Cooking In Cloncurry  

The SMH has a report on a solar thermal power project in Queensland - "Cloncurry so hot it's first on the solar block" no doubt helped along by Andrew McNamara.

IT'S HOT in Cloncurry. Bloody hot. Hot enough to power the homes for all the outback town's 4828 residents with heat from the sun. That is what the Queensland Government is hoping to do with a $7 million solar thermal power station that would make the former copper mining town the first in Australia to rely completely on solar power.

The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, yesterday announced the north-west Queensland town had been chosen as the site for a "groundbreaking" 10-megawatt plant that will use 8000 mirrors to reflect sunlight onto graphite blocks. Water will be pumped through the blocks to generate steam that will operate a turbine electricity generator. ...

"This is an example of the diversity of clean energy that is available in Australia because of the renewable resources at our disposal," said the energy council's chief executive, Dominique La Fontaine.

An Australian company, Lloyd Energy Storage, designed the unique graphic-block storage system. A forest of mirrors, each three metres by two metres, will reflect the sun's rays up into 50 10-tonne blocks perched atop 15-metre towers. Enough heat will be stored in the blocks to service peak daytime needs and overnight demand. Less water than falls in an average year on the power station's roof will be used in the turbine.

The project follows a decision last year by the Federal Government to give $75 million to a $420 million project to build a large-scale solar concentrator in Mildura in Victoria. That project is expected to start next year and reach full capacity by 2013. Using high-performance solar cells developed to power satellites, it could power as many as 45,000 homes.

The IHT has an update on the bioplastic industry - "Bioplastics have a small but growing market".

For Dennis McGrew, chief executive of NatureWorks, the high price of crude oil and natural gas is not unwelcome news. NatureWorks, formerly Cargill Dow, produces a plastic made from plant stalk, not fossil fuel. McGrew, a former plastics executive at Dow Chemical, says that as prices for fossil fuels soar and as the environment becomes an ever larger concern, ecofriendly plastics are becoming increasingly competitive, though they still remain a niche market.

That bioplastics are trending upward is clear. In the past month, a number of large chemical concerns have increased their commitment to market segment, including Braskem, the largest Brazilian petrochemical group, and Dow Chemical. In September, Plantic Technologies of Australia announced that DuPont would market its starch-based resins and sheet plastics in North America, a new market for a company previously limited to selling in Europe and Australi

Biopact reports that scientists have found a way to convert biodiesel byproduct glycerin into ethanol.

Recently, a way to connect the ethanol and biodiesel industries was revealed when it was determined that biodiesel could be a value-added product for ethanol plants through corn oil extraction technology (previous post). But now the link is reversed: researchers at Rice University in Houston have developed a way to convert glycerin (glycerol), a byproduct of biodiesel production, into ethanol. Both sectors are now linked and could create synergies that make both more efficient.

The glycerin-to-ethanol pathway is seen as promising, which is why the scientists behind it formed Glycos Biotechnologies to commercialise it. Once considered a valuable co-product, crude glycerol is rapidly becoming a 'waste product' with a disposal cost attributed to it - a result of the biodiesel boom. ...

The implications of this research are so promising that the process may be commercialized before cellulosic ethanol. Gonzalez partnered with Paul Campbell, who researches, develops and markets blends of microbes for industrial, agricultural and environmental markets, to form Glycos Biotechnologies Inc. The company, which was funded by Houston-based venture capital fund DFJ Mercury, expects to complete its pilot plant in early 2008.

TreeHugger has a post on "Using Sweet-Toothed Bacteria to Produce Hydrogen".

Aside from crop-based biofuels, few sectors of renewable energy have attracted as much attention as microbial fuel cells. With companies like LS9 and Amyris leading the way, the idea of engineering bacteria to produce new sources of energy has become an increasingly marketable one as gas prices continue to soar.

This high level of interest has also prompted a groundswell of new research in universities and government-funded science institutions aimed at finding ways to make these nascent technologies more practical and efficient. Scientists from Washington University and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently formed a partnership to study how electrochemically active, biomass-eating bacteria could be used in microbial fuel cells.

Mike Cotta, who leads the ARS Fermentation Biotechnology Research Unit, and Lars Angenent, an assistant professor at WU, will use the Microbial Culture Collection - an ARS-funded database with accessions from about 87,000 freeze-dried bacteria from around the world - to specifically isolate anaerobic bacteria that could help produce hydrogen. Electrochemically active bacteria are able to transfer electrons from fuel cell sugars - which, after traveling through a circuit, can be combined with protons in a cathode chamber to form hydrogen. This can then be burned or converted directly into electricity.

Two taxa that are showing early promise include Bacteroides and Shewanella.

TreeHugger also has a demoralising report on the state of the oceans - "Increasingly Acidified Waters Could Prompt Mass Shellfish Dissolution".

If present acidification trends in the world's oceans continue unabated, mussels, oysters and other shellfish could become extinct as early as 2100. Carol Turley, a researcher at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, is warning that these mass casualties could have severe repercussions for humans and the health of ocean ecosystems. "A lot of shellfish are an important food source for fish as well as humans. The impacts of shellfish disappearing could be massive," she explained in a recent address.

Increasing levels of dissolved carbon dioxide hinder the ability of shellfish to build their protective shells by significantly reducing the amount of free carbonate in the water. Shellfish typically absorb calcium carbonate from their surroundings and deposit it around their bodies to make their shells; higher levels of carbon dioxide, however, limit the amount of available carbonate - which otherwise could bind to free calcium ions - by forming more bicarbonate ions.

This effect is especially pronounced in deeper waters, where extremely low levels of carbonate ions, paired with higher hydrogen ion concentrations, have caused shellfish shells to actively dissolve. Indeed, several recent studies have noted a worrying rise in the Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD), a level below which the rate of supply of calcium carbonate equals that of dissolution.

For very much the same reason, coral reefs are also likely to be hit hard as coral polyps struggle to build the tough skeletons they need to protect themselves and provide habitats for a wide variety of organisms. Fish are also likely to not escape unscathed as acidification harms their ability to fertilize their eggs.

Links:

* Technology Review - Betting on Biocrude
* Red Herring - Wind Power Gets Gust of $16M
* The Long Now - NY Times Magazine: “The Future is Drying Up”
* UPI - Duke Energy faces water shortage
* Richard heinberg - Big melt meets big empty: Rethinking the implications of climate change and peak oil
* TreeHugger - Farewell to "Flush and Forget"
* TreeHugger - The Latest on the Disappearing Honeybee Mystery
* ABC - Press freedom declining: audit
* The Australian - Our slide into secrecy and censorship