More Biogas in West Sweden

Västra Götaland (VG) is the name of the largest province in west Sweden with 1.6 million inhabitants. This province together with two other provinces named Skåne (South) and Stockholm (east) are the largest producer of biogas in Sweden. In VG, about 200 GWh biogas (equal to about 21 million m3 methane) was produced in 2011, in order to feed 7111 cars, 1354 light trucks, 262 heavy trucks and 224 buses.

The province has now a heavy plan to increase its biogas production to 2.4 TWh (equal to 250 million m3 methane gas) per year in 2020, in which half of it to be produced by bacterial digestion and the other half via gasification. In order to reach this goal, many organizations, companies, farmers, universities, schools, municipalites etc. are now gathering to syncronize their activities. We are also an active partner in this development with our research, education, development and international network with the hope to reach the goal. More information about the program can be found at Biogas Väst!

Ethanol in windstorm in Sweden and Denmark

Fuel ethanol is currently produced primarily from sugarcane and grains. It is called the first generation ethanol, and with its 70 million tons/year production is globally dominant in the fuel market. A few years back, ethanol cars were dominant in the Swedish green car markets. Today, allmost all the gas stations offer ethanol as E85 to the customers. However, a stron debate on "Food vs. Fuel" in a few years ago, as well as increased price of ethanol reduced the interest to ethanol cars in Sweden.

The 2nd generation ethanol that is produced from lignocellulosic materials has been a very hot topic in the world since 1980's. The research resulted in great development (cf. our previous review articles 1 and 2) and it is still going on. Many problems of the process have been solved, or are still investigating. However, industrially talking, the "real" price of lignocellulosic ethanol is still high and cannot compete with the 1st generation ethanol. A recent report in Denmark point to a price of about 0.5 Euro per liter higher that the 1st generation ethanol. There are many reasons for this high price, such as enzyme price, difficulties of the pretreatment, transportation costs of raw materials, etc.

As the results of these difficulties, we heard last month turing down the Swedish cellulosic ethanol pilot plant (SEKAB), and now backing of Danish Energy minister in supporting of the large scale ethanol plant of Dong Energy.

We see now the polititions in Denmark talk in favor of methanol and DME. We shouldn't forget our experiences in Sweden for many years in developing both methanol and also DME. These are interesting biofuels, but they also have their own drawbacks. There is simply no black and white, or good and bad. We shouldn't make a high expectation or just disappoint people, as our media or polititions sometimes do!

Metals recycling in Sweden

Stena Recycling AB is a large company in Sweden that is active in recycling of wastes. This company collect different recycling wastes such as metals and papers in Sweden and other neibouring countries in their 200 plants, and treat them until becoming raw materials for other industries. One interesting part of this process is how to separate the mixture of different metals in e.g. a car or household wastes or industrial wastes. In this process (figure below), after crushing by mills, magnets are used to separate iron followed by separation using density differences of the metals. It seems they recycle about 99% of the metals which is a very good number. It is a good business considering the prices of the metals that go up every day!

Reusing wastes in Göteborg

When talking about waste managements, usually we talk about 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle). Developing countries and poor countries are usually very good in reusing the wastes. However, people at the industrial countries are usually not so good in that aspects. This general rule is also valid in Sweden. However, since few years ago, Gothenburg (or Göteborg) which is a neighboring city of Borås, has started waste reusing in one of the recycling stations, named Alelyckan. In this station, when people bring the wastes, the personal ask them about the quality of the materials, if could be reused. If so, those wastes are separated to be sold again directly by the shop next to the center, or send to the charity organizations such as myrorna or the church stadsmissionen. I believe it is a good initiative and should be developed to several cities and all the waste recycling stations. Here are some photos from this center and their shops!

A PhD thesis on magic fungi

People have consumed the resources in the world for thousands of years and produced wastes. But, why we still have the resources? The fact is that the good bugs (bacteria and fungi) together with plants and animals recycle the materials we consume!

Zygomycetes are among the fungi that are relatively unknown. We have worked with these fungi since 1999, and are getting more and more interested. These fungi are saprophytes (means they like wastes to grow on), and produce many products such as ethanol, lactic acid, fumaric acid, etc., they produce different types of enzymes, while their biomass is also usefull. Hunders of million people in Indonesia have eaten these fungi every day in form of a food named tempe for hundreds of years. In addition, these fungi are good as fish feed or animal feed. They are probably one of the best friends to human, without we know about it!

