Eco Factor: Synthetic gasoline producing using biomass and solar energy.
Biofuels are coming up as a great renewable energy source and we can see many companies investing into their production. But, most of the manufacturers burn biomass to meet terms with the energy required to develop biofuels. Here we have a company that has a little different approach. Ditching the biomass, Sundrop Fuels, a Colorado-based company, uses concentrated solar power with their process for the production of bio-based fuels. A pilot plant is just underway and is expected to have a capacity of 100 million gallons when fully functional in 2015.
The high temperatures produced by concentrated solar array is used to gasify a range of feedstocks including agricultural waste, energy crops and wood waste. This vaporization of the biomass feedstock leads to the formation of syngas, which is the basic building block that is turned into useful fuel. This process can produce a range of fuels including gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.
The advantages of using solar energy are that the process requires just half gallon of water per gallon of fuel produced, in comparison to other systems that need 6 or 7 gallons, it yields 100 to 125 gallons of fuel per ton of biomass, which is more than twice what other biofuel producers obtain and electrical power is created from the waste heat generated in the reaction tower. Sundrop hopes to be able to produce gasoline for less than $2 per gallon, that too without any subsidies.
Via: EcoGeek
