Tag: biofuel

A sustainable energy future for NZ (without all the hot air)

This is a guest post by Phil Scadden, a regular commenter at Hot Topic (bio at the end of the post). Phil’s interested in energy issues, and has spent a considerable amount of his personal time developing an overview of New Zealand’s energy issues, inspired by the approach used by Cambridge physicist David MacKay in his recent book Sustainable Energy – without all the hot air. I’m very pleased to say that Phil is making his work available via Hot Topic (PDF here), because the perspective he brings provides a starting point for the strategic energy debate we need to be having. Over to Phil:

Sustainable Energy – without all the hot air by Cambridge physicist David MacKay is an excellent and highly readable book of numbers about the questions associated with sustainable energy (available as a free download at www.withouthotair.com). As an advocate of sustainable energy, he describes himself as “pro-arithmetic” rather than a campaigner for one type of energy production over another, which is surely what informed debate needs. Rather than dealing with daunting numbers, he reduces energy calculations to units of kWh/person/day. 1kWh is the unit we pay for in our electricity bills — the energy used by one bar heater switched on for one hour. If you want to prioritise savings then you need to read this book. Turning off a cell phone charger when not in use for a year saves the energy found in one hot bath. “If everyone does a little, then we will achieve only a little”.

The majority of MacKay’s calculations are done for the UK, and I was interested in a New Zealand perspective. To this end, I have used a similar approach to look at two questions.

  • Can New Zealand maintain its current per capita energy consumption without fossil fuels and, in particular, can we live on renewable energy sources alone?
  • How can we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption, in order to reduce our power requirements?

The detailed document (about 20 pages) can be downloaded here, but this is a quick overview.

Currently 30% of NZ’s energy comes from renewable generation. My calculations (based mainly on 2007 data) show that NZ has the potential to increase this to nearly 100% over the next few decades, thus eliminating fossil fuel use, while still maintaining our current per capita energy consumption (assuming no significant population growth). We could do this initially with new hydro, geothermal and wind generation, while large-scale solar and marine technologies are promising options for the future. Biofuels are feasible but only at the expense of considerable agricultural intensification.

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Aquaflow’s NZ tech impresses China

Time for an update on Aquaflow, the Blenheim algae company we have frequently covered on Hot Topic this year. Things continue to look promising for it in the world outside NZ. Its discussions with overseas companies have resulted in a contract with Greenleaf Environmental of Chengdu City, Sichuan Province in China to investigate suitable sites in China for Aquaflow’s technology.

It’s quite a breakthrough. Sichuan is a leading clean technology centre and Aquaflow thinks it is the first company of its kind to move into the region. Greenleaf for its part is impressed by the two-fold function of the Aquaflow technology — remediating contaminated water, and producing green crude oil from the algae which infest the waters.

Aquaflow director Nick Gerritsen reports “amazing” unsolicited interest in recent months and the company is now evaluating more than 40 project opportunities across four continents, not including license and manufactured sales interest.

“The level of interest is mind boggling. We believe it’s because Aquaflow sits slap-dab on the cusp of two of the most fundamental issues that the world faces – fresh water and renewable fuels and chemicals.”

So far as the fuels and chemicals’ economics are concerned, the advantage for the Aquaflow process is its use of naturally-occurring wastewater algae which require no introduced elements such as extra CO2 and the fact that it uses existing infrastructure rather than building high rate ponds or intensive bio-reactor systems. The yield is lower but so are the costs.

The initial Hot Topic post on Aquaflow is here. Updates followed here, here and here.

Aquaflow’s Aussie adventure

algaeBlenheim company Aquaflow, appropriately, is not standing still. BusinessGreen reports it has embarked on a fund-raising programme in Australia to attract financing for the first of up to 16 pilot plants to demonstrate its algae fuel technology. For those who aren’t familiar with the enterprise, it extracts wild algae at the point of discharge from the Marlborough sewage ponds as a feedstock for biofuels, and in the process produces a much-improved water quality to the extent that it meets standards for irrigation use. By comparison with some of the overseas ventures which select and contain the algae it’s low tech, with a low capital requirement, albeit with a lower fuel yield. And it’s authentically renewable, which cannot be said of some processes which are using CO2 from fossil fuel burning to enhance the growth of the algae. (Hot Topic has carried reports of the company’s activity here and here and here.)

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South Island partnership in renewable biofuel

algaeAn interesting item of news concerning Aquaflow, the Blenheim algae farming company written about previously on Hot Topic here and here. They are combining efforts with another South Island company Solray Energy on the conversion of the harvested algae into fuel.

The Aquaflow operation in the Marlborough sewage ponds does two things – produces wild algae biomass from which oil can be extracted, and at the same time results in a discharged water which has been cleaned by the process to WHO irrigation standards.  The process of converting the biomass to fuel is obviously a key factor in the effectiveness of using naturally occurring algae. Solray has separately developed a reactor and extraction process to detoxify algae and deliver a crude oil and other co-products, with the oil capable of being refined as biofuel. It says it can convert all of the algae – not just the fatty acids – into the crude oil. Their new reactor can process several tonnes of harvested microalgae per day. It sounds a promising partnership. Continue reading “South Island partnership in renewable biofuel”

Go with the flow: NZ algae pioneers spark US interest

algaeNew Zealand company Aquaflow, which I wrote about in this post, has received praise in an article in Yale Environment 360 describing a project to use the city of Minneapolis’s sewage as a feedstock for algae from which biofuel can be derived.  A University of Minnesota professor, Roger Ruan, is engaged in the research and speaks optimistically of its prospects.  Early in the article comes this acknowledgement:

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