Chemrec and NewPage team up to produce biofuels from black liquor gasification
The effort to utilize abundant industrial biomass waste streams for the production of biofuels continues. Swedish-based Chemrec AB and Ohio-based NewPage Corporation have formed a partnership to explore possible development of a plant that would produce renewable fuels from black liquor at the NewPage paper mill in Escanaba, Michigan. The agreement was announced by Michigan's governor Jennifer M. Granholm during a tour in Europe.
The proposed plant would employ Chemrec's black liquor gasification (BLG) technology, which converts waste from the paper pulping process into synthesis gas. The synthesis gas can be used to generate power and electricity, or processed into a variety of biofuels such as dimethyl ether (DME) and methanol (MeOH), or alternatively Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD), Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG), or hydrogen (H2) (schematic, click to enlarge).
According to Chemrec, the potential of this efficient fuel production process and the available feedstock is large. For Sweden alone, it could replace approximately 30 - 40 % of the country's consumption of petrol and diesel or 5-7 % of today’s electricity demand. The renewable fuels, produced in large-scale plants, would have prices comparable to fossil petrol and diesel. Well-to-wheel analyses show that the BLG production process is amongst the most energy efficient production routes to renewable fuels, and consequently results in high CO2 reduction levels (graph, click to enlarge):
For the Escanaba mill it is estimated that the process could yield up to 13 million gallons of liquid biofuel per year from the black liquor waste stream. The plant would be closely integrated with the paper mill to optimize energy efficiency and enhance the pulp production capacity of the mill. Chemrec's gasification plants can be fully integrated in existing pulp mill processes (schematic, click to enlarge):
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: dimethylether :: methanol :: black liquor :: gasification :: syngas ::
Several European and U.S. studies have shown the BLG technology to provide a highly efficient and environmentally sound route for converting biomass to liquid biofuels. The technology does not require high-grade wood or woodchips.
Michigan's governor Jennifer M. Granholm made the announcement in Sweden following a reception with company and government leaders to celebrate the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two companies. The governor and Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) President and CEO James C. Epolito are on the third day of an investment mission to Sweden and Germany.
References:
Office of the Governor: Granholm: Alternative Energy Partnership to Fuel Further Growth in Michigan's Bio-Economy - August 22, 2007.
Chemrec: High-Temperature Black Liquor Gasification - Status and Outlook [*.pdf], Int. Conference Biomass Gasification for an efficient provision of electricity and fuels – state of knowledge 2007 Leipzig, Germany, February 27-28, 2007
Article continues
The proposed plant would employ Chemrec's black liquor gasification (BLG) technology, which converts waste from the paper pulping process into synthesis gas. The synthesis gas can be used to generate power and electricity, or processed into a variety of biofuels such as dimethyl ether (DME) and methanol (MeOH), or alternatively Fischer-Tropsch diesel (FTD), Synthetic Natural Gas (SNG), or hydrogen (H2) (schematic, click to enlarge).
According to Chemrec, the potential of this efficient fuel production process and the available feedstock is large. For Sweden alone, it could replace approximately 30 - 40 % of the country's consumption of petrol and diesel or 5-7 % of today’s electricity demand. The renewable fuels, produced in large-scale plants, would have prices comparable to fossil petrol and diesel. Well-to-wheel analyses show that the BLG production process is amongst the most energy efficient production routes to renewable fuels, and consequently results in high CO2 reduction levels (graph, click to enlarge):
For the Escanaba mill it is estimated that the process could yield up to 13 million gallons of liquid biofuel per year from the black liquor waste stream. The plant would be closely integrated with the paper mill to optimize energy efficiency and enhance the pulp production capacity of the mill. Chemrec's gasification plants can be fully integrated in existing pulp mill processes (schematic, click to enlarge):
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: dimethylether :: methanol :: black liquor :: gasification :: syngas ::
Several European and U.S. studies have shown the BLG technology to provide a highly efficient and environmentally sound route for converting biomass to liquid biofuels. The technology does not require high-grade wood or woodchips.
