We plan to create methane from an anaerobic digester and then take the gas and convert it into methanol.  This methanol is an important part of the biodiesel production process and is currently obtained from processes using natural gas, which are inherently harmful to the environment.

Our project would take the manure from the farm and capture the methane released (which is a green house gas with more potency than carbon dioxide) and minimize the amount of natural gas required for the project.

This process would allow the biodiesel to be produced by more natural byproducts and without the need of more gas drilling.

This venture will demonstrate to the community that we can reduce our dependence on oil just by leveraging potential energy sources that are generally wasted and ignored. It will also produce higher grade fertilizer in the digestion process and remove the excess green house gas (methane) from the air while producing a necessary component of a clean fuel.

Success will be measured by the net amount of methanol created by the process. This not only represents the amount of green house gas that was stopped from going into the air, but also the amount of natural gas conserved by the process. We aim for the steady production of a gallon of methanol gas produced every week, but without further research it will be impossible to tell our lower and upper limits.

Goals:

• Design and construct an anaerobic digestion process
• Design and construct a methane-to-methanol conversion process
• Purify methanol to high qualities (90%)
• Use methanol in current biodiesel process

The ABP is a student-run project doing independent research into creating biodiesel fuel from algae. We are a team of about thirty high-school students from twenty-three school districts across Connecticut spending time outside of school and on weekends doing original research and experimentation.

With the world’s supply of fossil fuels dwindling and global warming hovering over us, a practical solution is required today. We believe that algal biodiesel is the solution. Algae is a domestic, non-food crop with a much higher oil yield than other alternative fuel feedstock, and is easily cultivated on fallow land. Biodiesel is a renewable fuel that emits far less pollution than petrochemicals and can be used with existing infrastruct ure.

We have seen the effect of a failing oil supply on the world economy; biodiesel can replace reliance on oil and replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy. Biodiesel is a practical alternative energy that can fundamentally alter the energy industry and its impact on the environment of tomorrow.

Goals:

• 

  Create a process that will capture at least 50% of the oil from algal biomass with energy cost not exceeding amount of energy extracted

• Enact complete process for cultivating algae, harvesting it, extracting oil, and turning oil into biodiesel
• Make our product usable in a diesel motor and compliant with ASTM standards for biodiesel
• Refine and optimize product until it is equal to or more eco-friendly than other sources of biodiesel

Algae Tanks

]]> http://genvcampaigns.org/2009/04/13/venture-algal-biodiesel-project/feed/ 11