Go Green // Current TV

Solutions to the Fuel Problem

Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy: these... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
3 comments

Making Power from a Disposal Problem

Certianly not the only group to do someting like this but its a reall two-fer T... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

San Francisco Opens Gate to National Biodiesel Conference & Expo

October 30, 2008

San Francisco Opens Gate to National Biodiesel Conference & Expo
The City by the Bay Will Make Inspirational Host for 2009 Conference

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Spot a city bus, a fire truck, or a double-decker tour bus in San Francisco, and chances are pretty good that it is running on 20 percent biodiesel (B20). The area’s biodiesel enthusiasm even flows beyond the “City by the Bay” into the Bay itself, where the famous Red and White Ferries cruise on B20.

“San Francisco is an inspiration to our industry like none I’ve ever seen,” said Joe Jobe, CEO of the National Biodiesel Board. “The enthusiasm for biodiesel is in every corner of the city. The commitment is contagious, and I am eager for our conference attendees to experience it for themselves.”

The San Francisco City Government is the largest known city in the world to use B20 fleet-wide, one of many reasons it is the perfect host for the 2009 National Biodiesel Conference & Expo, Feb. 1 – 4.

The conference educational program will be kicked off by the people who have made the biodiesel program there a success. Mayor Gavin Newsom is anticipated to speak. In 2006, he issued an Executive Directive designed to increase the pace of municipal use of biodiesel. Today, virtually all of the City’s 1,500 diesel vehicles run on B20. The City uses about 5 million gallons of B20 a year.

Other speakers from the City will include Marty Mellera, Chief of Climate Action and Greening – a title as progressive as San Francisco itself. Vandana Bali, Clean Vehicles Manager at the Department of the Environment, Mike Ferry of the San Francisco Fire Department and past recipient of the Eye on Biodiesel Inspiration Award, and Karri Ving, Biofuels Coordinator for the Public Utilities Commission will round out the general session.

The 2009 conference promises to offer its valuable educational and networking opportunities that attendees have come to expect. This year, one new feature is sustainability sessions supplementing existing educational tracks. Meet biodiesel peers at the golf tournament and Super Bowl party. For more information and to register, please visit www.biodieselconference.org. For discounted rates, register by November 14’s early bird deadline.

The NBB is the national trade association of the biodiesel industry and is the coordinating body for biodiesel research and development in the U.S.October 30, 2008 San Francisco Opens Gate to National Biodiesel Conference... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
1 comment

Taiwan scientist invents world's first chlorophyll organic battery

A scientist in Taiwan has invented the world's first chlorophyll organic battery... more

VegaNerDiva
added this
3 years ago
|
19 comments

Dodge pickup that runs on wood 1.6 mpp (that's miles per pound)

Wayne Keith is headed to Las Vegas in an old Dodge pickup that runs on, of all things, wood. He gets about 1.6 mpp (that's miles per pound) and reckons he needs about 1,000 pounds to get there. No problem. He's carrying a chainsaw and a list of lumberyards along the way.

Such are the provisions you need for Escape from Berkeley, a madcap alt-fuel race that mashes up Mad Max and Cannonball Run with a touch of the Darpa Challenge and Burning Man. If the rules are simple -- no petroleum allowed, and fuel must be scavenged along the way -- the challenge is anything but.

"The basic premise is build a vehicle out of junk, we'll give you the equivalent of one gallon of gas and you have to drive 600 miles to Las Vegas. Oh, and you can't buy any fuel along the way," says Jim Mason, the artist and inventor behind the race. "That's a pretty heavy stone to carry."

That isn't keeping the 10 teams lining up for this weekend's race from giving it a try in everything from a veggie-oil Lotus 7 to a steam-powered three-wheeler that looks like it rolled right out of the 19th century.

The race has drawn geeks and gearheads, artists and academics and even a rancher from Alabama, none of whom are waiting for General Motors or Toyota to lead us beyond oil. They've cobbled together an impressive fleet of street-legal and roadworthy cars, proving automakers aren't the only ones who can make autos. "I think energy will be our next hacking culture," Mason says. "If there's any goal here, it's to see how we can move energy from a commodity culture to a hacker culture."