We continuously search for ways to improve operations while at the same time improving our efficient use of renewable resources such as wood and wood waste. Liquid biofuel production using the BLG technology holds promise to improve efficiencies at our mills as well as becoming a source of valuable fuels and chemicals extracted from renewable sources. - Mark A. Suwyn, NewPage Corporation Chairman and CEOThe addition of Chemrec's BLG technology to NewPage's Escanaba mill is expected to create new on and off-site job opportunities. New jobs would be created at the NewPage facility for both biofuel production and for the enhanced pulping capacity. Additional jobs would include logging operations, transportation and maintenance jobs and construction jobs during the development of the plant.
Michigan's governor Jennifer M. Granholm made the announcement in Sweden following a reception with company and government leaders to celebrate the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two companies. The governor and Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) President and CEO James C. Epolito are on the third day of an investment mission to Sweden and Germany.
References:
Office of the Governor: Granholm: Alternative Energy Partnership to Fuel Further Growth in Michigan's Bio-Economy - August 22, 2007.
Chemrec: High-Temperature Black Liquor Gasification - Status and Outlook [*.pdf], Int. Conference Biomass Gasification for an efficient provision of electricity and fuels – state of knowledge 2007 Leipzig, Germany, February 27-28, 2007
Article continues
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Consortium releases major database of protein sequences from oceanic microbes
A multinational biological information consortium, the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt), has now added a new database repository of DNA sequences obtained from oceanic microbes to its family of protein sequence databases. The data are publicly available. Information accumulated in this database is central to fundamental biological research, because of the functions that these molecules carry out in cells.
Proteomics research, the large-scale study of proteins and their interactions, has accelerated in recent years because of technological advances in protein science and the large amounts of genomic data pouring out of the Human Genome Project (HGP). The UniProt consortium aims to support biological research by maintaining a high quality database that serves as a stable, comprehensive, fully classified, richly and accurately annotated protein sequence knowledge base, with extensive cross-references and querying interfaces freely accessible to the scientific community.
In a major leap forward for researchers everywhere, UniProt has added the new database repository for metagenomic and environmental data to its existing family of protein sequence databases, the largest in the world. Metagenomics is the large-scale genomic analysis of microbes recovered from environmental samples, as opposed to laboratory-grown organisms which represent only a small proportion of the microbial world.
Secrets of the deep
The UniProt Metagenomic and Environmental Sequences (UniMES) database contains the data from the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition(GOS), which was originally submitted to the International Nucleotide Sequence Databases (INSDC). The GOS expedition was led by Dr. J Craig Venter, driving force behind the Human Genome Project and a leading scientist in the field of synthetic biology, which opens new doors to the bioeconomy (earlier post, here and here).
The initial GOS dataset is composed of 28 million DNA sequences from oceanic microbes and it predicts nearly 6 million proteins:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: microbes :: proteins :: enzymes :: proteomics :: genomics :: molecular biology :: synthetic biology ::bioconversion :: bioeconomy ::
By combining the predicted protein sequences with automatic classification by InterPro, the EBI’s integrated resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, UniMES uniquely provides free access to the array of genomic information gathered from sampling expeditions, enhanced by links to further analytical resources. Genomics holds the key to understanding a significant part of the world around us, and the metagenomic and environmental data represent a step forward in further charting genomic diversity.
With the increasing volume and variety of protein sequences and functional information that has become available, UniProt effectively serves as the central database of protein sequence and function. It has become a cornerstone for a wide range of scientists active in modern biological research, especially in the field of proteomics. Researchers working at the PIR site have also made great strides in automating the use of computers to analyse proteins.
As a publicly funded project, UniProt's data is freely accessible and all data is released in a timely manner. The website created for UniProt effectively fulfils this role.
The UniProt Consortium comprises the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), and the Protein Information Resource (PIR) hosted by the National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF) at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., USA.
Image: Sample of oceanic bacteria as seen using epifluorescence microscopy. Credit: Microbiologist Dr. Ed DeLong.
References:
European Research Headlines: Maritime secrets added to biological repository - August 22, 2007.
J. Craig Venter Institute: Global Ocean Sampling Expedition.
Biopact: Investigating life in extreme environments may yield applications in the bioeconomy - July 05, 2007
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posted by Biopact team at 8:17 PM 0 comments links to this post