Offering Solutions | Green Energy News

February 19, 2006 – Vol.10 No.48

OFFERING SOLUTIONS.

Tight supplies of oil, a failed attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, successful attacks on Nigerian oil and the possibility of a full-blown civil war in Iraq together have added jitters to the oil markets.

Yet, while jitters could turn into a real crisis - higher oil prices and shortages of transportation fuels - there is no shortage of ideas and technologies that could feasibly free the U.S. of its oil addiction. Companies come out of the woodwork to offer solutions and, in a market economy, try to capitalize on them.

–– Hymotion, of Toronto, Canada says it has a packaged, ready-for-sale system, to convert Toyota’s Prius or Ford’s Escape Hybrid into plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

The Hymotion PHEV conversion kit uses lithium ion batteries and will allow the conventional hybrids to travel twice as far, or more, on each gallon of gasoline, they say. The first 20 or so miles each day would be on electricity stored in the battery pack recharged from the power grid for just pennies per day.

While the company offers pictures of the conversion package it gives no indication of its cost or where it can be purchased. Visit Hymotion at http://www.hymotion.com/ .

–– Aerogel Composite (ACI) of Storrs, Connecticut is now offering ENERGel (TM) as an ultracapacitor electrode material. Ultracapacitors can be recharged rapidly and are being considered for advanced hybrid electric vehicles.

Like the battery pack in a conventional hybrid, only more efficient, ultracapacitors would be used to capture nearly all the energy of braking (regenerative braking) ready for reuse when the vehicle accelerates again. Batteries grab only a fraction of the lost energy.

Aerogel Composite says its ENERGel carbon aerogel material can store more energy than materials used in conventional capacitors because aerogels have a far greater electrochemical surface area. And, since aerogels are mostly air, they are very light: they rank among the world’s lowest density solids.

ENERGel can be produced in monolith solids, thin-films, powders, or micro-spheres to meet the needs of given applications.

Aerogel Composite says ENERGel ultracapacitor electrode and electrode materials are available for sale immediately. Visit Aerogel at http://www.aerogelcomposite.com/ .

–– The Hythane Company, of Denver Colorado, is offering its product Hythane (tm) as bridge fuel to a hydrogen economy. The fuel, which is mostly natural gas with hydrogen added, can be used in the same on-board fuel storage tanks as natural gas and only minor modifications to natural gas engines are necessary. (Hythane provides those modifications.) Fueling infrastructure for natural gas is utilized as well.

The company says Hythane fuel improves the combustion characteristics of natural gas to further reduce emissions. As a bridge fuel, Hythane, at about 5-7 percent hydrogen by energy content, would help build a hydrogen generation infrastructure. The more hydrogen that is sold, the more hydrogen production capacity will be built.

(By example, the small percentage of ethanol used as an octane booster and emissions reducer in gasoline is what’s behind the growing ethanol business in the U.S. Ethanol fuel blend, E85, (ethanol 85 percent, gasoline 15 percent) is the beneficiary of increased ethanol production.)

Hythane has partnered with consulting company Gladstein, Neandross and Associates (GNA) in an effort to become involved with the establishment of California's Hydrogen Highway. Visit Hythane at http://www.hythane.com/ .

–– The Veridium Corporation is offering a variety of solutions to bring more renewable fuels to the transportation market.

One solution available for sale is its proprietary Corn Oil Extraction System (tm), a system to squeeze residual corn oil out of an ethanol production byproduct known as distillers dried grain (DDG), often sold as animal feed. The corn oil from DDG is sold to biodiesel producers as biodiesel feedstock.

The company has installed a Corn Oil Extraction System for ethanol producer Glacial Lakes. The system at the Watertown, South Dakota facility is now producing corn oil at a rate of about 800,000 gallons per year. Enhancements should improve corn oil flow to 1.2 -1.5 million gallons per year they say.

Another solution offered by Veridium is its BioStarch Recirculation System (tm). That system channels exhaust carbon dioxide from the fermentation stage of ethanol production to a bioreactor where it becomes food for blue-green algae. The algae, thriving on the carbon dioxide, grows to maturity and falls to the bottom of the bioreactor where it is harvested several times a day.

The algae, which is about 94 percent starch and 6 percent oil, is then used as feedstock for more ethanol and biodiesel respectively. Visit Veridium at http://www.veridium.com/ .

–– G&K Auto Conversions, of Santa Ana, California, says it is completing the conversion of several hundred Smart Cars to be purchased and resold by electric and fuel efficient vehicle retailer Zap. G&K says it has 85 cars that are nearly ready to ship.

The company says it is the only one in the U.S. that has met all the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) certifications for 2005 and 2006 Smart Cars that can be sold in 45 states. The company is working on certifications for sale in states that have shifted to California emissions standards: Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont .

Smart Cars, built by a division of DaimlerChrysler, achieve about 60 miles per gallon. Like any fuel efficient conventional car, they reduce the dependence on oil. Visit G&K at http://www.gnkauto.com/ , ZAP at http://www.zapworld.com/ .