by Robert Wilkinson
A friend of the site sent me a story with major implications on getting rid of oil based jet fuels and moving into sustainability.
From Environmental News Network, we find Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, is walking his talk. It seems some smart entrepreneurs have come us with a waste based synthetic gas fuel that produces half the carbon emissions of regular jet fuel.
From the story:
The synthetic fuel will derive from captured and chemically treated gas waste from industrial steel mills. This will be converted into ethanol, which can then be converted into jet fuel. New Zealand-based biotech company, LanzaTech, believes that this process will be able to utilize gas waste from 65 percent of the world's steel mills.LanzaTech technology will be instrumental in capturing the waste gas and turning it into ethanol. The waste gases emitted from blast furnaces and other steel mill operations contains carbon monoxide. The CO containing gas goes into a bioreactor and is dispersed into a liquid medium. It is then consumed by microbes which produce the ethanol. Then Swedish Biofuels technology will chemically convert the ethanol into jet fuel. It produces a fully synthetic, 100% biological aviation fuel.
So hooray for Sir Richard, New Zealand, and Sweden, who seem to be leading the way to convert waste into energy! Oil is obsolete!!
© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson
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