We had previously several PhD theses on these fungi and now it is time for Patrik Lennartsson, to see if these fungi can help him to get a PhD :)

Patrik defends his thesis on 9 Februari this year.

Here is his thesis and some published articles and the link to download them:

PhD Thesis:
Zygomycetes and cellulose residuals: hydrolysis, cultivation and applications

Articles:
1-Effects of different growth forms of Mucor indicus on cultivation on dilute-acid lignocellulosic hydrolyzate, inhibitor tolerance, and cell wall composition

2-A pilot study on lignocelluloses to ethanol and fish feed using NMMO pretreatment and cultivation with Zygomycetes in an airlift reactor

3-Spent sulphite liquor for cultivation of an edible Rhizopus sp.

His other articles are on the way to be published!


(Dark field microscopy photograph of submerged growth of Mucor indicus. Photo by Patrik Lennartsson)

Green cars pool in Sweden

Sweden, as one of the most environmentally friendly contries, consumes today 47% renewable energy according to Swedish Energy Agency, while the rest is nuclear energy and fossil fules. The fossil oil is mainly consumed as fuel for the cars and trucks. There has been therefore a major effort to change the pattern of this branch. Ethanol was the first one introduced in Sweden in 2000 and it is now mixed with gasoline and also sold as 85% as E85 by almost all the gas stations. According to Bil Sweden, 304,984 new cars were registered in 2011, in which 122,460 cars were in the category of environmental cars. It means that 40.2% of the new cars were green cars.

However, among the green cars, there has been big fluctuations in the last few years. Ethanol was dominant a few years ago according to Gröna Bilisters. For exampe, 30% of the new green cars in 2010 were ethanol cars, which reduced to 12% last year. There are now many alternatives of low-consumimg green cars (producing less than 120 g CO2 per km) in the market, particularly diesel cars. It means in 2011, green diesel cars were dominants. However, the new incoming law with the harder definition of green cars, will further change the profile of the green cars in the coming years. The share of biogas cars is now more than 5%. Let's hope for the best development in this market!


(The percentage of newly registered green cars in Sweden in 2011. Complete list of the last few years is here)

2011: Political, economical, social and climate turbulences

2011 is now passed, a year with global turbulences in almost all the aspects, including politics in e.g. Middle East and North Africa, economics in Europe and USA, social in many countries and also the global climates. The global temperature in 2010 had a record high, but the warmest 13 years were in the last 15 years. Arctic sea ice got a record minimum of 4.33 million km2 in 2011, which is 35% below the average 1979-2000. We heard quite often about severe storms, cyclons, floods, drought, forest fires, and many other natural disasters everywhere in the world. The weather goes toward the extremes in all the aspects. We see for example drought followed by flood. The polititions in the world should wake up and do something! More information about 2001 can be found at World Meterological Organization.


(Global temperature from WMO)

Ethanol prices in EU

I wish you all had a happy holiday and happy new year, although this time is not a vacation time for all around the world. I am starting this year in my blog with ethanol prices in EU which was recently published as part of a large report from Swedish Energy Agency. Ethanol is the dominant biofuel in the global market and a lot of debates around it. Actually, anything new that comes to the market, bring new debates. I just add the price of ethanol here at the time being!

Narcotic effect of Carbon Monoxide (CO)

Developing of a society usually is in parity of developing more stress for the people. We have to work harder and harder, and also we affect our environment in different ways. A more developed society usually means also more thermal load, more traffic jams, more noise, more CO2, and more discomfort. People are used to say "it was better before".

There was a recent study on these factors and how they affect the human stress. One interesting point is the level of carbon monoxide (1-15 ppm), which act as narcotic for people living in the heart of the cities and reduces their stress. So, we shouldn't surprise if we see CO addicted people in the cities in line of other drugs :)

Hot climate: good or bad?

There are some people who don't believe or don't care about climate change. A recent report show that Americans as the most greenhouse gas producers, hesitate if this climate change is because of human activities. Somebody said that this climate change in good for Sweden, since the country become warmer and more suitable to live!

Actually it could be true for Sweden and some other parts of the world. However, the global development is serious and scaring. In a recent report from World Meterological Organization, year 2010 showed to be the warmest year, and 2011 as one of the warmest. Actually, the last 13 warmest years have been in the last 15 years. This development is in parity with CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. As you can see in this figure, the CO2 level has never been in this level (close to 400 ppm) in the last 400,000 years. So, we should expect the consequences and prepare for different disasters, believe it or not!