BIOENGINEERING, WORKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Engineering Microbes for Sustainable Manufacturing and Better Biofuels

 

Like mini-recycling plants, microbes ingest and break down material to create something new. Scientists around the world are now using bioengineering to harness and improve this processing power to apply it towards solving major environmental challenges.

 

Using microbes to create useful products is nothing new. Humans have been doing it for centuries to bake bread or brew alcohol, for example. More recent techniques have employed microbes in green technology, where they are used in the production of biofuels and in the generation of electricity from waste.

 

 

 

Using a non-food feedstock to create biofuels is better both environmentally and economically, which is why researchers from Iowa State University are working to turn corn stalks and sawdust into ethanol.
The process involves heating the feedstock until it becomes a sugar-rich bio oil, then unleashing microbes to feed on the oil and produce ethanol as a by-product. Unfortunately, the microbes have a bad reaction to some of the compounds in the oil, which prevents them from efficiently digesting it.
To work around this, the team is using a technique called directed evolution.
The method works by growing each generation of microbes in a higher concentration of the maligned compounds. Each time the microbes divide, their DNA is replicated, which leads to mistakes in the DNA. The researchers hope one of these mistakes will produce an improved microbe that is tolerant of the oil.

 



The team has already had some success; some of the newly evolved microbes are able to live in slightly higher concentrations of the compounds. Once the ideal microbe emerges, the researchers will analyze its genetic data in order to duplicate it, and will be on their way to creating better, more sustainable biofuels.

Fonts: www.renewableenergyworld.com

GOOD NEWS FOR THE PLANET

UK Reports Major Renewable Energy Advancements in 2012

 

Britain has reached several major milestones in its development of renewables during the past year. It established a national Green Investment Bank and confirmed a reduction from one tradable Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC) to 0.9 ROC/MWh for onshore wind – ending speculation over much deeper cuts, which had eroded industry confidence. This 10 percent cut was originally proposed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), but rumors that further cuts – up to 25 percent – were under consideration had driven leading wind turbine manufacturers to write to the energy minister, warning that continuing uncertainty was a risk to investment in the UK.

 

According to reports, the British public supports renewables despite some political opposition driven by a desire to protect the countryside from wind farm development, and a recent media flap over an expected rise in energy prices during which wind turbines were publicly demonized. But a recent survey found that, in the service of meeting European renewable energy targets for 2020, over two-thirds of the British populace favors more wind turbines over shale gas.

 

 

In addition to continuing growth in all sectors and a more stable policy framework, renewables' advances in the UK include increasing awareness of the potential for marine energy, according to McCaffery. Among other advancements, The Marine Energy Array Demonstrator (MEAD) scheme, which was set up in 2011, opened in April 2012 and will provide capital support to project developers installing the first wave and/or tidal arrays of full-scale electricity generating devices in UK waters.

 

It is an excellent news to the planet, as the world increasingly more money is invested in research on renewable energy, strengthening and creating policies that protect the environment, in Colombia this kind of pilicies should be implement.

 

 

Fonts: www.renewableenergyworld.com

 

ENERGY FROM THE EARTH

Geothermal energy is the heat from the Earth. It's clean and sustainable. Resources of geothermal energy range from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the Earth's surface, and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma.

 

 

This heat energy, known as geothermal energy, can be found almost anywhere, as far away as remote deep wells in Indonesia and as close as the dirt in our backyards. Many regions of the world are already tapping geothermal energy as an affordable and sustainable solution to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and the global warming and public health risks that result from their use. For example, more than 8,900 megawatts (MW) of large, utility-scale geothermal capacity in 24 countries now produce enough electricity to meet the annual needs of nearly 12 million typical U.S. households. Geothermal plants produce 25 percent or more of electricity in the Philippines, Iceland, and El Salvador.

 



Geothermal energy has the potential to play a significant role in moving all the countries in the world, toward a cleaner, more sustainable energy system. It is one of the few renewable energy technologies can supply continuous, baseload power. The costs for electricity from geothermal facilities are also declining. Some geothermal facilities have realized at least 50 percent reductions in the price of electricity since 1980.

 

 

Fonts: www.renewableenergyworld.com, www.ucsusa.org



FREE ENERGY?

Free energy has always been one of the most important searches in humanity, and in the course of history have made ​​discoveries that have approached this goal and have been closed, because the big oil corporations do not allow these developments to be made public and widespread use, as fossil fuels are the largest source of energy use worldwide.

Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors in history, dreamed of transmitting electrical energy free all people, a goal that was about to turn, when his lab was mysteriously burned with all his research.

Tesla was a great mind for science. Some of his studies because no one could decipher his huge inductive capacity. For most of its projects devised documents head, it was enough to have the image of that object without knowing how it worked, I just elaborated without knowing he could be a big step forward for mankind.

Free energy will be a reality, once you begin to deplete fossil fuel sources, or sooner if the significant support projects in this field.