Mason started hacking World War II-era Imbert wood gas technology three years ago. He's developed a DIY gasifier kit (he's sold 35 of them, at two grand a pop) and installed it in the 1989 Honda he's making the run to Vegas in. "A gasifier isn't a practical solution for urban transit," he concedes. "But it shows it can be done."

Still, if there's a favorite to take the $5,000 grand price, it's Alabama rancher Keith Wayne. He's making the run in a 1987 Dodge Dakota pickup truck, which is the fourth truck he's converted to run on wood gas. He's already put 30,000 miles on it, so he knows it works. "Gasification is a little tricky to grasp, but once you understand it, it's pretty simple," he says. "It takes a lot of rigging and welding and doing and redoing. But it's a cheap ride, and it's carbon-neutral. The scientists at Auburn (University) tell me it's cleaner than an electric car."

Those scientists oughta know, because one of them -- Dr. David Bransby -- is Keith's teammate. They're making their way across the country in a pair of wood-gas pickups, spreading the gasification gospel before making the run to Vegas. "We've been in touch with Lowe's and Home Depot and other places that will have scrap, and we'll be getting wood from them along the way," Keith says. As for those stretches of road where there's nothing but scrub and brush, well, Keith's got a chain saw and the rules allow him one gallon of gas, so he figures he's got it covered.

"We're looking forward to it," he says. "You get a group of people together, give them rules like this and tell them to drive from Point A to Point B without gas, well, there might be something come out of it you've never seen before."

Wayne Keith is headed to Las Vegas in an old Dodge pickup that runs on, of all things,... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

Carrots Not Sticks

"Carrotmobbing" is a new strategy to get stores to be more environmentally... more

rawleyv
added this
3 years ago
|
3 comments

first commercial algae plant to genereate power and clean smoke stack

The promise of commercial algae fuel is getting closer to reality with GreenFuel... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

UK announces world's largest algal biofuel project

"The world's biggest publicly funded project to make transport fuels from algae will be launched today by a government agency which develops low-carbon technologies.

The Carbon Trust will today announce a project to make algal biofuels a commercial reality by 2020. The plan could see up to £26m spent on developing the technology and infrastructure to ensure that algal biofuels replace a signficant proportion of the fossil fuels used by UK drivers.

Mark Williamson, innovations director at the Carbon Trust, said: "We must find a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to oil for our cars and planes if we are to deliver the deep cuts in carbon emissions necessary to tackle climate change. Algae could provide a significant part of the answer and represents a multibillion-pound opportunity."

Transport accounts for one-quarter of the UK's carbon emissions and is the fastest growing sector. Finding carbon-neutral fuels will be crucial to the government meeting its target to reduce overall emissions by 80% by 2050.

A recent review by the chairman of the Renewable Fuels Agency, Ed Gallagher, identified algae as a potential way to generate sustainable biofuels. Biofuels made from food crops have been blamed for rising food prices.

Algae produce a range of chemicals depending on their species and the environmental conditions in which they grow. View how the process works here. Scientists hope to find strains that can produce oils that could be used to make fuel for cars, as a replacement for petrol and diesel. Once identified, these algae could be grown in large amounts and processed to extract the useful oils.

John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy Research Council, said: "Algae are potentially attractive means to harvest solar energy: they reproduce themselves, so there's no manufacturing cost for the solar converter, they can live in areas not useful for food or similar productive use, they don't need clean or even fresh water so don't add to global water stress, and can give oils, biomass, or even hydrogen as a product. Perhaps they'll be the stem cells of the energy world.""The world's biggest publicly funded project to make transport fuels from... more

DeliaTheArtist
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

New energy-efficient process turns sugar into gasoline

Using microscopic metal particles, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison... more

buttcrack
added this
3 years ago
|
17 comments

Man creates homemade biodiesel from algae

" Plenty of companies are working on creating biodiesel from algae, but this is... more

