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RGen100
commercial vehicles conversion systems
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commercial boats conversion systems
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diesel generators
RG179 PPO Biofuel
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ethics & sustainability of PPO
Peace of mind
ethics & sustainability of PPO
Turning crops that have traditionally grown for food into fuel comes with a downside. Today's mainstream biofuel technologies that rely on large processing facilities to turn corn into ethanol and plant oils oil into biodiesel have a significant CO2 footprint.
Regenatec has developed a technology that allows pure plant oils (PPOs) to be used directly in a diesel engine, thus negating the need for large chemical processing facilities and associated environmental and financial overhead. Rather than carrying out an energy hungry, on-going chemical process such as transesterification to produce biodiesel, a one-time mechanical modification to the engine is performed. This therefore removes the chemical, energy and carbon overhead of the transesterification process.
From the data from International Energy Agency (IEA), ‘How Biofuels Measure Up’ (see graphic below) it can be seen that making biodiesel from vegetable oil has been estimated to provide a 45 – 75% reduction in CO2. The variability is due to the type of crop, quantity & type of chemicals used to grow the crop and the transesterification overhead of converting the oil into biodiesel. Crucially, Regenatec has removed the transesterification overhead, which can account for 10-15% of biodiesel’s carbon footprint. It is therefore accurate to say Regenatec’s methodology can improve the IEA’s figure by the overhead of the transesterification process, i.e. 10-15%.
Sources of Oil
food oils
Demand for biofuel feedstock oil is helping to push up global grain prices and reduce emergency food stocks. Areas earmarked for palm oil production in south-east Asia threaten the region's surviving rainforests. Regenatec uses no palm oil for its biofuel. The current feedstock for RG179 is technical grade soya oil or EU rapeseed oil. Soya oil is transported by bulk surface ship 1 from less environmentally sensitive areas, such as Argentina. Regenatec insists on traceability of feedstock and its current suppliers are members of a rainforest preservation charity.
It is not uncommon for detractors of biofuels to champion that the transportation of biofuels negates any benefits. Forgetting for a moment that the bulk of the products consumed in the UK, from TVs & mobile phones to food and clothes are important from the other side of the world, the actual carbon emitted by bulk surface sea carrier is the lowest of any form of modern transportation. Transportation actually accounts for a very small percentage of the total ‘carbon footprint’ of a fuel.
1 CO2 emitted per tonne per kilometre travelled: road 60 grammes; rail 41 grammes; ship 25 grammes
non-food oils
Jatropha: As the biofuel industry develops, the world can expect to see increasing volumes of non-food oils becoming commercial viable. Already large plantations of Jatropha (an arid loving, desert type ‘weed’) are being planted on scrub land – no food crops or people are being displaced.
Regenatec is working closely with award winning CleanStar Energy of India to develop a form of ‘FairTrade Fuels’. It is the intention to grow Jatropha on waste land – the poorest areas of the country - and then bulk ship the oil back to the UK to displace mineral diesel.
This gives rise to newer models for producing environmentally friendly biofuels that create new jobs in some of the poorest regions of Asia that can both offset carbon emissions of Europe and fuel Europe's appetite for renewable energy.
Jatropha does not require a sea of fertilizers nor mass irrigation as required by traditional food crops. The pressed Jatropha seed is used as fertiliser for growing more Jatropha or can be compressed to form bio-brickettes or ‘bio-coal’ for cooking and heating
Algae: More excitingly, extracting oil from algae has made major steps forward with the announcement of first production from PetroAlgae in the US. This company, along with others, is commercialising an environmentally friendly algae that generates over two hundred times more energy per acre than traditional crops such as soya. Regenatec is seeking to engage with such companies to assess the quality and technical characteristics of their product via its on-going fuels’ research programme with its academic partners.
Regenatec intends to supply low environmental impact, non-food oils under the RG179 standard as soon as commercially viable.
Conclusion
The biofuel industry is a nascent one - the technology is only just getting started. Research into advanced biofuels has been starved of investment for decades as the business case failed to show the return on investment expected by the financial community. That has now changed. A massive amount of research is now under way to find ways to use non-food plants, such as Jatropha and algae, that grow well without large volumes of chemicals and to process them more efficiently. Industry & consumers should not dismiss all biofuel projects until each new technology is up and running – by doing so the time to availability of viable biofuel technology is pushed further out.
The modest use of biofuels today is perfectly acceptable and passably green: for instance, there are few downsides to the use of ‘waste’ cooking oils, recycling farm waste or growing biofuels on disused land. By not supporting the development of biofuels and thus allowing the rapid movement to lower impact biofuel feedstocks, the position, by default, is that the continued use of fossil fuels is preferred.
