Fossil fuels are fast vanishing from the womb of Mother Earth, and the continuation of human civilization is impossible without the availability of fuel.
For a long time, the scientists have been working toward developing technology that can turn waste materials into fuel for powering automobiles and other machines. But developing technology is not all; these technologies should be commercialized first in order to be employed for mass production. An alliance has recently been formed to this end. The alliance is well represented by the industry, academic world as well as government agencies. Through a press release, the partners of the alliance have informed that the alliance would work for commercialization of technologies that will utilize concentrated solar energy to convert waste CO2 into diesel.
The alliance team members include Sandia National Laboratories, Renewable Energy Institute International (REII), Pacific Renewable Fuels, Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne (a United Technologies Division), Quanta Services, Desert Research Institute and Clean Energy (News - Alert) Systems. In addition, commercial partners have signed on to advance work on the first round of commercial plants.
Over the past few years, CO2 level has risen to a dangerous height in the USA as well as in the whole world. According to an estimate, total CO2 emissions in the United States have increased 17 percent from 1990 levels. If left unchecked, the CO2 level in the country will continue to grow at about 1 percent per year. To address the challenge of climate change, the United States has set targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Under this backdrop, the formation of the alliance sparked of new hopes among the environmentalists.
“The alliance team members believe that the best way to accomplish CO2 reduction goals is to commercialize platforms that will utilize CO2 as a carbon feedstock for the production of valuable products, such as diesel fuel,” Dr. Dennis Schuetzle, president of REII, observed.
The alliance members have informed that they are going to set up plants next to industrial facilities that produce streams of waste CO2. Thus the conversion plants are likely to come up next to the coal power plants, natural gas processing facilities, ethanol plants, cement production facilities and other stationary sources of CO2.
The needs for diesel fuels are constantly on the rise and to meet with this huge demand, the nation has to depend on the imported oil in a big way. According to an estimate, nearly 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel are used in the United States every year and it is not t all difficult to understand what a huge amount of imported oil is expended for this purpose.
The alliance will boost up the domestic production of diesel fuel. And this will simultaneously serve two important purposes. On the one hand, domestic production of diesel fuel will help the government improve energy security, on the other hand it will help reduce the level of CO2.
The solar reforming technology platform will be used to utilize waste CO2 for producing important products such as diesel fuel. Sandia National Laboratories is committed to the eco-friendly technologies and last month the lab announced the discovery of technology that can be used for commercial production of clean energy through nuclear fusion. “Sandia began working on research, development and demonstration of solar reforming technologies more than 20 years ago. We are pleased for the opportunity to extend these concepts in a public/private partnership that we expect will accelerate commercialization to accomplish our joint goals of CO2 emissions reduction and domestic fuel production,” Ellen Stechel, recycling CO2 program development lead for Sandia National Laboratories, informed.
A solar reforming system is currently being demonstrated in Sacramento, Calif., and demonstrations will continue both at Sandia’s facilities in New Mexico and at a power plant project site in Bakersfield, Calif. Planning for the first round of commercial plants is under way at several locations in the United States. The project team anticipates that deployment of the first commercial plants can begin in 2013.
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