Clean Energy's posts with tag: biomass
| | New Energy Source is the Pits by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Israeli biomass energy start-up Genova, which is now setting up its first pilot plant, uses olive pits to make energy. | | | The company, which was founded in September 2004, has its headquarters in the town of Karmiel, in the Galilee, reports Israel21c. Biomass, or organic waste, is a by-product of various industries worldwide, including forestry, agriculture and livestock farming. The biomass is generally transported to a landfill to decompose, or it is burned. Decomposition and burning both create methane, a greenhouse gas which, if harnessed properly, can be a valuable source of energy. An engineer named Dr Yuri Wladislawsky, who immigrated to Israel from Tbilisi, Georgia in 1996, came up with a new way of burning the biomass. He decided to use it on olive waste, from the presses which produce olive oil. The thinking was this: if the company could succeed in harnessing olive waste, which is difficult to use because of the pits, it would be able to handle all other kinds of biomass successfully. Wladislawsky founded Genova with this aim in mind, initially setting it up within the Misgav Technology Center incubator in the Galilee. Genova's technology employs a new, secret technique to maintain the high temperatures needed for the conversion process. The olive waste is heated and dried and then introduced into the converter, where it undergoes two processes: pyrolysis and gasification. These involve heating the biomass to 800 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which its molecules break down. Several gases, including methane and carbon monoxide are produced which, because they are lighter than air, flow upwards through a pipe into a standard gas turbine to generate electricity. The other by-product, coke, can be sold for use to power air conditioners or as filters for various substances. "Only ten percent of the electricity we produce is used to power the [olive waste conversion] process," said Yonat Grant, an industrial engineer who is the CEO of the company. "The process is 90% efficient. Our competitors are only 50% efficient, at best." While the cost of producing a kilowatt with the competitors' systems is 9 cents, Genova's cost is only 2 cents per kilowatt, she says. Genova's high efficiency and low cost has attracted much attention. The Israel Electric Company added a $60,000 investment to the NIS 1.4 million (about $300,000) that Genova received from the government-run Misgav incubator over the two years of its stay. Genova has designed a pilot project in which olive waste from the village of Julis, in northern Israel, is fed into a converter in order to produce electricity which in turn powers the press in a self-sustaining system. The process is being carried out in a 200 kw/hour plant in the Druze village. | | | Besides energy, the experiment has also generated a great deal of interest. An investor in California, famous for its wine industry and high awareness of environmental issues, asked to try out the Genova reactor with vineyard waste products. There is also interest coming from Australia, which has a flourishing olive oil industry. It is expected that other investors in the “green” industries won’t be far behind. | | |
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| | | A new power plant in the Hefer Valley has begun to produce electricity from manure and other organic waste. According to Globes, the power plant will generate 2-2.4 megawatt/hour (MW/h) by the end of the year. Its initial output is 1.6 MW/h, of which 1.3 MW/h is delivered to the national grid and 300 KW/h is used to operate the facility itself. The Tambour Hefer Ecology plant is located near Hadera. The Hefer Valley Cooperative Society is accomplishing two goals through the plant. It was ordered to reduce pollutants generated by the communities’ 12,000 dairy cows and is also using the 600 tons of manure generated daily to produce electricity. "This is unquestionably an important milestone,” Granite HaCarmel CEO Amiaz Sagis said. “This facility fits in with Granite HaCarmel's strategy to invest in infrastructures and ecology. The company is also investing resources to develop alternative energy, water treatment, and desalination." The web site TreeHugger.com took notice of the Israeli project, pointing out an additional benefit: “[Also positive] is that methane has a stronger greenhouse or ‘climate forcing’ effect than C02. The benefit of capturing methane before it escapes a farm manure pond, subverting its destiny of dispersing to the stratosphere, far exceeds the obvious short-term gains of making methane and its byproducts useful for farmers.” If successful, the project is due to be replicated in other areas of the country with high concentrations of dairies and cattle-ranches.
