Hemp produces viable biodiesel, study finds

(PhysOrg.com) -- Industrial hemp, which grows in infertile soils, is attractive as a potential source of sustainable diesel fuel.

Physorg.com, October 6, 2010 By Christine Buckley

Of all the various uses for Cannabis plants, add another, “green” one to the mix.

Hemp plant (Enlarge)

Researchers at UConn have found that the fiber crop Cannabis sativa, known as industrial hemp, has properties that make it viable and even attractive as a raw material, or feedstock, for producing biodiesel – sustainable diesel fuel made from renewable plant sources.

The plant’s ability to grow in infertile soils also reduces the need to grow it on primary croplands, which can then be reserved for growing food, says Richard Parnas, a professor of chemical, materials, and biomolecular engineering who led the study.

“For sustainable fuels, often it comes down to a question of food versus fuel,” says Parnas, noting that major current biodiesel plants include food crops such as soybeans, olives, peanuts, and rapeseed. “It’s equally important to make fuel from plants that are not food, but also won’t need the high-quality land.”

Industrial hemp is grown across the world, in many parts of Europe and Asia. Fiber from the plant’s stalk is strong, and until the development of synthetic fibers in the 1950s, it was a premier product used worldwide in making rope and clothing.

Today, there are still parts of the world that rely on Cannabis stalks as a primary fiber, mainly because of its ability to grow “like a weed,” without requiring lots of water, fertilizers, or high-grade inputs to flourish. But the seeds, which house the plant’s natural oils, are often discarded. Parnas points out that this apparent waste product could be put to good use by turning it into fuel.

“If someone is already growing hemp,” he says, “they might be able to produce enough fuel to power their whole farm with the oil from the seeds they produce.” The fact that a hemp industry already exists, he continues, means that a hemp biodiesel industry would need little additional investment.

With his graduate student Si-Yu Li and colleagues James Stuart of the Department of Chemistry and Yi Li of the Department of Plant Sciences, Parnas used virgin hemp seed oil to create biodiesel using a standardized process called transesterification. The group then tested the fuel for a suite of characteristics in the Biofuels Testing Laboratory at UConn’s Center for Environmental Science and Engineering.

The hemp biodiesel showed a high efficiency of conversion – 97 percent of the hemp oil was converted to biodiesel – and it passed all the laboratory’s tests, even showing properties that suggest it could be used at lower temperatures than any biodiesel currently on the market.

Although growing hemp is not legal in the U.S., Parnas hopes that the team’s results will help to spur hemp biodiesel production in other parts of the world. UConn holds a patent on a biodiesel reactor system that could be customized to make biodiesel from a range of sustainable inputs, hemp included.

“Our research data could make buying a reactor system with our technology more attractive,” says Parnas. “If we have data for the production of many different feedstocks, we can tailor the system to meet the company’s needs.”

Parnas, Yi Li, and colleagues Steven Suib of the Department of Chemistry, Fred Carstensen of the Department of Economics, and Harrison Yang of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment are preparing to build a pilot biodiesel production facility using a two-year, $1.8 million grant from the Department of Energy.

The reactor will be capable of producing up to 200,000 gallons of biodiesel per year, and while this production rate is small in comparison to commercial biodiesel reactors, the main use of the facility will be to test new ways to produce biodiesel, including catalysts and feedstocks. Ultimately, the team will perform economic analyses on commercializing their methods.

As for other industries that utilize Cannabis plants, Parnas makes a clear distinction between industrial hemp, which contains less than 1 percent psychoactive chemicals in its flowers, and some of its cousins, which contain up to 22 percent. “This stuff,” he points out, “won’t get you high.”

Provided by University of Connecticut (news : web)

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Expect More Floods as Global Water Cycle Speeds Up

National Geographic, By Sandra L. Postel, National Geographic Freshwater Fellow, October 8, 2010

There is nearly 20 percent more freshwater flowing into the world's oceans than there was 10 years ago--a sign of climate change and a harbinger of more flooding.

This post is part of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative.

A new indicator has joined the century-long rise in temperature to signal that the planet's climate is changing: the global water cycle is speeding up. Using satellite observations, NASA and university researchers have found that rivers and melting ice sheets delivered 18 percent more water to the oceans in 2006 than in 1994.