EddieStarr
added this
3 years ago
|
22 comments

Gas from Tobacco

Instead of using Food products and Trees lets use someting smarter for making fuel.... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

Future Farming Now

Thirty miles north of New York City, in the small village of Mount Kisco, is a farm... more

vigliotti
added this
4 years ago
|
27 comments

Making Ethanol from wood chips/other bio-mass not used for food

This is the way ethanol for fuel should be made from waste bio-mass. well maybe not... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

Growing algae for biofuel

"It's actually like growing tomatoes; the algae need similar things,"... more

TrikyNiki
added this
3 years ago
|
3 comments

TOBACCO -- source for Ethanol Feedstock

Sounds like a better way than using corn!!!
only with all the bans on smoking it will probably go the way of Canabis and be removed from cultavation before it can be appreciated for its other uses.

Tobacco also has uses as a natural insect repelent/cide

While almost every plant on earth has been investigated as an alternative energy resource, for some odd reason tobacco has been entirely overlooked. I call this odd because the high sugar & starch composition of tobacco is well-known, as is the very low lignin encasement of its cellulosic materials. With this data alone it should be clear to science, agriculture, and industry worldwide that the tobacco plant has a nearly ideal composition for direct digestion to ethanol, and is also an ideal candidate for biomethanation or gasification. Tobacco-based ethanol can be produced for far less cost per gallon, with far more economically valuable sidestreams, than corn-based ethanol ( see below for full details). Further, it is known that tobacco is a heavily coppicing plant, enabling it to produce very high biomass tonnage, and it is also known that tobacco thrives on poor soils in a wide range of environments.
Perhaps the most attractive aspect of tobacco-based biomass fuel is that not only would tobacco fuel not take away from food crop production, as corn-based ethanol does, it would actually add immense tonnage of food-grade protein that can be extracted from the sludge remaining after ethanol is produced. Fraction-1 protein is an odorless, tasteless crystalline substance that can be extracted from tobacco, and it is a complete protein - as efficient a source of human food value as beef. It would be totally 'paid for' by the ethanol produced from the tobacco biomass, and so it would be, in effect, free food. It can be added to flour of all kinds and used to produce baked goods like bread and tortillas, adding enough high quality at no cost to these basic foods to practically eliminate protein deficiencies in even the poorest countries.

addtional information on the same site

In summary, Tobacco biomass can be produced at well over a hundred tons per acre, using either hand labor or simple machinery, on land that is unsuitable for food crops, and that biomass material can not only provide low cost bioenergy, extracted as biogas or ethanol or both, but also after that energy has been produced, pure unadulterated food grade protein, along with medical grade protein and other economically valuable byproducts, can be extracted from the fermentation tank or digester sludge. Then that sludge, which is very high in available nitrogen, and other nutrients and trace elements, can be returned to the soil.
http://home.ktc.com/bdrake/tbe3.html

A second article http://www.newsline.umd.edu/business/specialreports/tobacco/tobaccob030201.htmSounds like a better way than using corn!!! only with all the bans on smoking it will... more

Commentor
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

Free Burritos

Just another reason to wish you lived in southern California. The inaugural Roll... more

andrewrules
added this
3 years ago
|
6 comments

Natural Ideas For Healthy Skin

Natural Ideas For Healthy Skin 47

melanierose
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

solar powered taxi

I am at a loss for words as to why we are not all driving green cars. Its depressing... more

beccacis
added this
3 years ago
|
1 comment

DNC proves 'green' trash efforts big success

Months of planning for a deeply green Democratic National Convention largely paid off,... more

ivxx
added this
3 years ago
|
0 comments

Al Gore lays down green challenge to America

Former Vice President Al Gore, seeking to shake up an energy debate that is focused... more

kushan
added this
3 years ago
|
3 comments

select your country

Community Spotlight

TAGS

tagged w/ Go Green

top videos

find current on tv

find current online

recent comments

© 2012 Current TV, LLC All Rights Reserved

the basics

follow us online

tools

stay in touch

© 2012 Current TV, LLC
All Rights Reserved