Canadian Solar has been chosen to provide solar modules for a solar project on the Leeward Islands. Comet Solar, an Anguilla-based solar installation company selected Canadian Solar, and when complete the solar power project will provide an estimated 600KW of power per year, making it the largest commercial project permitted by the St. Kitts & Nevis Government to date.- The most powerful turbine-generator unit ever built by Voith has entered service in the Chinese hydropower plant Xiluodu on the Jinsha River. After a successful 72-hour test run, Voith handed over the first of a total of three such machines to the customer “China Three Gorges Corporation.” With 784 megawatt the output of the generator-turbine unit in Xiluodu is higher than that of the world’s largest hydropower plants and consequently sets new standards.
- The World Energy Council (WEC) has welcomed Enerjisa as the newest member of Global Partner programme. Enerjisa is a leading energy company operating in Turkey’s electricity generation, distribution, trading, wholesale and retail markets. The WEC is working to devise strategies to address global energy challenges and to deliver sustainable energy systems.
- The 6th Sugar Asia conference will be held at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai February 27-28, 2014. Sugar Asia is an international Conference and Expo on Sugar and its allied industries. This two days event will be focused on equipments and technology display for Sugar and allied industries like Ethanol, Distilleries, Cogen and Cane Farming. A two days conference is major highlight of the event where galaxy of international speakers are going to deliver best of their research, information and experience in front of the audience coming from various countries.
Algae Int’l, Gulf Hydrocarbon Ink Biodiesel Deal
A commercial scale algae producer and a biodiesel maker ink a deal that will end up turning algae oil into biodiesel. Biodiesel Magazine reports Gulf Hydrocarbon will represent Algae International Group in sales and distribution of its algal oils and products created with the algal oils, including biodiesel, and precedes Algae International Group’s commercial production at its pilot facility located in Tulare, Calif.
Algae International Group advises that it will start the relationship with Gulf Hydrocarbon by shipping samples of proprietary and nonproprietary algal oils for testing as feedstocks for biodiesel. Jess Hewitt, chairman of Gulf Hydrocarbon, said, “Algae oils were approved by the U.S. EPA for use as a biodiesel feedstock in 2010 but we have yet to see the feedstock available. By shipping samples to the biodiesel producers, we can begin the process of registering the numerous production plants with the EPA.”
As a part of the agreement, Gulf Hydrocarbon will offer standard biodiesel reference fuels made using Algae International Group’s output from its pilot facility. “In order to satisfy the OEM’s requirements for engine and material compatibility, we must be able to supply a standard reference fuel before the engine manufacturers can certify use of the algal-based biodiesel in vehicle and nonroad engines,” Hewitt said. “Gulf Hydrocarbon will be responsible for quality control and packaging of these fuels for distribution to fuel laboratories and OEM testing facilities.”
Gulf Hydrocarbon will also represent Algae International Group’s excess biogas market.
Investing Big Bucks in Biodiesel from Down Under
The owner of Australia’s biggest biodiesel plant is seeing more greenbacks (or, well, whatever the nickname is for Down Under Dollars) for its company. Lignol Energy Corporation, already a leader in advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals, is putting another nearly $1 million US dollars into Territory Biofuels Limited, increasing LEC’s share of TBF to about two-thirds of its holdings.
“We are excited to be increasing our ownership in such a large scale biofuels project. This investment represents the opportunity for our company to have a substantial majority equity interest in potentially a very profitable business”, said Ross MacLachlan, CEO and Chairman of LEC. “Our goal remains to work with TBF with a view to restarting the plant in late 2013 with an appropriate project funding package in place. Once operational, we plan to incorporate plant upgrades to process lower cost feedstocks that should further enhance margins in 2014.”
TBF owns a large scale biodiesel plant in Darwin, Northern Territory. It was originally built in 2008 to turn palm oil and food-grade vegetable oil but closed down in 2009. Next year, there are plans to re-open the plant to run on more feedstocks, including tallow, used cooking oil and palm sludge oil.
How the Make the RFS Attainable
According to Purdue University energy policy specialist Wally Tyner, the U.S. can likely produce federally mandated levels of biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2014 if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reduces its requirements by 2.3 billion gallons. The RFS requires a minimum amount of biofuels to be blended into transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel. For 2013, that level is 16.55 billion gallons. As it stands now, the volume requirement continues to rise each year until 2022.
Tyner projects that refiners could reasonably expect to produce 15.85 billion gallons of biofuels, less than the 18.15 billion that the EPA requires in its RFS for 2014. The EPA said on Aug. 6 that it will “propose adjustments” to next year’s volume requirements in the next few weeks. One element that has caused the EPA to change required volumes is the lack of commercially available “advanced” and “cellulosic” biofuels. However, despite the lowering of these category volumes, the EPA has maintained the overall biofuels production requirement.
“The devil is in the details. However, it is clear that if the EPA does what is implied … the RFS moves from being unworkable to quite manageable,” Tyner says in his article, “The Biofuels Renewable Fuel Standard – EPA to the Rescue.”