The findings, which appear in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the volume of water running off the land toward the sea is expanding by the equivalent of roughly one Mississippi River each year.

On the face of it that might sound like a good thing--more water in rivers means more water to tap for agriculture, industry, and growing cities. But most of the increase is occurring in places where extra water isn't needed, like the wet tropics or the remote Arctic, or is being delivered through torrential storms that overwhelm human infrastructure and coping capacities. Though no single weather episode can be pinned to climate change, the massive rains that recently flooded a fifth of Pakistan is the kind of event scientists expect to see more of--and that nations should prepare for.

Image of flooding in Sukkur, Pakistan, on August 18, 2010 by NASA.

(See more pictures of the Pakistan flood.)

Why is the water cycle speeding up? As the atmosphere warms from the addition of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, it can hold more moisture. As a result, more water evaporates from the oceans, leading to thicker clouds that then dump more rainfall over the land. That heavier-than-normal rain can then produce massive flooding as it runs back toward the sea, where the cycle begins all over again.

Scientists have expected global warming to speed up the water cycle in this way, but the use of satellite data allowed the trend to be observed and measured for the first time. The research team, led by Jay Famiglietti of the University of California at Irvine, used satellite records of sea level rise, precipitation, and evaporation to compile a unique 13-year record, the first of its kind.

As the scientific evidence mounts that more severe floods and droughts are on the horizon, getting on with ways of adapting to climatic change becomes just as urgent as slowing the pace of that change.

Sandra Postel directs the independent Global Water Policy Project and lectures, writes, and consults on international water issues. She is also Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society, and serves as lead water expert for the Society's freshwater initiative.

Sandra is the author of several acclaimed books, including Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? (W.W. Norton, 1999) and Last Oasis (W.W. Norton, 1997), which appears in eight languages and was the basis for a 1997 PBS documentary. She is also co-author, with Brian Richter, of Rivers for Life. Her essay "Troubled Waters" was selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is a 1995 Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment.

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Panel: Gov't blocked worst-case oil spill figures

Yahoo/Associated Press, by DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The White House blocked efforts by federal scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could have been, according to a panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP PLC contractor Nick Wilson pauses while testifying
about his experience aboard the Deepwater Horizon

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff reveals that in late April or early May the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make public the worst-case discharge from the blown-out well. The Unified Command — the government team incharge of the spill response — also was discussing the possibility of making the numbers public, the report says, citing interviews with government officials.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Jerry Miller, head of the White House science office's ocean subcommittee, told The Associated Press in an interview at a St. Petersburg, Fla., conference on the oil's flow that he didn't think the budget office censored NOAA.

"I would very much doubt that anyone would put restrictions on NOAA's ability to articulate factual information," Miller said.

The April 20 blowout and explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, spewed 206 million gallons of oil from the damaged oil well, and sunk the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

BP's drilling permit for the Macondo well originally estimated the worst scenario to be a leak of 6.8 million gallons per day. In late April, the Coast Guard and NOAA received an updated estimate of 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day.

While those figures were used as the basis for the government'sresponse to the spill — they appeared on an internal Coast Guard Situation report and on a dry-erase board in NOAA's Seattle war room — the public was never told.

In the meantime, government officials were telling the public that the well was releasing 210,000 gallons per day — a figure that would be later adjusted to be much closer to the worst-case estimates.

"Despite the fact that the Unified Command had this information, relied on it for operations, and publicly states that it was operating under a worst-case scenario, the government never disclosed what its...scenario was," the report says.

University of South Florida oceanographer David Hollander, who was also at the St. Petersburg meeting of 150 scientists studying the oil flow on Wednesday, said he was surprised to find that the White House budget office gagged NOAA. He said public disclosure would have helped scientists to figure out what was going on.

"It would have been much better to know, from a scientific point of view, the reality," he said in an interview with the AP.

On the Web: National Oil Spill Commission: http://www.oilspillcommission.gov

Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Fla.

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A stronger Sun actually cools the Earth

An increase in solar activity from the Sun actually cools the Earth, suggests new research that will renew the debate over the science behind climate change.

Telegraph.co.uk, By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, 06 Oct 2010

The findings will be seized upon by those who believe that man's role
in rises in the earth's temperature has been overstated Photo: AP

The research overturns traditional assumptions about the relationship between the sun and global warming.

