Viewing posts tagged "Academic"

Michael Kanellos | April 7, 2009 at 1:58 PM 3 Comments

Bacteria That Eat Plastic to Make Plastic Goes Commercial

Thanks to Todd Kimmel of Mayfield Fund and overall green chemistry fan for updating us on this one.

Last year, we wrote about how Kevin O’Connor at University of College Dublin had come up with a way to recycle old plastic bottles and containers with microorganisms. The bugs eat a cooked down version of a plastic bottle and metabolize it into new, saleable molecules. If I could do that, I’d never leave home.

The plastic that comes out of the digestive process is also biodegradable. It can go safely into a landfill and will disappear over time.

O’Connor has since formed a company, called Bioplastech, to commercialize it. CrapPlastic is funner, but might spook investors.

If the process can be brought up to an industrial level, it could help the world get rid of the nation-sized mass of plastic that humanity has generated. Right now, there are two general ways of dealing with old plastic.

Some countries, like England and Ireland, ship it to other countries after doing the green thing and recycling. Plastic bottles have a low recycling value; hence, a lot of the plastic ends up in landfills forever. (But the Irish are big into recycling — a 15 cent tax on plastic bags dropped their use by over 99 percent, O’Connor said.)

The other method to “recycle� plastic is to burn it. Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and other countries practice it. It yields useable energy, but it’s not the cleanest practice in the world either.

Bioplastech’s process works like this. Polypropylene (plastic) is cooked until it turns into a styrene oil. The oil is then fed to microorganisms, which metabolically turn it into globules of fatty acids.

When 60 percent of the bacteria consists of those fatty acids, the microorganism is split open and the harvested fatty acids are converted to a biodegradable plastic. See why bacteria make such good workers?

Keep your eye on Ireland in cleantech and advance science, by the way. For years, the Irish tech industry primarily concentrated on serving as an outsourcing destination for multinationals. But in about 2000, the government — realizing that Ireland was no longer a low-cost center — began to invest in technology transfer center and incubators.

Michael Kanellos | April 3, 2009 at 9:23 AM 9 Comments

Calera Gives Info on Green Cement Process, Mystery Lingers

Brent Constantz, CEO of green cement company Calera, forwarded us a document from one of his scientific advisers today that partly explains what they are doing and to further respond to criticism from Ken Caldeira. It’s still vague, it’s one they showed to BusinessWeek where the story broke, but good to have on the record.

The document was prepared by J.R. O’Neil, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geological Science at the University of Michigan. There is clearly no love lost here.

“In essence, Caldeira goofed up big time and should have known better,” O’Neil wrote. The story has no legs.”

Caldeira, however, is not some random Internet crank. He’s a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, which is at Stanford. He says it doesn’t add up and the selective secrecy of the company (we sequester carbon dioxide but won’t completely explain how) is misleading the public.

O’Neil essentially says that Caldera is pumping carbon dioxide from smokestacks into treated seawater to produce solid carbonates out of the magnesium and calcium found inside seawater. These carbonates, such as calcium carbonate (CO3) can be used in cement production.

In the process, the solids in the seawater react with the carbon dioxide, typically a very low energy molecule: “because the pH of the seawater (normally around 8) has been raised to the point where CO3 is the dominant and stable species of dissolved carbonate. Alkaline solutions like this are very effective sinks for gaseous CO2. Calera’s methods for making seawater appropriately alkaline are proprietary, but it can be done simply by the addition of a base like sodium hydroxide.”

In a patent application bearing Constantz’s name that emerged earlier this year, the application discussed running the process with pH 10 or 11 seawater. “Above pH 10.33, greater than 90% of the carbonate is in the form of carbonate ion, and no CO.sub.2 is released during the precipitation of calcium carbonate,” the application states.

Caldeira’s reply? Sodium hydroxide is somewhat rare, so that won’t work. The company could also be using magnesium hydroxide, but that actually might just involve taking magnesium carbonate, transforming it into hydroxide, and then back to magnesium carbonate. In other words, no gain.

Then there is the theory touted earlier by some sources that there could be a biological mechanism turning carbon dioxide into carbonates. Coral do this. But that would involve tightly controlling pH balances and massive ponds.

As a side note, some of the argument might also be wrapped up in business model nuances. What if Calera is really just doing a version of carbon sequestration? The carbonate plan is very similar to the business plan of Carbon Sciences. But Carbon Sciences’ business plan relies on carbon taxes. Calera’s public interviews have made it seem a bit “cake and eat it too.”

