| |
Airlines push for
homegrown jet fuel
By CHRIS KAHN, AP
Business Writer
Fri Aug 15
With the price of oil still
above $100 a barrel, everything from wood chips to chicken
fat is being scrutinized as an alternative to traditional fuel.
But when it comes to airplanes, finding the right mix poses
a special challenge.
"When you're in an
airplane, you don't want your fuel to start solidifying,"
said Robert Dunn, a Department of Agriculture chemical engineer who is
studying biodiesel jet fuel.
The airline industry is
aggressively pushing for homegrown alternatives to
petroleum-based jet fuel, while leaning on customers with a variety of
new travel charges to help control a projected $61 billion
industrywide fuel
expense this year. A number of alternatives to standard jet
fuel have been studied for years, though
aircraft manufacturers
say the challenge is to find ideas that will work
now.
Jet engines can be
retrofitted to run on hydrogen, for example. But hydrogen
does not pack the same punch as traditional jet fuel — kerosene — and
would require airlines to buy planes designed with massive
tanks.
That is a tough choice
for cash-strapped carriers, said Billy Glover, managing
director of environmental strategy at Boeing Commercial
Airplanes.
The best bet right now
for non-conventional fuel comes from South Africa, experts
said. The country has powered its airline industry for a decade
using a coal-based jet fuel blend developed by
petrochemicals group
Sasol. It's technically a "synthetic" fuel, which means it
can be used without altering engines or other
aircraft
equipment.
A number of U.S.
companies are developing a variety of similar synthetics.
Airline experts say three companies in particular could provide as
much as three million gallons a day of synthetic fuel by
2012: American Clean
Coal Fuels of Portland, Ore., Baard Energy in Vancouver,
Wash., and Rentech Inc. of Los Angeles.
Though significant
supplies will not be ready for several years, the
Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels
Initiative (CAAFI) — a
coalition that includes the Federal Aviation
Administration, airline, manufacturing and
airport associations —
wants to set standards by the end of the year for a
50-percent synthetic jet fuel.
CAAFI wants standards for
a totally synthetic fuel ready in two
years.Executive
Director Richard L. Altman said the push for new fuel
standards is meant to show investors that
airlines will buy synthetic
fuel. Doing so will send needed dollars to energy startups
that may one day replace foreign oil, Altman said.
"Nobody will invest
unless the fuel is certified," he said. "So we have a bit
of a chicken-and-egg problem."
With more companies
investing in alternative energy, the thinking goes, the
more synthetic jet fuel eventually
becomes available. The
more fuel available, the easier it will be for
airlines to unshackle themselves from
volatile petroleum
markets.
Meanwhile, Boeing and Air
New Zealand later this year will test a biofuel made from
the oil-rich seeds of the jatropha tree, a Mexican plant that grows
in warm climates. Other synthetic fuel tests will follow
on Continental
Airlines and Japan Airlines flights. In February, Boeing
partnered with Virgin Atlantic to test a
flight that included a
biofuel mixture of babassu oil, which comes from a
palm tree in northern Brazil, and coconut oil.
"We're looking for
something that is so correct in its performance that it can
be interchanged with petroleum-based kerosene," Glover said.
"From a distribution standpoint, from a technical
standpoint, it needs
to fit without modifications or special
handling."
Many biofuels may create
more problems than they solve, however. Using edible
feedstocks such as corn and sugar could raise the price of food.
And palm trees for babassu and coconut oil could lead to
clearing large chunks
of rain forest.
These are some of the
reasons why algae-based synthetic fuel is getting a lot of
attention. Algae is
inedible, and it has a relatively high yield compared with
other crops, using less land to produce the
same amount of
oil.
"It can be grown anywhere
you can have a pool of water and expose it to sunlight,"
said Stanford Seto, an expert in aviation fuels who works with
ASTM International, a Pennsyvania-based organization that
develops standards for
jet fuel.
Investors have pumped
almost $84 million into companies developing algae-based
fuel so far this year, up from $29 million in all of 2007,
according to the Cleantech Group, an industry research
firm.
Despite its promise, it
will be years before algae biofuel could be sold at a price
that would make sense to an airline, said Dave Jones, co-founder of
LiveFuels, an algae fuel startup in San Carlos,
Calif. "If anyone is
below $50 a gallon, I'd be stunned," he said. "We have a
pretty good idea on how to grow algae. The biggest challenge is in the
harvesting and how to extract it from the
water."
Even if prices come down,
most airlines see synthetic fuel as a chance to run a
greener airline, not necessarily a cheaper one, said Nancy
Young, vice president of environmental affairs for the Air
Transport Association.