The RFS has been a topic of debate for several years in part because of the corn ethanol “blend wall,” the point at which the market cannot consume as much ethanol as the EPA requires to be produced. One reason, and one that was not factored in during the development of the RFS, is the decreased consumption of gasoline nationwide – from 141 billion gallons in 2007, when the RFS mandates were last updated, to a rate of 133 billion now.
Tyner calculates in the report that 15.85 billion gallons of biofuels can be produced in 2014 if the EPA reduces its volume targets for corn ethanol to better align with the blend wall, 
and by lowering its requirements for production of cellulosic biofuels such as from corn stover, straw and Miscanthus grass to what the EPA might deem to be available.
He said blend requirements could be met in 2015 and 2016 with similar reductions. With no changes in the RFS, the energy industry would have to blend 20.5 billion gallons of biofuels into gasoline in 2015 and 22.25 billion gallons in 2016. His calculations would reduce those totals to 16.58 billion in 2015 and 17.3 billion the following year.
The EPA has shown willingness to reconsider the blend mandates and using information it has at hand, along with analyses done by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), plans to announce final 2014 volumes sometime this fall.
DOE Looks to Better Catalysts for Biomass to Biofuel
New and better catalysts could be the key to unlocking the potential biofuel locked up in biomass. This article from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory says scientists at the lab’s Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) for the past four years have been looking at how to improve the efficiency and selectivity of catalysts:
IACT was originally founded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2009 as a special Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), in which scientists from both academic institutions and government labs were asked to team up to discover better ways of converting biomass – plant sugars from corn or sugarcane – into combustible diesel fuel, jet fuel or gasoline.
“While catalysts are used in a countless number of manufacturing and industrial processes, we wanted to focus on biofuels because they provide a challenging platform on which to work,” [Argonne chemist Chris] Marshall said. “The point of the EFRCs is to focus on some of the most important scientific problems we face today.”
In order to successfully convert biomass into fuel, Marshall and his colleagues have developed a roadmap of chemical reactions. Each of these reactions requires either a different catalytic material or a different set of reaction conditions to work effectively.
“The problem with biomass is that it’s loaded with oxygen, while the fuels we’re trying to create are much more oxygen-poor and hydrogen-rich,” Marshall said. “Hydrogen is an expensive commodity; if we’re going to use it, we need to use it judiciously.”
The most daunting task for the scientists is to improve the catalysts’ selectivity, while increasing the lifespan of these workhorses of biomass conversion. One discovery that is helping is a technique called “overcoating,” in which a dome-like sheath of protective material is added on top of the metal catalyst. Using a method known as atomic layer deposition (ALD), researchers are able to deposit extremely thin and uniform sheets of material on different surfaces, just a few atoms thick. They hope eventually to expand the process into biological molecules.
New EPA Head Positive on Renewable Fuels
The newly confirmed head of the Environmental Protection Agency visited the Iowa State Fair last week where she spoke to farmers and met with environmentalists.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stressed her goal of building a better relationship with farmers. “My commitment to you is that at the end of my term, we will have a stronger, more productive, more trusting relationship between EPA and the agriculture community,” she said during her brief remarks.
In an interview with USDA Radio from Iowa, McCarthy was positive about the role of renewable fuels going forward. “We’re at a pretty exciting time,” she said. “We are seeing a lot of activity, especially here in Iowa where they have advanced ethanol plants. We’re working closely with the farming community and we’re looking at new feedstocks all the time, new ways of producing biofuels.”
Earlier this month, the EPA published the final 2013 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volumetric blending requirements, or Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO), and McCarthy says they support the RFS. “We see that the Renewable Fuel Standard is operating effectively, that the law gives us plenty of tools and flexibility that we can move this forward,” she said.
McCarthy was just confirmed as the administrator of EPA last month.
Ethanol Industry Celebrates Patriot’s 5th Anniversary
The ethanol industry is helping Patriot Renewable Fuels celebrate it’s 5th Anniversary this month with congratulations and well wishes for another successful five years and beyond. In addition, Patriot is thanking several of its partners including CHS, a farmer-owned cooperative that has enabled Patriot to connect to global distiller grain (DDGS) markets.
Each year, the ethanol plant produces 320,000 tons of high-quality animal feed that is loaded into containers on site and exported by CHS to Asian countries including China, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan. As countries around the world gain wealth there 
has been a significantly increasing demand for meat and as a result, for more animal feed. Distillers grains are a high-protein, cost-competitive feed for cattle, hogs and other animals.
“Our DDGS exports have contributed an additional $300 million reduction on our nation’s U.S. trade deficit,” explained Gene Griffith, the plant’s general manager. “Over five years, corn purchased from area growers and processed into DDGS, a value-added protein ingredient, has fed approximately five million hogs.”
Griffith said due to the success of the relationship, Patriot has also expanded its relationship with CHS by naming them as its ethanol marketing partner. “Over the last five years, Patriot Renewable Fuels has shipped approximately 18,000 rail cars of ethanol,” said Griffith. “Together, Patriot Renewable Fuels and CHS are contributing significantly to rural economic development and providing consumers with a dependable, high quality ethanol fuel supply.”