Focused on a three-year snapshot of time between 2004 and 2007, the findings will be seized upon by those who believe that man's role in rises in the earth's temperature has been overstated.

As solar activity waned at the end of one of the Sun's 11-year cycles, the new data shows the amount of light and heat reaching the Earth rose rather than fell. Its impact on melting polar ice caps, and drying up rivers could therefore have been exaggerated by conventional climate models during the period.

Scientists also believe it may also be possible that during the next upturn of the cycle, when solar activity increases, there might be a cooling effect at the Earth's surface.

However while this may support climate change sceptics' arguments in the short term, long term analysis suggests it actually provides further evidence that the heating of the planet is more than a natural, cyclical phenomenon.

Over the past century, overall solar activity has been increasing and should therefore cool the Earth, yet global temperatures have increased.

Professor Joanna Haigh, from Imperial College London, who led the study, said: "These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the sun's effect on our climate.

"However, they only show us a snapshot of the sun's activity and its behaviour over the three years of our study could be an anomaly.

"We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the sun's activity and the patterns that we have uncovered on longer timescales.

"However, if further studies find the same pattern over a longer period of time, this could suggest that we may have overestimated the Sun's role in warming the planet, rather than underestimating it."

She denied that it would fuel scepticism about climate change research.

"I think it doesn't give comfort to the climate sceptics at all," she said. "It may suggest that we don't know that much about the Sun. It casts no aspersions at all upon the climate models."

The research, published in the journal Nature, is based on data from a satellite called SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) that has been measuring the sun's energy output at X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, the Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said: "We know that the Earth's climate is affected both by human activity and by natural forces and today's study improves our understanding of how the Sun influences our climate.

"Studies like this are vital for helping us to create a clear picture of how our climate is changing and through this, to work out how we can best protect our planet."

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Unexplained crack splits Mich. Backyard

WWLP.com, Wednesday, 06 Oct 2010, 11:48 AM EDT

BIRCH CREEK, Mich. (WLUK) - A Michigan family's property has a sudden unexplained divide.

Divide runs 200 yards through property

A large unexplained crack now runs 200 yards through the Salewsky family's property, eight miles north of Menominee in Birch Creek.

The family thinks it happened Monday around 9:00 in the morning. The ground raised five feet up, taking trees along for the ride.

Some cracks were up two feet wide and five feet deep.

"The house shook, the chairs shook," Doug Salewsky said. "The logs weren't there when I piled them."

Salewsky doesn't know what caused his backyard to split in two and neither do police.

There have been no recent reports of any earthquakes in the area. People specializing in geological surveying are being called in to try and explain the phenomenon.

Chasm: The five metre wide hole mysteriously opened in a road in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, 30 June 2010.

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Hungary sludge flood called 'ecological disaster'

Yahoo/Associated press, By BELA SZANDELSZKY, Associated Press Write

• Slideshow:Toxic red sludge from alumina plant floods Hungary
• Play VideoVideo:Toxic sludge floods Hungary villages Reuters
• Play VideoVideo:Raw Video: Hungary sludge spill sparks emergency AP

DEVECSER, Hungary – Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties Tuesday after a flood of toxic red sludge from analumina plant engulfed several towns and burned people through their clothes. One official called it "an ecological disaster" that may threaten the Danube and other key rivers.

A Hungarian soldier wearing a chemical protection
gear walks through a street flooded by toxic in the
town of Devecser, Hungary, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

The toll rose to four dead, six missing and at least 120 people injured after a reservoir failed Monday at the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant in Ajka, a town 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Budapest, the capital.

Several hundred tons of plaster were being poured into the Marcal River to bind the toxic sludge and prevent it from flowing on, the National Disaster Management Directorate said.

So far, about 35.3 million cubic feet (1 million cubic meters) of sludge has leaked from the reservoir, affecting an estimated 15.4 square miles (40 square kilometers), Environmental Affairs State Secretary Zoltan Illes told the state news wire MTI.

Illes called the flood an "ecological catastrophe" and said the sludge could reach the Raba and Danube rivers. He suspended activity at the plant and ordered the company to repair the damaged reservoir.

The disaster agency said 390 residents had to be temporarily relocated and 110 were rescued from the flooded towns, including Kolontal, Devecser and Somlovasarhely. Firefighters and soldiers swept through the region Tuesday carrying out cleanup tasks with bulldozers.

