Recovery of value added products from catalytic pyrolysis

The practices of crops field burning currently is one of the major environmental problem in Malaysia. Although current definition on greenhouse gaseous identify the process as a net zero emitter due to compensated carbon from next crop season, the practices are still considered harmful from the hazardous particles released.

Few mechanisms of solution have been devised to overcome this problem including mass conversion of waste residue into reusable agriculture products such as bio-fertilizer, composting and mulch. However, there is a need for a fast and rapid process which can convert these agriculture byproducts into commercial needs.

Advanced methods involving the separation and refinery of fossil fuels into pure chemicals and oils have proven not only to be cost effective, but also able to fulfill the targeted market demands.

Thus, a rapid process for product separation involving high temperature and pressure has been proposed for conversion of agriculture biomasses. Crops residue such as straw and husk can be transformed via thermochemical degradation such as fast pyrolysis to produce liquid bio-oils, which can be used for various applications.

Fast pyrolysis is a thermal decomposition process that occurs with little or none presence of oxygen that converts biomass into liquid products (bio-oils), noncondensable gaseous, and biochars. (Bridgwater and Peacocke, 2000; Mohan et al., 2006). It is a process which occurs at heating degrees ranging from 400C to 800C leaving a highly valuable compounds completely different from its original source.

Options for pyrolysis have been proposed as a promising candidate to be used in thermal devices for heat and power generation. Apart from this, a number of studies have also reported efficient pyrolysis conversion to obtain valuable compounds such as high value hydrocarbons and pure chemicals (Shah et al., 2009). These include aromatic phenols, steroids and ascetic acids.However, since most of the compounds are in low concentration, commercialization faces dilemma on market sustainability.

Another issue surrounding prospect for agriculture pyrolysis is lower product energy and heating value if compared to other industrial recycled products such as plastic and waste tyres. Thus,the suitability of these residues for generating secondary biofuels is questioned. Product may improve, however, with certain compound modifications.

Several studies, through catalytic pyrolysis and pretreatment of biomass have successfully increased the quality of bio-oils.The use of Zeolites and Ni- based catalyst for example, would be useful for breaking down large molecules associated with high lignin contents in many of these crops residue.

Catalyst, through cracking reaction of heavy molecules in pyrolysis could also produce lighter and less viscous bio-oils.This will induce the reactions that involve the removal of reactive oxygenated species, especially carbonyl compounds, which will produce bio-oil of higher heating values and better stability (Pattiya et al., 2007).

Finding similarities: Green Technology and Carbon Mitigation

*Facts and informations mainly taken from

http://www.green-technology.org/what.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_technology

As the world gears up for the battle on climate change, the idea for evolving green strategy in business will identify new opportunities and innovations for the world community.

Generally defined as " Green Technology", this concept encompasses a continuously evolves methods and materials to conserve environment and resources from techniques of generating clean energy fuels to non-toxic household products.

As molecule of carbon is the essentials of organic (carbon-based) for structure and processes, required to maintain life, the aim for sequestering and re-use of a waste-product for Carbon Mitigation means to achieve the main objectives of the Green Revolution, which is to apply the concept of " Cradle to cradle",a cycle begins with no end.

It's concept thus build upon each other, between Carbon mitigation and the Green Revolution

Now, let us simply look into the goals of the Green Technology .

1. Sustainability in short, means meeting the needs of present generation without compromising the possibility of future generations to meet their own needs so as the society can indefinitely continued their way into the future without damaging the natural resources.

2. “Cradle to cradle” is an approach that models human industry on nature’s process in which materials are circulating in a healthy and safe environment. The system consists of a set of product cycle that can be fully re-claimed or reused.

3. Source reduction, better known as waste prevention, is elimination of waste before it is created. It involves design, manufacturing, purchase and precise management of products and materials used.

4. Innovation means a new way of doing something. It aims at developing alternatives to the conventional technologies such as seeking replacement of fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizer which has been demonstrated to have side effects on health and environment.

5. Viability, in this aspect, specifically referred to as creating a center of economic activity around the technologies and products that will support the implementation and creation of new careers as well as benefiting the environment. Thus, the whole system may have the “capacity for survival”.