More fuel sources could
temper the effect oil speculation has on gas prices, and
they could give carriers fuel at a cost they can count on, she said.
But "you aren't going to find a fuel that's pennies on the
dollar than what we
find today," she said.
For travelers, that means
that fewer flight options and charges for checked bags,
drinks and other items are here to stay. "Even if we were to double the volume we
were to make in biofuels every year for the next 10 years,
we're still looking at
maybe this will impact 15 percent of the overall fuel
supply," said Brian Fan, Cleantech's
senior director of
research.
"Realistically, for
anything to be happening at scale, enough to actually
impact an airline's bottom line, we're
years away," Fan
said.
Copyright © 2008 The
Associated Press
Algae: Biofuel of the Future?
August. 6, 2008 — In the world of alternative fuels,
there may be nothing greener than pond scum.
Algae are tiny biological factories that use photosynthesis
to transform carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy so
efficiently that they can double their weight several times
a day.
As part of the photosynthesis process algae produce oil and
can generate 15 times more oil per acre than other plants
used for biofuels, such as corn and switchgrass. Algae can
grow in salt water, freshwater or even contaminated water,
at sea or in ponds, and on land not suitable for food
production.
On top of those advantages, algae — at least in theory —
should grow even better when fed extra carbon dioxide (the
main greenhouse gas) and organic material like sewage. If
so, algae could produce biofuel while cleaning up other
problems.
"We have to prove these two things to show that we really
are getting a free lunch," said Lisa Colosi, a professor of
civil and environmental engineering who is part of an
interdisciplinary University of Virginia research team,
recently funded by a new U.Va. Collaborative
Sustainable Energy Seed Grant worth
about $30,000.
With the grant, the team will try to determine
exactly how promising algae biofuel production can be by
tweaking the inputs of carbon dioxide and organic matter to
increase algae oil yields.
Scientific interest in producing fuel from algae has been
around since the 1950s, Colosi said. The U.S. Department of
Energy did pioneering
research on it from 1978 to 1996.
Most previous and current research on algae biofuel, she
said, has used the algae in a manner similar to its natural
state — essentially letting it grow in water with just the
naturally occurring inputs of atmospheric carbon dioxide
and sunlight. This approach results in a rather low yield
of oil — about 1 percent by weight of the algae.
The U.Va. team hypothesizes that feeding the algae more
carbon dioxide and organic material could boost the oil
yield to as much as 40 percent by weight, Colosi said.
Proving that the algae can thrive with increased inputs of
either carbon dioxide or untreated sewage solids will
confirm its industrial ecology possibilities — to help with
wastewater treatment, where dealing with solids is one of
the most expensive challenges, or to reduce emissions of
carbon dioxide, such as coal power-plant flue gas, which
contains about 10 to 30 times as much carbon dioxide as
normal air.
"The main principle of industrial ecology is to try and use
our waste products to produce something of value," Colosi
said.
Research partner Mark White, a professor at the
McIntire
School of Commerce, will help the team
quantify the big-picture environmental and economic
benefits of algae biofuel compared to soy-based biodiesel,
under three different sets of assumptions.
White will examine the economic benefits of algae fuel if
the nation instituted a carbon cap-and-trade system, which
would increase the monetary value of algae's ability to
dispose of carbon dioxide. He will also consider how algae
fuel economics would be impacted if there were increased
nitrogen regulations (since algae can also remove nitrogen
from air or water), or if oil prices rise to a prohibitive
level.
The third team member is Andres Clarens, a professor of
civil and
environmental engineering with
expertise in separating the oil produced by the algae.
The team will experiment on a very small scale — a few
liters of algae at a time. They will seek to optimize the
oil output by using a pragmatic engineering approach,
testing basic issues like whether it makes a difference to
grind up the organic material before feeding it to the
algae.
Wastewater solids and algae, either dead or alive, are on
the menu. "We're looking at dumping the whole dinner on top
of them and seeing what happens," Colosi said.
Some of these pragmatic issues may have been tackled
already by the various private companies, including oil
industry giants Chevron and Shell, which are already
researching algae fuel, but a published scientific report
on these fundamentals will be a major benefit to other
researchers looking into algae biofuel.
Published evidence of improved algae oil output might spur
significant follow-up efforts by public and private
sectors, since the fundamentals of this technology are so
appealing, Colosi said. Research successes would also open
the door to larger grants from agencies like the U.S.
Department of Energy, and could be immediately applicable
to the handful of pilot-scale algae biofuel facilities
recently funded by Shell and start-up firms.
— By Brevy Cannon
|
|