The sludge, a waste product in aluminum production, contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested. Many of the injured sustained burns as the sludge seeped through their clothes, and two faced life-threatening conditions. Two women, a young man and a 3-year-old child were killed in the flooding.

Click image to see photos of the toxic red sludge

The injured were being monitored because the chemical burns caused by the sludge could take days to emerge and what may seem like superficial injuries could later cause damage to deeper tissue, Dr. Peter Jakabos of Gyor hospital, where several of the injured were taken, told state television.

In Devecser, the sludge in Tunde Erdelyi's house was still five feet (1.5 meters) high Tuesday and rescue workers had to use an ax to cut through her living room door to let the red liquid flow out.

"When I heard the rumble of the flood, all the time I had was to jump out the window and run to higher ground," said a tearful Erdelyi, still shocked by the events but grateful that the family rabbit and cat were safe.

Robert Kis, Erdelyi's husband, said his uncle had been taken to Budapest by helicopter after the sludge "burned him to the bone." The toxic flood overturned Erdelyi's car and pushed it 30 yards (meters) to the back of the garden while her husband's van was lifted up onto a fence.

Erdelyi, a seamstress, was hoping the flood spared the shop in town where she worked, her family's main source of income.

In neighboring Kolontal, the town closest to the aluminum plant, 61-year old widow Erzsebet Veingartner was in her kitchen when the sludge flood hit Monday afternoon.

"I looked outside and all I saw was the stream swelling like a huge wave," said Veingartner, who lives on a monthly disability pension of 70,000 forints ($350). "Thank God I had the presence of mind to turn off the gas and run up to the attic."

Veingartner, devastated by her losses, looked out at her backyard still covered by some three yards (meters) of red sludge.

"I have a winter's worth of firewood in the basement and it's all useless now," she said. "I lost all my chickens, my ducks, my Rottweiler, and my potato patch. My late husband's tools and machinery were in the shed and it's all gone."

Local environmentalists say they have tried to call the government's attention to the risks of red sludge for years, pointing to a 2003 report in which they estimated the waste at 30 million tons.

"Accumulated during decades ... red sludge is, by volume, the largest amount of toxic waste in Hungary," the Clear Air Action Group said, adding that producing one ton of alumina resulted in two tons of toxic waste.

MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company that owns the Ajka plant, said that according to European Union standards, the red sludge was not considered toxic waste. The company also denied that it should have taken more precautions to shore up the reservoir.

"According to the current evaluation, company management could not have noticed the signs of the natural catastrophe nor done anything to prevent it even while carefully respecting technological procedures," MAL said in a statement.

Associated Press writer Pablo Gorondi in Budapest contributed to this report.

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Human waste to be used to provide gas to power homes in UK first

Daily Mail, DAILY MAIL REPORTER, 5th October 2010

Householders will be cooking and heating their homes with renewable gas made from sewage from today - in a £2.5 million scheme which is a first for the UK.

The use of human waste to generate 'biogas' and then feed the green fuel into the gas grid is part of efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from heating and cooking in homes.

The project at Didcot sewage works, Oxfordshire, is a joint venture between British Gas, Thames Water and Scotia Gas Networks, and will produce enough renewable gas to supply up to 200 homes, the companies said.

Didcot is to be the first town in the UK to be powered by human sewage

It is hoped that the project will be the first of many to create renewable heat from waste such as sewage, as the UK aims for its EU goal of supplying 15 per cent of all energy, including heat, from renewables by 2020.

The launch of the project was celebrated with a breakfast barbecue at Didcot, with bacon sandwiches cooked on a grill powered by the biomethane produced by the scheme.

It is estimated by National Grid that at least 15 per cent of the domestic gas market could be supplied by renewable gas, known as biomethane, by 2020.

The scheme sees sewage arriving at the Didcot works for treatment, and then sludge - the solid part of the waste - is further treated in a process known as anaerobic digestion in which bacteria break down the biodegradable material and create gas.

The gas is cleaned, with impurities removed, before it is fed into the gas grid, in a process which takes around 20 days from toilet flush to being piped back to people's homes.

Anaerobic digestion is already used to create renewable electricity from sewage - with the gas burned to produce power - but this is the first time the biogas has been pumped directly into the grid for use in homes.