My perception is based on the understanding that Green Technology always try to figure out the point of similarity between business interest and a care of environment.

This definitions clearly put some way for economy to thrive and people's passion for environment to strive.

Don't blame God for it...Sun keeps doing a good job

I had little skeptics few weeks ago after i watched the Hollywood movie Knowing, when they bring about the theory of how the sun's electromagnetic radiation could be the final culprit behind the catastrophe of global warming

Digging out for informations, let me share two of these facts here.

**View a photo here from

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

The graph shows the sun's electromagnetic radiation ever since 1975 has little or nothing to do with current elevating temperatures

**View a photo here from

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/another-global-temp-index-dives-in-jan08-this-time-hadcrut

Skeptics of the greenhouse gaseous theory say that early 2008 sudden drop in world temperature is a sign that global warming is dominantly driven by the sun's activity. If we kept pumping out the gas, why should there be a drop at the time where we could barely breathe and find ourselves gasping for a clean air?

Another fact to share here, in the period between 2007 to 2008, Sun's activity only contributed in 0.18^oC reduction out of those 0.6^oC anomaly.

........
We would never know about the aftermath awaiting us, i mean how the sun would react in future. Anyhow,up to this moment, we only rely on the facts that the greenhouse gaseous theory so far does true.


Informations mainly taken from

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/19/another-global-temp-index-dives-in-jan08-this-time-hadcrut

5 green things everyone can do for the environment now

By Nurhidayati Abdul Aziz

http://greenadvocates.wordpress.com

Activist burn-out. I suffered from it once. I had written a pageful article about the devastating effects of shock, denial, and anger I was experiencing at my failure of contributing fruitfully for the state of environment in Malaysia. At the end of it, I was shamefully trying to bargain my way out of the state of helplessness by attributing it to the zero support we’re currently getting from the government and our society.

At present, rubbish is what I would say to myself. Who am I to talk as if my life is on a leash of some undeterred and unchangeable force. Granted, change is hard, change is difficult. But what use it is being human if we can’t rise above ourselves and change for the better. For ourselves and the world.

So, taking into account the institutional and social blocks present in our country at the moment. The following are my take on what we ourselves can do on a daily basis. Let’s create a cultural revolution, a social movement:

1. Stop tossing rubbish out the window of our car, into the drains, rivers, sidewalks, or anywhere we’re not meant to. Even when our conscious mind fail to admit it, deep down inside we all know the result of reckless garbage disposal - a very dirty world.

2. Watch the flow of our tap while we brush our teeth and clean the dishes. Water, as does carbon, is increasingly becoming the new world currency these days. I understand it’s difficult to comprehend the logic as we live in a country where water is still abundant. In truth, I’m not sure how to put forth the logic of not wasting the water other than, it’s wasteful. Perhaps it makes more sense if we’re in a drought, or our water is dirty, or the water is expensive. But we don’t want it to happen, do we?

3. Switch off the light, turn off the computer, save on electricity whenever we can. First there is electricity, then there’s petroleum and carbon, there’s hydroelectric dams too - which means tons of submerged trees and elephants losing their home. How much more affluent can we get?

4. Eat moderately, do not overuse resources more than what our body needs. To help us put it into perspective, simply check the bin in the kitchen every night after dinner, if we find our guilty conscience is being pricked to the core, there is a big chance we are using more than we should.

5. Synchronize yourself to the working of nature. At a particularly warm day, don’t just say to your friend - “Oh great, another hot day!”, but think - “This could be the climate change people are talking about, why do you think it happens?”. I particularly think Jane Goodall sums it all up rather aptly, “We’ve been very arrogant in assuming that there’s a sharp line dividing us from the rest of the animal kingdom (and nature). We are not the only beings on this planet ith personalities, minds, and above all, emotions. We need to be more respectful.”

In short, my dearest friends, I think it’s time we think in a rather broader horizon than we used to. The environment needs us, the world needs us.

Do you think these ideas are feasible as individual actions, or do you think we can do better?

