Energy Out Of Waste

It has been awhile since our last post but we have been mightily busy with worldwide behind-the-scenes activity. During the past year we have been working with our associates in the U.S. and internationally in bringing specific high-yield, non invasive and non-human food grass for conversion into high grade diesel fuel.

We are using the term PowerGrass to include multiple species of this hybrid grass. What is so unique? PowerGrass first is a perennial, secondly, it grows to 4 meters or nearly 13 feet in height, and thirdly, we can get theoretically get three cuttings per year.

Why are we concerned about a non-invasive species? These plants are sterile which means that they have to be individually planted versus wheat or maize which we can collect their seeds for propagation. Our concern is that we do not want any cross-pollination or seeds contaminating another farmer’s fields, period.

We have all heard about GMO crops and the disastrous consequences of “flying” seeds effecting other crops – not to mention the litigation by the GMO seed manufacturers when this happens – and affects their bottom line. (Sorry, sometimes this gets a bit political). Anyway, we are very excited about the worldwide potential for PowerGrass for conversion into high grade diesel fuel and also for its carbon-neutral value because of CO2 sequestration, etc.

Once we get our contracts in place, we will divulge e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g!

So, what does the Belizean sugar cane grower have to do with waste or energy or waste-to-fuel? First, a little background: There are 6000+ sugar cane farmers/growers in this small sub-tropical country and my friend, Leonardo, happens to be the largest grower there, having 1000 acres under till. He is also a visionary and has designed a model farm for his countrymen. We will explore one aspect at a time for Project Belize.

There’s a lot of sugar cane trash in sugar cane growing. And what is the composition of this “trash”? Many left-overs. Once the sugar cane has been harvested whether manually or mechanically, there are leftovers in the field consisting of leaves, blow-down, stubble, etc. (And I am your typical layman describing in non-technical terms). At the refinery, after the cane has been “processed,” there is a tremendous amount of bagasse, cachaza, filter press and other stuff – all containing vast amounts of waste energy. In Belize, their one refinery uses much of the waste for its co-generation plant as electricity (through steam turbines) to power the refinery and also to produce power for the electric utility.

What I’d like to focus on here is the leftover field trash and share Leonardo’s vision, too. Currently all the sugar cane harvesting is done manually with laborers wielding machetes; and all the fields are burned after harvest to “clean up” the fields and prepare for next year’s crop.

Here are two operations that can be mediated and have profound consequences. Other countries have growers and co-ops that have imported specially designed mechanical harvesting equipment that speeds up harvesting and hence, reduces employee/laborer injury and is vastly more efficient. However, there still is much “trash” left in the field that, until now, is burned.

The Field Trash Vision

This vision entails a multi-step process that will conceivably include many sugar cane growers in Belize. The vision, put simply, is to stop field burning. That’s easy to say and the environmentally correct thing to do but, why would farmers want to change what they’ve done successfully and for generations? What’s in it for them? They burn the fields. The smoke clears. The fields are clean for the next year. Life goes on.

As an aside, when in Guatemala working with the cane producers there, I asked a manager about pollution when their co-gens are spewing black smoke and ash into the air. And, when the plant is burning bunker oil after the bagasse has been spent but needs to continue to produce electrical energy for the grid. His reply was that his plant was out in the country where few people live and… Well, there are many who know that that smoke, that pollution travels in the wind currents all over the world – just as we know that when a volcano erupts or the Gobi Desert has a severe sand storm, those same wind currents carry what’s in the air “there” to “here.” So, there needs to be some paradigm shifts in perception and thought so that all of us, throughout our world, can get on the same play page.

To be continued…

Currently, Energy Visions, Inc., a U.S. based company, and its worldwide partners are working on multiple projects in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

But first, a note of explanation: Our CC (catalytic conversion) process which can convert almost all organic waste into high grade diesel fuel oil, can also convert plastics, fats and oils from food processing, hospital waste; and waste oils from machinery, maritime and industry. Although we can convert human food crops, it has always been our intent to process/convert organic waste, not crops needed for human or animal consumption. We can also convert select, pre-sorted municipal solid waste into precious high grade diesel fuel.