A graphic that shows how the new system will work by
processing natural gas to produce power (Enlarge)

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said: 'It's not every day that a Secretary of State can announce that, for the first time ever in the UK, people can cook and heat their homes with gas generated from sewage.

'This is a historic day for the companies involved, for energy from waste technologies, and for progress to increase the amount of renewable energy in the UK.

'I know there are other similar projects across the country that are close to completion, so this is just the start of a new era of renewable energy.'

Under the proposed Renewable Heat Incentive, which was set to be introduced next April but is currently subject to the Government's spending review, subsidies would be paid for renewable gas being put into the grid.

Martin Baggs, chief executive of Thames Water, suggested that sewage works across the country were a potential source of renewable gas which could be put to use in their local area.

'We already produce £15 million a year of electricity by burning biogas from the 2.8 billion litres a day of sewage produced by our 14 million customers.

'Feeding this renewable gas directly into the gas grid is the logical next step in our energy from waste business,' he said.

Gearoid Lane, managing director of communities and new energy at British Gas, said: 'Renewable gas has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting the UK's energy needs.

'Gas from sewage is just one part of a bigger project, which will see us using brewery and farm waste and farm slurry to generate gas to heat our British Gas homes.'

John Morea, chief executive of Scotia Gas Networks, said the process by which gas created from sewage could be supplied back to the homes it came from in the first place was 'recycling at its very best'.

6.3 Earthquake Hits Japan; Tsunami Advisory Issued

AOL News, Dana Chivvis, Contributor, AOL News Surge Desk

(Oct. 4) -- A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck this evening in Japan near the southwestern Ryukyu Islands, the U.S. Geological Survey is reporting.

The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued a tsunami advisory for the Miyakojima and Yaeyama areas. A tsunami of 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) is expected.

The earthquake occurred at 10:28 p.m. local time (9:28 a.m. EDT) at the shallow depth of 22.3 miles. The epicenter of the quake was about 70 miles east of Ishigaki-jima, a city in the Ryukyu Islands and 200 miles southwest of Naha, Okinawa.

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Surprise: Solar System "Force Field" Shrinks Fast

NASA craft reveals unexpected unpredictability of our protective bubble.

National Geographic News, Graeme Stemp-Morlock, September 30, 2010

Shown in a Hubble Space Telescope image, the "astrosphere" around
the star L.L. Orionis approximates the heliosphere around our solar system.
Image courtesy ESA/NASA

It's cold, dusty, and bereft of planets, but the outskirts of our solar system are anything but dull, according to increasing evidence from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) craft.

As charged particles flow out from the sun, they eventually bump up against interstellar medium—the relatively empty areas between stars. These interactions "inflate" a protective bubble that shields Earth and the entire solar system from potentially harmful cosmic rays (solar system pictures).

Now IBEX has surprised astronomers by showing that this force field-like structure, the heliosphere, is an unexpectedly dynamic, unpredictable boundary.

"If we've learned anything from IBEX so far, it is that the models that we're using for interaction of the solar wind with the galaxy were just dead wrong," David McComas, principal investigator for the IBEX program, said during a NASA press conference Thursday.

Heliosphere Changes Fast

For starters, it's been assumed that the heliosphere's expansion and contraction follows the sun's roughly 11-year activity cycle, during which the flow rate of charged particles, or solar wind, fluctuates.

But when scientists compared IBEX maps of the heliosphere taken just six months apart, the researchers found that it had shrunk to a much greater extent than expected. (See "Sun's Power Hits New Low, May Endanger Earth?")

This quick shrinkage could be a concern for astronauts, said McComas, of the Southwest research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. That's because, as the heliosphere shrinks, it lets in more cosmic radiation, which can compromise the body's immune system.

(Related: "Solar System Is 'Bullet Shaped.'")

Among IBEX's other new surprises: a long, mysterious ribbon of uncharged particles found last year that has apparently lost its brightest, most energetic region since its 2009 discovery.

"What we're seeing is the knot pull apart as it spreads across a region of the ribbon," McComas said in a press statement.

"To this day the science team can't agree on exactly what causes the knot or the ribbon, but by comparing different sky maps, we find the surprising result that the region is changing over relatively short time periods. Now we have to figure out why."

IBEX's new cosmic-ribbon findings published September 29 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

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