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Link: http://cleanenergy.multiply.com/journal/item/15by Jason Gold 07/20/07. ...recycling waste is becoming a priority. The idea is to take biodegradable waste and recycle it into something useful. Garbage in, recycled product out is the paradigm.
Ah, but leave it to Israel to change the paradigm. For in what other country are washed-up, corrupt politicians, ...recycle themselves and redefine the paradigm as: garbage in, garbage out.
 | | | Biodegradable Israeli leaders recycle themselves. The world is going green. Notwithstanding Al Gore's hysterical blathering - and his part in helping the environment by sponsoring rock concerts that few watched, but which were responsible for much burning of jet fuel as jaded musicians hopped from continent to continent - recycling waste is becoming a priority. The idea is to take biodegradable waste and recycle it into something useful. Garbage in, recycled product out is the paradigm.
Ah, but leave it to Israel to change the paradigm. For in what other country are washed-up, corrupt politicians, bereft of any vision save to blame the settlers for all the country's problems and to prostrate prone in front of the Arabs, Europeans and the United States State Department, returned to positions of power again and again ad nauseum. Hence, the biodegradable Israeli leaders recycle themselves and redefine the paradigm as: garbage in, garbage out.
How does Shimon Peres - a man who has done more to damage Israel's deterrent position by helping to propagate the Oslo vision, a man who virtually defines the self-hating Jew - end up as President of Israel? How does a so-called religious party vault him into this position based on the rationale that he will free Jewish prisoners? The man who handed the United States evidence against Jonathan Pollard? No, the only prisoners Mr. Peres will free are Arabs "without blood on their hands" (translation: 'we tried to kill Jews, but failed'), while making sure he does everything possible to keep Jonathan Pollard buried in prison. How does Ehud Barak, the man singularly responsible for thousands of Katyushas landing in the north, get put back into power as the head of Labor and then head of the Defense Ministry? You would think he would be anxious to prove his military toughness and fortitude by going after the terrorists launching rockets at Sderot and Ashkelon, but no, he is pursuing a completely different track. He is far too busy implementing Ehud Olmert's newest vision of propping up the myth of the "moderate" terrorist Mahmoud Abbas by agreeing to the latest amnesty insanity for at-large terrorists, in addition to freeing 256 terrorists from prison.
I can see it now. Terrorist walks in, signs his worthless declaration, hands over his terrorist firearm at desk number one and picks up his Fatah "preventative" security force sidearm at desk number two. This is obviously a novel military strategy, as Barak and Olmert have hit on a new fighting formula. They will defeat the terrorists by having them laugh themselves to death.
So, depending on whether one counts Olmert in this mess, we are either waiting for the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, [...], if the Likud membership is short-sighted and amnesiac enough to give Binyamin Netanyahu another turn at leading the country to the precipice of disaster. Another alleged right-wing leader who is determined to make more painful concessions for peace and morph into Peres's little brother, Bibi is hell-bent on bringing Jordanian troops into Judea and Samaria to maintain peace, as the first step in the eviction process. Lest we forget, this should probably work about as well as his plan in Hebron during the reign of Bibi I.
Israel has a choice, a very stark choice. A choice between the old and failed versus the new and faithful; a chance to begin to correct the root cause of Israel's myriad of problems and select faith-based leadership for the Likud, and eventually for the country. Nearly 60 years of secular stewardship have resulted in incompetent, faithless, and morally bankrupt leaders who have put Israel's citizens in danger and rendered the country little more than a banana republic. The time for Manhigut Yehudit and Moshe Feiglin has arrived. For the survival of the state, it is a necessary condition. Israel must have faith-based leadership and begin to fulfill its destiny as a Jewish state.
If not, we can always start funneling those pardoned terrorists into the British health care system.
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|  | Renewable energy has become a major factor in farming. Cows produce a lot of methane. |
| | Energy in the form of methane gas, ethanol, biodiesel, etc. from grass, manure, vegetable waist, garbage, etc |
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