Calera and its investors have also strongly indicated that they won’t be forwarding any more information. Constantz, who came to prominence years ago with bone treatments, is also said to be quite secretive.

Michael Kanellos | February 27, 2009 at 8:33 AM 1 Comment

San Francisco Files Wave Power Application

The City of San Francisco has filed an application for a wave power farm that could produce up to 30 megawatts of power.

Details, however, are vague to nonexistent. What sort of wave machines would be built? Who would own and maintain them, etc. All that is TBA. Nonetheless it’s a start.

Wave and tidal power are in the embryonic stages but proponents say the business could take off in the 2010s. Pelamis Wave Power launched the first commercial wave power device off the coast of Portugal last Fall and a couple of companies, such as Ireland’s Open Hydro (tidal power), have launched large-scale prototypes.

The big challenges? Building something that can survive Neptune’s fury. Tidal turbines tested in New York’s East River have come up mangled. Finavera Renewables launched a demo wave bobber off the coast of Oregon last year. It sank.

Then there is the problem of economics. SF Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to see tidal turbines go into the water as well but the city’s Public Utility Commission concluded that the devices would require $750,000 a year in maintenance and would not provide enough power to be cost-effective.

And if those two work out, you have to figure out how to deliver power to large urban centers. Still, progress continues and several nations are dumping money into R&D. Oil services companies, who will put these things out there, also are warming up to the waves. It’s like the wind industry was in the 80s, everyone tells me.

Six years from now, there could be 1 gigawatt of marine power worldwide. Startup Aquamarine says it will build 1 gigawatt of wave and tidal power in the U.K. by 2020 alone.

Eric Wesoff | February 19, 2009 at 11:19 AM 2 Comments

Drill, Baby, Drill

Midday events at Stanford University attract a crowd of students, professors, George Schultz in a red jacket and a bunch of retirees.  I mean, who else can attend a speech by the CEO of ExxonMobil in the middle of the day?

Rex Tillerson, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil recited a speech on Tuesday afternoon in an event sponsored by the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). GCEP’s purpose is to conduct pre-commercial research that will lead to technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  ExxonMobil is GCEP’s largest sponsor and plans to invest up to $100 million in the program over 10 years.

In 1968, there would be have been howls of protest in the face of an oil company underwriting an environmental program. These days, Stanford students just hope for employment after their studies.

Mr. Tillerson, a civil engineer by training, joined Exxon in 1975.  He became CEO and Chairman of Exxon in 2006.  According to Wikipedia, The Rockefeller family sponsored a non-binding resolution to separate the CEO and chairman positions that Tillerson holds in order to maintain a system of checks and balances. The Rockefeller family also wanted Exxon Mobil to invest more in alternative energy. The resolution did not obtain the necessary majority, and Tillerson held on to both job titles.  According to Forbes’ CEO compensation data, he made about $6.86 million in compensation in 2007.

Here are some quotes from Mr. Tillerson:

• “The world economy will recover and when the world economy recovers—so will energy demand.”
• “‘Hydrocarbon energy is available and abundant and will account for the majority of the world’s energy demand at least until 2030”
• “No single energy source will meet all needs or reduce emissions, there is no one perfect solution on the shelf or on the drawing board.”
• “Solar needs to drop an order of magnitude to about $0.30/W from $3.00/W.”
• “With much further R&D, algae could play a role in transportation fuel supplies and reducing GHGs.”
• “We believe that a carbon tax would be a more effective policy than a cap-and-trade system.”
• “It is rare that a business person like myself would support a new tax but it is my judgment that a carbon tax would be the best solution.”
• “We need a 30-year energy policy, 10 years won’t do it.”

On peak oil:

• “We endorse the assessment of the USGS—the current conventional oil resource base is three trillion barrels and there are another one to two trillion barrels in heavy oil and one trillion barrels of shale oil.  We have consumed one trillion barrels since we started using oil.  There is a large endowment out there.  USGS updates have always gone up—it is a technology phenomenon.  With technology advancements like 3D seismic imaging to a whole host of other technologies.  We have gone from 600 feet to 10,000 feet ocean drilling.  It’s ongoing technical advances that open up and identify that resource endowment—imaging in sub salt basins in West Africa and below basalt imaging.  The technology keeps moving and the resource base keeps growing,  We are confident that we can access much more. We have sufficient hydrocarbon resources to meet the world’s needs for the next century.”