But how does the corn needed to produce the ethanol and DDGs get to the plant at the right time? CGB, has been fulfilling this role for Patriot since the plant went online. Griffith noted that since Patriot began producing ethanol, the plant has operated in some of the tightest 
U.S. corn stocks to usage ratios in history and through this as well as other challenges, CGB has been a successful partner.
Dan Aubry, CGB grain procurement manager said that the company’s strategic placement of facilities across the corn-belt have allowed the origination of grain throughout a 60-mile radius of the plant and allows utilization of other resources when the need arises.
“We’ve utilized Iowa rail corn and brought corn up the Illinois River from southern CGB origins,” explained Aubry. We’ve also brought corn from our southwest, northern and northeastern locations. Our footprint in northern Illinois and access to the Illinois River gives us an enormous draw territory and we’ve certainty utilized and will continue to utilize that for Patriot’s needs.”
Aubry added that his company looks forward to working with Patriot long into the future.
LanzaTech & Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy Partner
LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from waste gases, has partnered with the Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy (Centre), a joint venture between Indian Oil Corporation, Ltd. (IOC) and the Indian government’s Department for Biotechnology (DBT), to create a novel process for the direct production of low carbon fuels from industrial carbon dioxide emissions. LanzaTech and the Centre will leverage their expertise to create a new process for the direct conversion of waste CO2 into drop-in fuels through an acetates-to-lipids pathway.
LanzaTech has developed gas fermentation technology that can directly convert waste CO2 gases into acetates, and the Centre is working to increase the production yield of lipids (oils) by “feeding” acetates to microalgae. These oils can then be refined into fuels using a range of existing processing technologies.
“India has made it a national priority to balance its meteoric economic growth with environmental and social sustainability,” said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. “By converting India’s industrial waste CO2 emissions into low carbon fuels and chemicals, LanzaTech and the Centre can reduce overall emissions while creating a sustainable, domestic supply of transportation fuels. We look forward to extending our technology platform and our existing partnerships in India as we work with the team at the Centre on this initiative.”
Dr. R K Malhotra, Director, (R&D) of Indian Oil and Head of the DBT-IOC Centre said that “Any developments leading to useful conversion of carbon dioxide are most desirable,” and expressed hope that DBT-IOC Centre will come up with viable solutions in association with LanzaTech.
LanzaTech already has a working relationship with Indian Oil, India’s largest national oil company, to develop a domestic ethanol supply chain by leveraging LanzaTech’s technology with a range of carbon-containing waste streams widely available in India, including industrial carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from steel plants. The country is expected to become the world’s largest steel producer by 2015.
BioEnergy Bytes
- POET Biorefining plants in Gowrie and Coon Rapids, Iowa have donated $1,000 each to support the Fly Iowa 2013 Airshow that will feature the ethanol-powered Vanguard Squadron. The event takes place on August 24, 2013 and will be held at the Perry Municipal Airport, and is free and open to the public.
- Huaneng Power International, Inc. has announced that Huaneng Liaoning Changtu Laocheng Wind Farm Project has obtained the approval from the Development and Reform Commission of the Liaoning Province. The project has a planned installed capacity of 48MW.
- Duke Energy Renewables has acquired a 4.5 megawatt solar project in San Francisco, California from solar project developer Recurrent Energy. The Sunset Reservoir Solar Power Project is the largest solar generation facility in San Francisco.
- CHS Inc., a farmer-owned cooperative and a global energy, grains and foods company, has named Brian Legried as the vice president, Refined Fuels Sales and Energy Services. In this role he will provide strategic leadership and direction for the refined fuels sales organization focused on growing the Cenex brand.
Alberta Looks to Become Canada’s Biofuel Leader
A Canadian province most well-known for its petroleum products could be that country’s leader in non-petroleum energy. According to this article in the Edmonton Journal, Alberta, in all the headlines for its oilsands, could end up leading Canada by replacing half of its transportation fuels with biodiesel and ethanol.
“We now have ethanol from grain and biodiesel from oilseeds, and we can also have ethanol from poplar which is not used in many forestry management areas and we can grow dedicated energy crops,” said Bradley Saville, a professor of chemical engineering from the University of Toronto.
He spoke Friday at an event organized by the Biorefining Conversions Network on the University of Alberta campus.
He said a recent study determined that by using just five per cent of the arable land in Canada, 29 billion litres of biofuel could be produced.
“And while Alberta is the energy superpower because of its oil production and the oilsands, this scenario sees the province as remaining the superpower in biofuel production because of the large amount of really productive land in the province.”
But the trick for Canada is to get “from where we are now, which is a pretty low level, to a higher level. You have to have confidence as an investor, so this process will be incremental over the years,” said Saville.
One of the oilseeds seen as having great potential north of the border is camelina, although right now, it’s not as economical because there’s no market for the seed’s meal. But experts believe that will change.