Volkswagen has announced partnerships with two manufacturers of biodiesel fuel as part of their ongoing work in developing diesel automobiles. The two companies are each receiving two VW diesel automobiles: a Passat TDI and a Jetta TDI, and they will each study how their fuels perform in these vehicles. The two companies, Amyris and Solazyme, will share the results of their research with VW over the 12-month period to help VW to "develop more efficient, cleaner burning diesel powertrains for future products."

Both companies are making biodiesel fuel with renewable materials as feedstock, instead of using petroleum. But the two companies are using different approaches to making fuel. Amyris uses a fermentation process to produce fuels from plant-sourced sugar feedstock. Solazyme uses an algae-based process, which also requires plant sugar feedstock, to produce its fuel. We've had both of these companies on our radar for the past few years, and they are both survivors in a startup industry that has seen a number of other players fall by the wayside.

Volkswagen is already a significant presence in the diesel portion of the passenger fleet in the United States. Although VW represents only about 2.5% of the US market, over 20% of that is with diesel automobiles.

Previously on EcoGeek: Solazyme, Amyris

[Ed. Note: Volkswagen paid for the travel and lodging for my trip to SF where I gathered some of the information for this story.]

A group of four autonomous, wave-powered robots has completed a trip from San Francisco to Hawaii and are now continuing on in two pairs, one set to Australia, and the other set to Japan.  They are seeking to carry out the PacX Challenge in which they are trying to set the record for the longest ocean voyage by an unmanned ocean vessel and to demonstrte the abilities of these robots.

The Wave Gliders are built with a two-part construction, with a floating part, which also contains solar panels to operate on-board data collecting equipment and communications equipment, and a glider part, which is connected to the float with a cable and which is used to provide propulsion for the vehicle. The float measures 208 x 60 cm (about 82 x 24 inches) and the glider is 40 x 191 cm (about 16 x 75 in). The two are connected with a 7 meter (about 23 feet) cable. The robot weighs 90 kg (about 200 pounds).

The robots can be used for station-keeping data collection, as well as for autonomous travel, as the current project demonstrates. The Wave Glider has a speed of 0.4 to 2.0 knots (about 0.45 to 2.3 mph or 0.75 to 3.7 kph), but they are able to operate autonomously for up to 1 year. By being able to be autonomously operated, it is possible to do data collection at a remote ocean location without needing to use fuel and human effort to take a buoy to the location to deploy it and to keep it resupplied.

Twin Creeks Technologies has announced a new method to make less expensive solar cells. While we see many new ways of making cheap solar panels, most of these methods focus on producing panels with alternative materials rather than silicon. But the method developed by Twin Creeks produces ultra-thin pieces of crystalline silicon by using an ion cannon dubbed Hyperion.

There are a number of different materials that are used for solar cells, but crystalline silicon is the material that has been used for cells with the highest efficiency. Unfortunately, it also has a very high cost. Much of the thickness of the silicon cell does not contribute to making electricity. Thinner cells would work as well, and use less material, but they have been too hard to produce until now, because crystalline silicon is a fragile and brittle material.

The Hyperion ion cannon bombards discs of silicon with hydrogen ions with a very precisely controlled charge. These accumulate in a layer 20 micrometers below the surface. After bombardment, the discs are transported to a furnace where the ions expand into hydrogen gas and shear off a fine layer of crystalline silicon called a lamina, which is ten times thinner than conventionally produced silicon (20 micrometers versus 200 micrometers). These pieces can be mounted on a metal backing which supports the silicon and allows it to flex without breaking. This method also eliminates the waste of silicon which is ordinarily lost from conventional sawing.

The company claims an ability to create silicon solar cells for under 40 cents per watt (half the price of conventional methods), and says that one of its Hyperion systems has the capacity to produce 1.5 million wafers - enough for 6 megawatts of solar cells - per year.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge (England) have developed a method using lasers to remove the toner from a laser printed page, which would allow the paper to be reused. With the "unprinter," a green laser is flashed at the page. This does not harm the paper, but the light is absorbed by the toner, causing it to detach from the paper.

Because of the difference in technology between laser printing, where the toner sits on top of the paper and is fused to it by heat, and inkjet printing, where some of the dye is absorbed by the paper, it probably would not work (or would work less well) with inkjet printing.

As noted on Slashdot, "Recycling paper is a good step in the right direction, but it still pales in comparison to unprinting. In a worst-case scenario, The University of Cambridge unprinting method has half the carbon emissions of recycling; best-case, unprinting is almost 20 times as efficient."

image: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

via: BoingBoing

A recent article from Smart Energy Portal turns out to be extremely timely as a major solar storm is headed towards Earth.

Geomagnetic storms are triggered by the solar wind of charged particles from a solar eruption which create fields that interfere with the Earth's own magnetic fields. In turn, this can induce low frequency currents in the power grid network, and these currents have the potential to damage the high voltage transformers that are central to power transmission over the grid.

While this storm doesn't appear to have the strength to damage power distribution, the sun certainly has the potential for stronger outbursts, and there have been grid failures due to solar activity in the past.

image: NASA

via: SmartEnergyPortal.net

Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana is in the process of installing the largest ground-source heat pump system in the country. It is not supplying just a single building, however. Rather, this is a campus-wide system that will provide heating and cooling for the entire University campus.