On climate change:

• “Climate science is one of the most complex sciences out there today.  We don’t believe in scientific consensus.  That’s an oxymoronic statement.  We support scientific investigation.  We have to submit to the continuation of scientific study.  Its too important to fail.  C02 concentration is going up and temperature is going up but what is the relationship?   We have an issue about how people use the models.  First and foremost we need to support good unencumbered scientific investigation.  As far as policy—it is a risk management issue—probabilities of outcome.  We need to actively manage that risk.  Our position hasn’t changed.  The science has been so contaminated by the political process.”

Why not drill in the U.S.?

• “The U.S. has a rich resource endowment that has not been fully explored or tapped.  It is withheld from our beneficial use—our government water and our government lands.  We’ve been set in the mindset of the 1960s  It is purely and simply an environmental issue.  If you live by the precautionatry principle—get out your tent and your matches and your horse.  We have to help the public understand.”

We can’t drill our way to energy independence. The  Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that offshore drilling will have little effect on oil and gas production or on prices before 2030. Meanwhile, Big Oil swims in record profits and the U.S. is the top global warming polluter in the world.

We need a new vision for our future.  We should focus on reducing our need for oil—which is where real national energy security lies.

Michael Kanellos | February 2, 2009 at 7:43 AM

Morons on the High Seas: Ex-Googler Plans Cities on Oceans

One of the greatest things about the high-tech revolution is how its unleashed the inner bonehead in people.

Today’s case in point: Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute. The ex-Googler wants to build cities on the high seas to escape the pernicious influence of government. It’s a Libertarian experiment.

“We don’t have a frontier anymore. The reason our political system doesn’t innovate anymore is that there’s no place to try out new things. We want to provide that place,” he told News.com.

Brave talk like this is always great, particularly when it comes from a guy whose whole career is bound up in a technological achievement (the Internet) funded by an ossified political system he’s carping about. Granted, we don’t have much of a frontier anymore. We paved it over and gave the early inhabitants smallpox a long time ago. But is that so bad? We live in an area where we have to understand the limits of resource exploitation. We could continue to do that in Brazil, but it would be frowned on and cause ecological damage.

An experiment like this could work, but only if you limited citizenship to the audience of “This American Life” or the members of They Might Be Giants. The first criminals with guns that pop up and the term Libertarian Utopia takes on a different hue.

And ecologically, would it be a disaster? It depends.

“Some rogue seasteads are, sadly, likely to pollute. But most of the technologies seasteaders use will be much less polluting than what is used on land. Also, resources will be more expensive, which means seasteaders will use less of them, so the net result may well be a reduction in footprint. And it’s not like seasteads are completely unaccountable—we see pollution as one of the areas most likely to provoke interference from traditional nations,” the statement said.

There’s the upside: The organization is at least giving us an invitation to invade.

Michael Kanellos | December 10, 2008 at 6:16 PM 2 Comments

Berkeley: Radical Hotbed of Energy Efficiency

With the appointment of Steve Chu as the Secretary of Energy, it becomes official: Berkeley is the world capital of efficiency. Chu, the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has been one of the leading advocates of trying to curb fuel consumption through things like designing buildings better for their environment. Chu follows in the footsteps of Art Rosenfeld, who taught at the University of California and worked at the lab for decades. A physicist (Enrico Fermi's last grad student), Rosenfeld convinced the state of California to past stringent energy efficiency laws and appliance standards in the 1970s. Since then, electricity consumption in California has stayed roughly flat in per capita terms: It has doubled elsewhere in the country. From 1974 to 1994, Rosenfeld directed the Center for Building Science. He is now with the California Energy Commission. Other notable scientists working on energy efficiency in Berkeley include Arun Majumdar, the Almy and Agnes Maynard professor of mechanical engineering, and Steve Selkowitz, who now runs the Center for Building Science.

We waste a lot of power in the U.S., by the way. The U.S. consumes about 100 quads of energy a year, Manjumar told me recently. A quad is a quadrillion BTUs. A BTU is equivalent to the energy produced by a match.

"Of the 100 quads, about 55 to 60 go into waste heat," he said. "Fifty or 60 percent of the energy is wasted as heat."

The city's image in the popular imagination won't likely change. And effciency is pretty undtramatic. Don't expect someone to blurt out "You've got to throw yourselves on the gears of the machine and demand R 9 windows at an economical price" in the middle of Sproul Plaza any day soon. But the history and work taking place in the East Bay could have a pretty big impact.