In Latin America, there are projects are “in the pipeline” for Colombia at the present time. First, we are working with a large African Palm oil plantation owner who currently has 2500 ha planted and will be planting an additional 2500 ha shortly. We are able to able to convert all of his African Palm waste including empty fruit baskets, palm fronds and stalks, along with filter press, etc.

We are now able to add an additional technology to the CC! This proven German technology can, through anaerobic digestion, called Hydro Thermal Carbonization (HTC), convert specific organic wastes (empty fruit bunches, grasses, etc.) into biocoal (charcoal), produce plant-nutritious irrigation water, high energy sludge for the CC, and a continuous 5 mW of electricity due to the hot water (220°C at 30 Bar). This is a 360° self-sustaining combination of technologies that provides: diesel fuel, organic liquid fertilizer, electricity, and employs many people all year long. The biocoal (charcoal) can be used in place of cutting trees being for charcoal to be used for cooking and heating, and will dramatically reduce deforestation, etc.

The second project using CC technology is taking low grade (waste) oil from the oil fields and converting that waste along with biomass waste into high grade diesel fuel; more on this later.

In Europe, we are currently working in Slovakia taking their RDF (select refuse derived fuel) which will produce diesel fuel. This is the first of six operating plants for that country.

In Asia, we are currently working in Japan, Korea and the Philippines on various projects from crop waste to municipal solid waste.

In Africa, we are currently working with an east Africa country to process 150,000 MT of municipal solid waste and an equal amount of crop waste into diesel fuel; and the 1500 ha of prime, pivot-irrigated agricultural land is being provided by the country for that use while introducing the planting of high revenue-producing Moringa Oleifera (image right) for human and animal nutritional needs.

Moringa Oleifera, the most commonly known variety of Moringa, has been grown in many countries for thousands of years. Moringa Oleifera is a slender tree with long, delicate-looking branches covered with oval-shaped dark green leaves and small white blossoms. The leaves are packed with healthy, tasty nutrients. It is basically a tropical tree, but Moringa is known to grow in India, north Africa, and the US.

Additionally, we will be converting cargo ship bilge waste along with the country’s solid waste so that the country can become more self-sufficient. Another east Africa country is following suit with processing 650,000 MT municipal solid waste (MSW) in their capital, along with cargo ship bilge waste. In their prime agricultural sector, we will be planting an initial 4500 ha of Elephant grass using the HTC (Hydro Thermal Carbonization) technology into biocoal, Moringa Oleifera for human and animal nutritional needs, and any other organic waste including cargo ship bilge waste into diesel fuel through the CC technology.

Many countries in Africa use charcoal for cooking or sometimes for heat, even for making electricity through co-generation. However, there is one mighty big problem. What percentage of the producers of charcoal plant new trees or seedlings once the timber has been “harvested”?

Sadly, the answer is almost never.

Reforestation is a word seldom used outside of the Western world. However, there may be hope after all. Grasses native to Africa such as Napier (image right) or Elephant grass can be very effectively utilized for making charcoal. Yes, there is a technology for converting high moisture biomass such as grass into high BTU charcoal.

Sound too good to be true? The good news is that it is true. And another thing, it’ll take many workers to cut the grass and take it to the “machine” that does the miracle work. That spells e-m-p-l-o-y-m-e-n-t! Stay tuned.

Our partners in east Africa are making excellent progress in both Pt. Louis, Mauritius and in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo and its northern port, Nacala (image right; the deepest natural port on the east coast of Africa).

Municipal solid waste, cruise ship food waste and cargo/cruise ship bilge wastes are currently hot topics of discussion in Mauritius. Mozambique, one of the favored world countries of late, is quite anxious to fully utilize their northern port of Nacala by receiving bilge waste for processing and also increasing their agricultural crop production.

