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The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? Customers Say Energy Machine Works & Saves Money (Important!)
CBS News ^

Posted on 02/22/2010 4:36:25 AM PST by MindBender26

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To: thackney
Commercial sized units are proceeding using PetroAlgea technology in Egypt and China. Pilot projects are going forward in India and Indonesia. Their process utilizes a coker unit similar to the process in a petroleum refinery.

I know of countless commercial biofuels facilities that were built and went broke. I can name a hundred pilot projects in the US right now attempting to commercialize cellulose to fuel. Nearly all will fail.

At one time the Soviet Union had over 50 cellulose to ethanol facilities. After the wall came down they closed down except for a few in Belarus because they could not compete in an open market.

We have been in the business of commercializing technologies to produce chemicals from plant life for 60 years. We have more experience in cellulosic biofuels than perhaps any other company in the world. The founder of our company built the first commercial scale cellulose to fuel plants for the US Gov. during WWII.

We have developed numerous cellulose projects over the years connected to the paper industry. Some of the so called new cellulosic technologies are rediscoveries of what we knew 40 and 50 years ago.

We review between 800 and 1000 proposed biofuels projects a year. We are currently involved in several cellulosic pilot projects and have reviewed several algae projects. Most all of are a waste of time.

The bottom line is, aside from a few extremely unusually favorable circumstances, cellulose and algae as fuel sources will never turn profit. It takes more than just fancy technology. Getting something to work in a pristine lab environment is easy, but doing it in a dirty bucket is where the money is made. Nearly all of the new technologies can not operate economically in the dirty bucket.

A couple of generalizations regarding India and China and biofuels. Indian biofuels technology is considered bottom shelf. So is China's except when they copy the technology from someone else.

Oh, and by the way. Biobutanol isnt going to work either. Our company worked on it over 40 years ago.

You might also want to check out the biodiesl industry. It is currently on life support.

121 posted on 02/23/2010 9:32:49 PM PST by suijuris
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To: suijuris

The development of the solid oxide fuel cell could change the biofuel market.

Biofuel in the past has always aimed at the internal combustion engine that really doesn’t tolerate “dirty bucket” fuels.

A SOFC with fuel conditioner (energy provided by waste heat) could run off straight pyrolysis oil. That is easy to make, requires relatively inexpensive technology and can be scaled from small to industrial sized relatively easily. Stabilization with methanol should give it an adequate shelf life.


122 posted on 02/24/2010 8:04:42 AM PST by dangerdoc
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; Rurudyne; steelyourfaith; Tolerance Sucks Rocks; xcamel; AdmSmith; ...

Thanks MindBender26. Topic is from 2010.

Bloom box debut: More IPO than CO2
February 25, 2010: 12:10 PM ET
The long-awaited unveiling may have another goal in mind: to fuel investors’ appetite for a public offering
By Paul Keegan, contributor
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/02/25/bloom-box-debut-more-ipo-than-co2/


123 posted on 06/13/2012 7:45:28 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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