Sundrop Fuels announces its hybrid solar biomass refinery
Talk about biofuels has waxed and waned over the past decade. On one hand, people are excited about an alternative fuel to gasoline or diesel. On the flip side are concerns about the amount of energy it takes to produce a barrel of biofuels. Add into the mix the idea that taking corn off our plates and into our fuel tanks may not make the most sense!
Sundrop Fuels has come up with a way to address these issues, with its hybrid solar biomass refinery. The New-Mexico based company plans to produce bio-ethanol using concentrated solar power (CSP) technology. Instead of the end-product being solar electricity, biofuel is the product created by superheating plant scraps and woodchips with parabolic reflective mirrors.
Solar power is the key component to Sundrop Fuels’ reduction of energy consumption at the refinery. Using a SurroundSun reactor, the technology borrows heavily from the CSP process that is used to generate solar thermal electricity. However, there is an important difference. Whereas concentrated solar power generally focuses solar heat on water and/or molten salts, the hybrid solar biomass refinery will “blast organic materials with super high temperatures…tearing apart the materials at the molecular level…which creates a synthetic gas that can be formed into gasoline or diesel,” said Sundrop CEO Wayne Simmons.
A typical concentrated solar power plant
Using the new technology, Sundrop Fuels claims that it can save up to 1/3 of its energy costs in producing bio-ethanol at the solar biomass refinery. Another downside of biofuel production – competition with food supply – is also addressed through the use of plant scraps and wood chips that would otherwise be burned or discarded.
A call for investors has been made so that Sundrop can build a demonstration project in the next 2 years, by 2012. That one plant alone could create 8 million gallons of alternative fuel each year! The balance of the decade would be devoted to expanding into foreign markets that have demonstrated to be ideal solar power markets (North Africa, China and the Middle East).
Tags: alternative fuel, bio ethanol, biofuels, concentrated solar power, csp technology, hybrid solar biomass refinery, parabolic reflective mirrors, solar biomass, sundrop fuels
It makes a lot of sense. From pieces of information supplied by the company itself, like operating temperatures in the range of 1300°C and the reactor’s relatively small dimensions, as can be inferred from the pictures, one can assume it’s based on a molten carbonate bath that drives a fast pyrolysis reaction in order to make synthesis gas very efficiently. Thus, capital costs can be kept relatively low and operating costs can be grounded to realistic low levels as well. It can give Fischer-Tropsch technologies a needed boost towards a more widespread adoption in times of environmental, political and economic woes.
The Fastest Growing Industry on Earth as Archimedes would say the least, EUREKA it is exceedingly colossal.
The day is coming that most all on Earth will use Solar Energy.
Most will have PV Solar Panels on their roofs. The Free Energy from the Sun will be used to Make Electric.
The surplus of Electric not used will then be used to split water into Hydrogen. The Hydrogen will be put
into a tank like most farmer and people living out of town already have. This Hydrogen will power their
stove to cook, car to drive and power generator to use as electric at night.
Very soon the need for the Power Grid will be gone for most. As the great need for Oil will no longer be needed.
There were 200 electric taxi cabs in New York City way before 200 gas Taxi cabs came into being there.
Thomas Edison’s Interest in Renewable Energy is no big surprise, for it was his friend Albert Einstein
that dreamed this dream that the day will come that All On Earth Would Use Solar Energy for the GOOD OF ALL.
Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for the 1921 year. For his work and time and efforts to freely show
Governments and Universities around the world they could get Electric from the Sun Solar Energy
Photovoltaics The Discovery of the Law of Physics call The PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT. To this day we do not
teach this to our young in schools. Have no worry Albert Einstein’s Dream is becoming real 100 years later.
Archimedes another genius had this same dream 2,250 years ago. Very little is said in schools about these
two and the work they did to show the world. The Free Energy all could get from the Sun in the Heavens above.
These two Brilliant Mathematician and Scientist were always glad to teach all that had ears to hear.
Archimedes and Albert Einstein two of the smartest men to ever live on Earth.
The day will soon be when Hybrid and Electric cars will out number the one that need Oil and gas.
God Bless
All that Spotlighting Solar, Wind and Renewable Energy
The Lord’s Little Helper
Paul Felix Schott
PS
to know more about Hydrogen, get The Freedom Element Living with Hydrogen by Dr. Addison Bain another Great Scientist That has worked to help others all of his life. And Scientist Bill Young at the Florida Solar Energy Center he has spent a life time of showing Solar Energy to the World.