The Moringa tree, known in many places around the world as the “perfect food,” is being studied for implementation there as well. We are most anxious to utilize the wastes from the Moringa tree harvesting for inclusion with the bilge waste for converting same into high grade ultra low sulfur diesel fuel oil through CC (catalytic conversion). We are currently studying the MSW issues in Pt. Louis and Maputo for scalability. Looks very exciting.

Meanwhile on the other side of the continent, another favored country, Liberia, has a similar problem with cargo ship bilge waste at their ports and those wastes can be an excellent source of revenue for them as well.

There is plentiful biomass waste available to balance the hydrocarbon mix, thereby producing inexpensive diesel and having a stable supply. (Sorry, can’t relate the other “projects” there yet, but, in time! Hint: it has to do with farming and re-energizing the very successful livestock production prior to the Liberian Civil War.)

Project Belize has been dormant for quite awhile, mainly due to the world’s economic depression. The worldwide economic devastation has spared very few countries.

On the plus side, however, sometimes the best laid plans need additional fine tuning. The search goes on for funding opportunities; even in this shaky economy, potential investors do exist. But, as always, no matter how worthy a project is in terms of helping the environment or social justice, it’s the numbers – just give me the numbers, that ROI (return on investment) in the shortest period of time and all is well. So, Project Belize is in gestation, so to speak; although we know that there will be an eventual birth, the actual “birth time” is unknown.

Meanwhile, potential waste-to-fuel/energy projects are also gestating in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, MENA (Middle East/North Africa), Kenya, Mauritius, and Mozambique.

About going viral, our associates in Mauritius (image right: an island off the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean) were talking to their east African neighbor, Mozambique, and it just so happens that Mozambique is very interested in looking at the details for Project Belize. His Excellency is very keen on the potential for the project and others as well.

Where are the degrees of separation? Haven’t seen any lately!

The Carbon Bathtub Excerpted from National Geographic, December 2009

It’s simple, really: As long as we pour CO2; into the atmosphere faster than nature drains it out, the planet warms. And that extra carbon takes a long time to drain out of the tub.

A fundamental human flaw, says John Sterman, impedes action on global warming. Sterman is not talking about greed, selfishness, or some other vice. He’s talking about a cognitive limitation, “an important and pervasive problem in human reasoning” that he has documented by testing graduate students at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Sterman teaches system dynamics, and he says his students, though very bright and schooled in calculus, lack an intuitive grasp of a simple, crucial system: a bathtub.

Interactive Climate Change Simulator

In particular, a tub with the tap running and the drain open. The water level can stand for many quantities in the modern world. The level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is one. A person’s waistline or credit card debt—both of which have also become spreading problems of late—are two more. In all three cases, the level in the tub falls only when the drain runs faster than the tap—when you burn more calories than you eat, for instance, or pay off old charges faster than you incur new ones.

Plants, oceans, and rocks all drain carbon from the atmosphere, but as climatologist David Archer explains in his book The Long Thaw, those drains are slow. It’s going to take them hundreds of years to remove most of the CO2; that humans are pouring into the tub and hundreds of thousands of years to remove it all. Stopping the rise of CO2; will thus require huge cuts in emissions from cars, power plants, and factories, until inflow no longer exceeds outflow.

Most of Sterman’s students didn’t understand that, at least not when the problem was described in the usual climate jargon . . .  If MIT graduate students don’t get it, most politicians and voters probably don’t either. “And that means they think it’s easier to stabilize greenhouse gases and stop warming than it is,” Sterman says.

By 2008, the level of CO2 in the tub was 385 parts per million (ppm) and rising by 2 or 3 ppm each year. To stop it at 450 ppm, Sterman says, a level many scientists consider dangerously high, the world would have to cut emissions by around 80 percent by 2050.

When diplomats convene in Copenhagen to negotiate a global climate treaty, Sterman will be there to help, with software that shows immediately, based on the latest climate-model forecasts, how a proposed emissions cut will affect the level in the tub—and thus the temperature of the planet.