The system uses 3,600 vertical bores located in several fileds throughout the campus with more than 1,000 miles of piping for the heat transfer. The first phase of this project is nearing completion, with the system now providing heating and cooling to nearly half the campus.

The University expects to realize $2 million in annual energy costs through the use of the campus-wide geothermal system. Additionally, by removing its old boilers, the University says it will also reduce about 85,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually. Total cost for the project is around $70 million.

Natural gas is going to be a fuel option available for some Chevrolet and GMC pickups beginning late this year. These will be bi-fuel vehicles, like the present flex-fuel vehicles (that can run on either gasoline or ethanol) but in this case, the fuel choices are gasoline and compressed natural gas (CNG). Chrysler has also announced similar plans for its Ram pickup.

There are many utilities and service companies that have pilot fleets of CNG vehicles, and the Honda Civic Natural Gas was this named this past year's Green Car of the Year. But these are all dedicated CNG vehicles. The newly announced pickups will be able to run on either gasoline or CNG.

Economics is certainly a factor in this. The cost of CNG fuel is about one third less than an equivalent amount of gasoline. But the bi-fuel option is several thousand dollars of additional cost over the base vehicle. The numbers for these vehicles are rather meager, with GM planning to build 2,500 of these pickups in the fourth quarter and Chrysler planning to build 2,000 of its trucks this year.

Overall, it's only a small step, and not without its downside. While seeing new markets for cheap CNG will have some cheering the use of this cleaner burning fuel, there are also environmental consequences lurking at the corners of the gas fracking boom that make us think this is a mixed development at best.

However, wider adoption of natural gas vehicles could lead the way to wider distribution infrastructure. While the use of fossil natural gas is still problematic in terms of CO2 emissions, methane is fairly easy to synthesize compared to gasoline, and several solar and microbial fuel processes could potentially produce gas that could be used for more vehicles in the future.

via: GM Media

Installing offshore wind turbines is already a logistical nightmare to get all the components delivered to the proper site. But the biggest issue may be getting the workers to the worksite. For the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm off the east coast of England north of Norfolk, the workers are being housed on-site in a 137-room ferry during their 2-week on/2-week off rotations.

A former cruise ferry, the Regina Baltica, has now been repurposed to serve as a floating hotel for wind farm construction workers. Keeping the workers close at hand makes it possible to work in smaller windows of favorable weather, and reduces the amount of travel and transportation needed for them. It also reduces the stress on local towns which may not have the capacity to support 100+ workers at a time. The ship's accommodations include "amenities such as a coffee shop, restaurant, swimming pool, conference and meeting rooms, lounge areas and a sun deck."

image: CC BY-SA 3.0 by Erik Christensen/Wikimedia

via: NA Windpower

A low-cost, low-power, credit-card sized computer developed by a charitable foundation set up by some computer science instructors from Cambridge University. Their goal was to produce a very inexpensive, low-power computer that could be used by kids to learn programming. Now the first examples of the resulting low-cost credit-card sized computer are about to reach the market with a starting price as little as $25.

"The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming."

The Raspberry Pi is an ARM-based, SoC (system on a chip) computer that is just slightly too large to fit in an Altoids tin.  It will run several varieties of Linux operating system. Fedora Linux is its recommended distribution, and it will also support Debian and ArchLinux (some issues with Ubuntu and the ARM processor prevent Ubuntu from supporting it at this time).

The Raspberry Pi is capable of delivering BluRay quality display. The developers say that "graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics." It has ports for composite and DVI (using a cheap adapter for the DVI) video output.

Power to run the Raspberry Pi can come from a phone charger or even from 4 AA batteries. A 700 mA USB charger will be the power source for the Model B, and the Model A can get away with even lower power requirements (300 mA). At that low power level, solar powered options should be practical and not terribly expensive.

The Raspberry Pi comes in two models (A and B) with 128 MB and 256 MB of RAM and priced at $25 and $35 respectively. Lots more information and specifications are available in the Raspberry Pi FAQ. The Raspberry Pi will be available beginning at the end of February 2012.

image: via Raspberry Pi

Hat-tip to @chrissalzman for the heads-up

The USVI, much like other islands, currently depends heavily on imported fuel for their energy needs, making electricity cost almost $0.50/kWh for residents -- about five times more than residents of the continental U.S. The need for switching to renewable sources of energy is just as much economical as it is environmental for the islanders.

NREL wanted to come up with a realistic plan for reducing the USVI's dependence on fossil fuels, so they worked with the government, utilities and public and private groups to map out the territory's potential for different renewable energy and efficiency solutions. The organization came up with the following mix of efforts to get the islands to a 60 percent reduction:

• 2 percent biomass
• 3 percent landfill gas
• 3 percent solar
• 6 percent wind
• 8 percent waste-to-energy
• 38 percent energy efficiency

The USVI burns 2.6 million barrels of oil every year for electricity and water desalination. By 2025, if this plan comes together, that number could drop that number to just over 1 million barrels, creating a cheaper, homegrown electricity portfolio for the islands and a major slash in emissions.

via NREL

Image via Don Buchanan, USVI Energy Office