Algae culture

By Helmi Natrah

Article can be viewed at http://helminatrah.blogspot.com/2008/08/algal-culture.html

Informations mainly from Handbook of Microalgal Culture, Biotechnology and Applied Phycology, Amos Richmond, Blackwell Publishing

Algal culture

I'm back from Spain, what a nice country..i will upload all the pictures in my fotopages ok. By the way, currently I'm busy preparing slides for my coming presentations. When preparing the slides, I noticed the need of having a page where I can quickly grab vital informations about my PhD topics. I'm sorry guys..but I guess more and more post will be in a scientific ways from now on..The 'leisure' things will all be in fotopages ok..

Since basically my PhD is about the study of algae-bacteria interaction in aquaculture. Thus, this page will be mostly dedicated to this three major topics. If you need to know in details about the topic (especially for the layman), you can always write something in the comment sections

So today's post will be about algal culture

Algae - any organisms with chlorophyll a and didn't have differentiated thallus (meaning: no roots, stem etc..) Just imagine spirulina or seaweed. There are obviously different from a tree!

Different algae are basically classified depending on its 1) pigments; 2) the chemical compositions of their storage products and 3) cell wall constituents

IMPORTANCE OF ALGAE
1) Contribute about 40-50% of oxygen in the atmosphere...yes, including some that we breathe everyday..
2)Primary producers in the oceans, first in the food chain & supports most of the aquatic life (especially the faunas)
3)Economically important - feed, nutritional supplements, cosmetics, biofuel etc...

There are two groups of algae:
a) Prokaryotic which consist of Cyanobacteria (blue green algae) and Prochlorophytes. Spirulina which is widely used for human supplements, feed & fine chemicals falls under Cyanobacteria. The lack of cellulose in cyanobacterial walls made them easier to digest thus made them an excellent candidate for human consumptions. Cyanobacteria is called blue green algae due to presence of phycocyanin and phycoerythrin pigments which masked the chlorophyll & makes them blue green in colour

b) Eukaryotic algae consist of 10 different divisions namely
1) Rhodophyta or red algae- Majority are seaweeds (macroalgae) & among commercial utilization of this algae are agar (yang kita semua buat puding tu) and carrageenans (boleh jumpa di Hagen dasz ice cream)
2)Chlorophyta or green algae- can be macro or micro. Cell walls are mostly cellulose based. Most of them are freshwater. Among the famous green algae are Chlorella (health food), Dunaliella (for beta-carotene products)-can grow in hypersaline conditions, Haematococcus freshwater algae which has astaxanthin suitable for colouring agent & are high in antioxidant and Botrycoccus braunii (biofuel).
3)Dinophyta -some of the toxic algae are from here. If you see reddish colour in the sea. Beware! That is probably the red tide which contains highly toxic algae. If you consumed mussels or any shellfish around that area, it may cost you your life! (refer the older saxitoxin test post)
4)Chrysophyta the golden brown algae
5)Prymnesiophyta
6)Bacillariophyta or diatoms -commercially used in aquaculture due to the high PUFA contents especially EPA. Have a siliceous cell wall & that is why when you want to grow them you have to add silica in your medium
7)Xanthophyta
8)Eustigmatophyta-also used in aquaculture eg Nannochloropsis. High source of PUFA with significant Eicosapentaenoic (EPA) content
9)Rhaphidophyta
10) Pheophyta (brown algae) - Mostly in marine habitat and are common in the alginate industry

Reference
Richmond A (ed) 2004 Handbook of microalgal culture: biotechnology and applied phycology. Blackwell Publishing Company

In order to culture this algae, you have to have media which are suitable for them. I'm using Walne and Bold's Basal Media right now. Conway and F2 are good for the marine species too. Other things to consider are the abiotic factors such as salinity (optimal 20-24 ppt), light intensity (10-30 micromolphotons; incorrect light levels will result to poor growth), pH (more acidic for fwater spp 5-7 while alkaline for the cyanobacteria spp (7-9)

Terra Preta

Monday was a bad day. Central monitoring commitee expressed their scepticism on my proposed project.They said lot of people already done it and work redundancy should be avoid at the first place.

