Hybrid News

Filed under: Ethanol, USA

Driving around South Carolina and Iowa in a flex-fuel vehicle? Time for you to fill up your tank with E85 at a promotional price on Wednesday, July 23, a Kum & Go station in Elk Point, South Dakota. The stations with the odd spelling are offering E85 for $1.85 a gallon. The following day, July 24, the Kum & Go in Sloan, Iowa is matching the deal offered at the South Dakota station. Both fuel promotions begin at 10 a.m. and end at 2 p.m., and are being sponsored by Kum & Go, the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest and the Iowa and South Dakota Clean Air Choice Teams. Thanks to Bob for the tip.

[Source: Clean Air Choice]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Xavier Navarro

Filed under: Biodiesel, Emerging Technologies, Green Daily, Pacific Region

I wonder if this is the kind of thing the San Francisco Green Party would have a problem with: according to C-NET, two companies in Australia announced they will work together to run emissions from a coal plant through a bioreactor to make biodiesel. C-NET’s Martin LaMonica writes that Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal will create a prototype bioreactor (cost: $1 million) that will grow the algae that eat the carbon from the coal plant’s emissions. Dry those suckers out and you’ve got a biomass that can be turned into biodiesel (or fertilizer; or even burnt to produce more power). One more step in the road to turn waste into fuel, one more step to turn algae into biodiesel.

[Source: C-NET]

&nbsp

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Original post by Sebastian Blanco

Filed under: Ethanol, Legislation and Policy

By law, if a pump in Iowa provides gas that contains ten percent ethanol (an amount that is safe for almost all cars), the pump must have a label that says the gas contains ethanol. This can turn off some buyers who might be worried about the lower energy content of ethanol, and that equals lower sales of ethanol. All of that might change thanks to State Iowa Sen. Jack Kibbie who introduced legislation that would allow gas stations to remove the ethanol identification stickers. Sen. Kibbie says:

My goal is to increase the use of ethanol in Iowa. … Sometimes, people driving through Iowa on the interstates, who don’t know as much about ethanol as we do, see those stickers and say, ‘I don’t want any of that stuff!’ So they put in high octane fuel that costs 10 cents a gallon more.

E85 and other alternative fuels would still require a label, but E10 labels could be removed and consumers could be sold ethanol blended gasoline without warning. The Des Moines Register spoke with, Jim Millick, a Davenport motorist that opposes Kibbie’s Senate File 2137, who says:

That is outrageous that they want to obscure the contents of the fuel that we buy in an effort to sell more. … Have you ever heard of consumer labeling that actually takes away information from a consumer?

The bill could be debated on the Senate floor next week. Stay tuned for updates.

[Source: The Des Moines Register]

 

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Original post by Lascelles Linton

Filed under: Ethanol, Green Daily, USA

There has been talk of a continental U.S. ethanol pipeline before. Back in 2006, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) proposed legislation on the issue, but it didn’t get very far. The idea didn’t die, though. This past week, Magellan Midstream Partners and Buckeye Partners announced that the two companies would begin thinking about building a 1,700-mile pipeline across half the continent to bring ethanol from the corn states of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and South Dakota to Pennsylvania and New York. The idea, the companies said, is to bring up to 10 million gallons of the biofuel “safely and efficiently″ to the Northeast every day. How much would this cost? The companies estimate $3 billion and “several years,” but more details will be forthcoming after Magellan and Buckeye Partners finish a feasibility study later this year. For his part, Senator Harkin is still very much in favor of a pipeline.

[Source: Magellan]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Original post by Sebastian Blanco

Filed under: Ethanol

Photo by laffy4k. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

We don’t write about Iowa much unless ethanol is involved. Whether it’s an proposed ethanol pipeline or ethanol pump label laws, the Hawkeye State is tied to corn ethanol. This post will be no different. In fact, the news here is unsurprisingly similar to an announcement that seems to cross our wires every month or so: cheap E85 at one particular gas station for a few hours.

The details for tomorrow are that a Prairie Gas station in Newton, Iowa will sell E85 for $1.85 a gallon between 2 and 5 pm on Monday. The sponsors include GM, Kum & Go and other likely suspects (full list after the jump). These kinds of promotions will continue throughout the summer, but we’ll only be really impressed if a national cheap ethanol day can be organized, if only because that′d be a twist we haven’t seen before.

Press announcement:

Green Fuel Savings Spring Forth At Prairie Gas Monday

With gas prices near record highs, owners of flex-fuel vehicles in Newton, Iowa will be lining up for ᭉ for $1.85 a gallon from 2-5 p.m. on Monday, March 24 at the Prairie Gas station. Located at 4300 S. 22nd Avenue, just off busy Interstate Highway I-80 in Newton, Iowa, the ᭉ promotion at Prairie Gas is one of the first of many station events and biofuel promotions expected in the upper Midwest this season.

“As gasoline and oil prices rise, so does interest in alternative fuels like E85,” said Jessica Zopf, program manager for the Iowa Clean Air Choice Team. “While many people are attracted by the price, other drivers are committed to using a less polluting, largely renewable fuel that’s made in the United States.”

The event is sponsored by the Iowa Clean Air Choice Team: General Motors, Iowa Farm Bureau, Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, Kum & Go, Iowa Corn Promotion Board, Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Stores of Iowa, Iowa Soybean Association, National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, Iowa Biodiesel Board and American Lung Association of Iowa.

[Source: Bob from ALAMN]

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Original post by Sebastian Blanco

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, USA

A team of researchers at Iowa State University is developing a new system which promises biomass-sourced ethanol at very efficient production levels. The system, described as an “integrated system of thermochemical and catalytic technologies” is ready to use any kind of biomass, such as cornstalks, to obtain ethanol.

The process works like this: Biomass would be broken down by fast pyrolysis, where the biomass is heated up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit in the absence of oxygen to be converted into a bio-oil. This oil would be gasified with steam and/or oxygen at 1,100 to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a synthesis gas, which is then reacted with a nanotechnology-based catalyst to produce ethanol.

The key of this process is the new nano-catalyst based on solid nanospheres just 250 billionths of a meter in diameter that have honeycomb channels running through them.

[Source: Sciencedaily]

&nbsp

Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Original post by Jeremy Korzeniewski