’s rules sitting down, though; they’ve gone to court. They argue more lenient federal rules on ethanol should trump California’s.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Pitching Diesels as an Eco-Friendly Option

  • VW's Jetta TDI - a diesel that the EPA estimates at 40 miles per gallon (Photo by Julie Grant)

If you’re thinking about buying a cleaner, more fuel-efficient
car, you might think a hybrid is your best option. But some
automakers want people to look at an older technology when
they’re looking for green cars: the diesel engine. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

If you’re thinking about buying a cleaner, more fuel-efficient
car, you might think a hybrid is your best option. But some
automakers want people to look at an older technology when
they’re looking for green cars: the diesel engine. Julie Grant
reports:

Lots of automakers make diesel cars – BMW, Ford, General
Motors, Volkswagen. But they sell most of them in Europe,
not the U.S. Diesel engines have a bad rap here.

Just ask Jerry Doble; he used to drive a diesel truck.

“They’re noisy and they’re smelly and they’re hard to start in
the winter. And that’s about it, I guess.”

But Doble hasn’t seen the new diesel cars making their way
from Europe.

Mike Omotoso is an auto industry analyst with JD Power and
Associates.

He says diesel carmakers have lowered their tailpipe
emissions. They’ve put in extensive filtering systems. Plus,
the fuel, itself, is cleaner than it used to be.
Diesel used to have lots of stinky sulfur – up to 500 parts per
million – now it has only 15 parts per million.

But Omotoso says when most Americans think of clean cars,
diesels aren’t the first thing that come to mind.

“When people think of clean vehicles they think of the Prius
first, and then they think of Toyota and they think of Honda
as well. The manufacturers, especially the German
manufacturers, are having to do a job catching up to the
positive publicity of hybrids. So they have to persuade the
American public that diesels can be clean as well.”

That’s why you may have seen those Volkswagen
commercials on TV – where one neighbor has a Prius, and
the other a new Jetta TDI-diesel:

VW: “A TDI set a Guiness World Record – 58 miles per
gallon.”

Prius owner: “58 miles per gallon!”

VW: “But this baby hauls. It’s like errr…errr… What does
your Prius sound like?”

Prius owner: (sound of quietly exhaling)

VW: “Oh. That’s cool.”

There’s a couple of things going on in that commercial.
It’s pushing the diesel as a green car. It’s also trying to
dispel the image of diesels being slow and clunky. They’re
trying to push diesels as green, muscle cars.

At this Volkswagen dealership, salesman Aaron Heinlein
says these commercials are having some success.

He says the only people who used to buy diesels worked
with the railways, in construction, or on farms. But this
week, he sold a TDI Jetta to a dietician.

“She would be the customer that, if she came in four years
ago, I would have said, ‘wow, you want to look at a diesel?
Cool, I’ll show you one.’ Now it’s just, that’s the norm. It’s
the lawyer, it’s the dentist, it’s the traveling salesperson who
is in their car a lot and needs better fuel mileage that you
wouldn’t have seen four years ago.”

Diesels cars still makeup less than 1% of the market.

Americans want power and speed and that’s not how they
think about diesel engines. Things are different in Europe,
where gas is upwards of $8 per gallon and consumers are
focused on good gas mileage.

Auto industry analysts are expecting to see a jump in diesel
sales in the U.S. in the next few years.

But JD Power and Associates doesn’t expect all this
marketing to make a huge dent in American car sales.
They’re forecasting diesel car sales at 4% to 5% of the
market by 2016.

That’s when the new federal fuel standards take effect.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Green Fuel From Green Slime

  • Roger Ruan directs the Center for BioRefining at the University of Minnesota. He's experimenting with algae that grow quickly in the nutrients in wastewater. He says the oil-rich algae are a potential source of biodiesel. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

When people talk about bio-fuels,
they usually mean ethanol from corn or diesel
fuel from soybeans. But there are lots of
possibilities. One of them is algae. Algae
contains a lot of oil. The US Department of
Energy experimented with algae for nearly
twenty years after the oil crisis of the 1970s.
But with fuel prices so high, scientists around
the world are looking at algae again. Stephanie
Hemphill reports one researcher thinks
he’s figured out how to grow lots of algae, fast:

Transcript

When people talk about bio-fuels,
they usually mean ethanol from corn or diesel
fuel from soybeans. But there are lots of
possibilities. One of them is algae. Algae
contains a lot of oil. The US Department of
Energy experimented with algae for nearly
twenty years after the oil crisis of the 1970s.
But with fuel prices so high, scientists around
the world are looking at algae again. Stephanie
Hemphill reports one researcher thinks
he’s figured out how to grow lots of algae, fast:

Roger Ruan has been trying for years to figure out how to turn algae into diesel,
economically. He’s the director of the Center for BioRefining at the University of
Minnesota.

Ruan says there’s no question it can be done; some people are already producing algae
oil. They’re growing it in open ponds. It’s used for pharmaceuticals, food supplements,
and cosmetics.

“Right now, based on an open pond system, per acre per year, you can easily get 5,000
gallons of oil, and soybean would probably give you 50. That’s 100 times difference.”

So algae can be far more efficient at producing diesel fuel than soybeans. But how do
you grow enough algae to make a dent in the nation’s energy demand?

Ruan is turning to an unlikely partner: the local sewage treatment plant.

“Wastewater has lot of nutrients: phosphorus, nitrogen, are all available in wastewater,
and actually you spend lot of money to remove these from wastewater, so if we can kill
two birds with one stone, that would be the best, and that’s what we’re hoping to do.”

(sound of treatment plant)

St. Paul, Minnesota’s sewage treatment plant sits on the bank of the Mississippi River.
The basement of the building where the solids are separated from the liquids is a
brightly lit space. It’s filled with big steel pipes and valves and tanks.

Off to one side, Ruan’s team is setting up a rack of aquariums – the future home of juicy
green algae. When everything is ready, some of the partially-treated waste will be
diverted into the tanks, where it will feed the algae.

The waste is still full of stuff that’s bad for the river, but good for algae.

“It’s got a fair amount of phosphorus, and some ammonia nitrogen that the algae are
going to need.”

Bob Polta is manager of research and development at the treatment plant.

It’s easy to see why he likes this idea: every day the facility has to remove 4 tons of
phosphorus and more than 16 tons of nitrogen from the waste stream.

The algae experiment, if it works, will allow them to do some of that removal in a more
cost-effective way. And this could be the answer to Roger Ruan’s problem of trying to
create enough algae to make enough oil to compete with petroleum diesel.

Polta says there’s a big potential, both for cleaning wastewater and for producing
energy in the same place.

“All the wastewater treatment ponds in the small communities around the state are
essentially using algae to treat wastewater; it’s just that they’re not being harvested. It’s
just that we’re getting two goals together here, and two research groups, one is essentially taking algae and
harvesting the oil and making biodiesel, and the other is using algae as a treatment
scheme, and to see if we can make this thing really fit.”

Polta expects by the end of the year he’ll know more about whether this is a practical
idea.

Roger Ruan says within six-to-ten years someone, somewhere, will be producing diesel
from algae on a commercial scale.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

New Emission Control for Diesels

The company that fueled the innovation for cleaner auto exhaust is looking to do the same for diesel-powered trucks and buses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports: