Copyright © 2010 Solander Science Park
February 25, 09
Richard J. LeBlanc has been appointed as chief executive officer of leading biorefinery company Chemrec AB. Mr. LeBlanc has been a senior executive with Siemens AG in the USA. Rick is very welcome and he will be dividing his time between the Chemrec Stockholm office and Chicago, concentrating on developing the American and Asia-Pacific markets with the objective of accelerating the implementation of the Chemrec business plan, supported by the recently completed $20 million C-round financing.
Asia
And Asia is interesting.Ten buses fueled by Dimethyl ether (DME) will start serving the city's No 147 line, running between Hongkou and Yangpu districts from next month, according to a report in the Shanghai Morning Post. It is expected that the new fuel, which is 10 percent cheaper than diesel oil, will discharge less waste, it said.As a diesel fuel replacement, DME is a completely sootless synthetic fuel that can be produced from coal, natural gas or biomass, and meets the stringent emission regulations in Europe and Japan.It also features high cetane, which causes less delay between the start of injection and combustion.According to Shanghai Urban Construction and Communications Committee, clean and energy-efficient buses are being developed to make the city "greener".As of now, there are 17 electric-powered buses and 10 mixedly powered ones in operation, said Huang Xiaoyong, an official with the committee. "There are 281 buses powered by natural gas," he added.Vehicle waste has become a major source of pollution in the city, contributing 80 percent of the air pollution downtown. There are more than 2.5 million vehicles in Shanghai.In 2007, the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress passed a bill banning vehicles that emit black exhaust. According to the bill, drivers of vehicles emitting black fumes can have their licenses confiscated.
America
And America is interesting. A new breed of biorefineries that combine gasification and fermentation processes will undoubtedly become the industry standard as the U.S. moves towards a nation run primarily on biofuels over the course of the next several decades. As the ethanol industry exists today, many ethanol plants employ a fermentation process that uses enzymes to break down organic matter into workable sugars; this limits their input feedstocks and the energy yields associated with the distillation process. By installing gasification systems at these ethanol fermentation plants, the integrated biorefinery can increase energy yields per acre and be able to process a variety of feedstocks throughout the course of an agricultural year.Biomass is basically any organic feedstock that is harvested in order to make biofuel; it can be crops, vegetative plants, agricultural waste, and even good ole trash. Further defined, biomass refers to biological material (living or dead) that can be used as a fuel or for running any industrial process. The term has been used to refer to organic matter specifically grown or harvested in order to generate electricity or transportation fuel, but it can also be used in the production of plastics, lubricants, chemicals, waxes, etc...; anything that can be made from a petroleum refinery can also be processed at a biorefinery. Biomass is considered a renewable resource because it can be grown and harvested cyclically; it is seen as sustainable because the plants generally sequester as much CO2 from the air during their growth period as they emit during the burning process. The term biomass, however, excludes organic material like coal and petroleum that has gone through a geologic process.Criticism of using biomass for transportation fuel or to generate electricity is generally two-sided. On the one hand, critics claim that by deforesting wooded areas through the process of preparing an area for feedstock growth or as part of the harvest, the natural carbon equilibrium of the planet is disturbed. In the critics’ other hand is the unknown; analysts have not been able to definitively claim whether the use of biomass on a global scale will be able to maintain sustainability over time. Central to diffusing the critics’ argument is the capacity of the industry to increase energy yield per acre or ton of biomass harvested. By increasing energy yields, less land needs to be disturbed and the sustainability question is answered.