Now i'm stuck here again, but thanks to my mentor, i got an idea yesterday. It was still not far from my intention of being here if i continue with the new proposal. Terra Preta was the keyword of the topic.A long lost infertile Amazon land transformed into a fertile soil inhabited by 100,000 populations thank to Amazonians who invented the so called charcoal without any bombastic state of the art technology whatsoever.After all, it will be the future carbon currency for the post kyoto-protocol. Could give a try

Feel so bad for not be able to stand and defend my idea during that meeting.After all thats me. Though my pengarah already gave a sign to say something, i was stunned and could say nothing.

Biodegradable Products Online - The Green Business that Helps Other Businesses Go Green

Biodegradable Products Online - The Green Business that Helps Other Businesses Go Green

Autor: jmleander

Many online biodegradable product distributors are strongly committed to environmental sustainability. Their major focus is the slow decomposition of garbage in landfills and its devastating affects on the environment. That is why they sell 100% biodegradable, eco-friendly products to speed up the breakdown of trash and to reduce our negative effects on the earth.
'Eco-friendly' or 'Environmentally friendly' means that their products pose no harmful effects on the environment or its inhabitants. This includes the methods being used to produce merchandise. Unlike petroleum-based (traditional) plastics, biodegradable plastic does not produce greenhouse gases as it is formed because it is made from plant fibers. Since the aim to have as little affect on the earth as possible, these companies ensure that all products are made in a way that avoids clear-cutting forests, wasting water, using insecticides, burning fossil fuels, etc. They support the use of eco friendly products and encourage others to pave the way for a brighter, cleaner future. Did you know that a plastic beverage bottle takes roughly 450 years to decompose? Take a look at the numbers found by the U.S. National Park
Service:

Time it takes for garbage to decompose in the environment:
Glass Bottle -----------------------------1 million years
Monofilament Fishing Lines--------600 years
Plastic Beverage Bottle--------------450 years
Disposable Diaper--------------------450 years
Aluminum Can---------------------------80-200 years
Foamed Plastic Buoy-----------------80 years
Foamed Plastic Cups-----------------50 years
Rubber-Boot Sole----------------------50-80 years
Tin Cans------------------------------------50 years
Leather--------------------------------------50 years
Nylon Fabric------------------------------30-40 years
Plastic Film Container-----------------20-30 years
Plastic Bag--------------------------------10-20 years
Cigarette Butt-----------------------------1-5 years
Wool Sock--------------------------------1-5 years
Plywood-----------------------------------1-3 years
Waxed Milk Carton--------------------3 months
Apple Core-------------------------------2 months
Newspaper------------------------------6 weeks
Orange or Banana Peel------------2-5 weeks
Paper Towel----------------------------2-4 weeks
Information Source: U.S. National Park Service; Mote Marine Lab, Sarasota, FL.

Humans are producing more garbage than the earth can handle. Waste has gotten harder, and harder to decompose since the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to modern science, a new type of plant-based plastic has been formulated that quickly and completely decomposes. Biodegradable plastics are the solution for environmentally-conscience homes and businesses to reduce landfill waste, and reduce green house gas emissions. In the right conditions, they decompose like fruits and vegetables because they are derived from raw renewable materials. With the same reliability, look, and feel as traditional plastics, corn fiber products can decompose in less than 2 months in the right conditions. An example of such online distributor is SunTerra.us. They offer the following Biodegradable Products: Biodegradable clear plastic cup, eco-friendly plastic bag, environmental friendly plate, trash bag, biodegradable packaging, plastic deli container, leaf bags, garbage bags, biodegradable cleaner and solo cups Composting is a vital part of maintaining our environment's balance. Now that scientists have formulated biodegradable materials, almost anything can be made from it such as eco-friendly: trash bags, cups, cutlery, deli containers, packaging and more. Starch and limestone have also become popular replacements for traditional paper plate products and soup bowls. These products look and feel just like old non-biodegradable products, but reduce your negative impact on the earth. Take advantage of environmentally friendly products online and go GREEN now!

Source: http://www.articlecircle.com/

About the Author
For more information on SunTerra’s Biodegradable Products biodegradable products and environmentally friendly products Click on link text to visit
SunTerra.us J. M. Leander Senior Editor Prime Interactive, Inc http://www.primeinteractive.com/

Biodegradable Products Online - The Green Business that Helps Other Businesses Go Green