“People can learn this,” he says. ~ Robert Kunzig

My friend Leonardo tells me that there are over 9000 farmers in Belize that farm small parcels of land growing a single crop, sugar cane. For the most part, these farmers have been using the same growing techniques for countless years and are slow to embrace newer technologies that we, here in the upper West, consider commonplace. Adaptation is slow because the farmers feel isolated and often times do not have the necessary capital for improving their condition. This, of course, is a double-edged sword. I do not know whether the country of Belize has an agricultural support center for its farmers so that they can learn new practices and improve the yield for their sugar cane crop. This is where Leonardo and his group of agriculturalists have stepped in to fill the void that is not being satisfied by Belize – a very poor country with only 320,000 inhabitants.

This group, NAMTES (Northern Agricultural Mechanical and Technical Engineering Services), is based in northern Belize which is the major growing area for sugar cane. From its base in the Estrella Village in the Corozal District, NAMTES is working with the farmers and is primarily focusing on land preparation and secondary cultivation to include fertilizing, herbiciding and advice on pest control. For example, this year’s crop suffered a 30% decrease in production as a result of an insect infestation which could have been easily controlled if the farmers had the capital for the necessary pesticide application.

Other programs yet to be launched are cane loading and transporting for those farmers who don’t have the ability due to lack of transportation and, hence, lose part or all of their cane production. Additionally, added infrastructure such as drainage, road and field design, mechanization, etc. will prove extremely beneficial for the whole Belizean economy.

All it takes is the focus of one visionary and others who share that vision for actualization to take place.

This almost sounds like a travel log, but with a twist. It seems that countries in the far corners of the globe (and in between) are quite interested in getting a handle on finding available solutions for their waste streams being generated by agricultural crops or by human consumption – even in the Middle East! In addition, agricultural waste that isn’t immediately plowed back into the land creates toxic methane gas while it decomposes. The same holds true for the waste generated by each of us which is then carted off to the landfill.

To be sure (and this is the understatement of our lifetime), the same holds true for the whole planet. Is there a solution? Yes, there are many solutions. But which one is the most viable and how is it measured? Sheer economics or a combination of financial returns coupled with social and environmental concerns?

I have spent the past six days in Abu Dhabi (the capital of the United Arab Emirates) at the urging of both private and public concerns who need a least one solution to their growing municipal solid waste problems. One very efficient and affordable option is the KDV technology which can convert municipal solid waste (as well as almost all other organic waste) into a very high grade diesel fuel.

And here we are in the middle of the planet’s richest oil producing countries! MSW is a worldwide problem and the lack of high quality diesel fuel is another. So why not convert MSW into diesel fuel?

Not only have we been meeting with the movers and shakers in Abu Dhabi, but there are projects “on the table” and being actively discussed for Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen.

I can’t avoid this pun: We can’t bury our heads in the sand anymore and wish the problem of worldwide waste to disappear. That will take private and public partnerships working together. This, like global warming, is an environmental disaster in the making.

Looking at the agricultural demographics of Belize, it makes sense to install the KDV waste-to-fuel machine in the north, near to Corozal Town which is about 9 miles from the border of Mexico. The surrounding area has the heaviest concentration of sugar cane production in all of Belize.

The land that Leonardo has available for the pad is just a stone’s throw from Corozal Town (which has a beautiful Caribbean waterfront and is quite popular with the tourist trade – but hasn’t been spoiled). And where there is farming, there is a need for diesel to fuel the tractors and other machinery required for production and harvesting the cane.

Upon further investigation, the combined monthly sales of the fuel stations in Corozal Town are less than one KDV 500 can produce per month. This could, indeed, cause a little competition in the marketplace. Purchasing and using fuel from organic waste versus fuel from major oil companies at the same or lower price, from which would you choose? From my biased perspective, I hope that the choice is obvious.

So, what happens when you improve sugar cane production and the refinery has excess capacity to utilize the extra cane? Next.