Sugar Technology and the Sony Bio-Battery

Who ever thought that asking your neighbor for sugar could carry more connotations than that of baking necessities? Well, Sony is working on a product that will make your neighbor think twice about your consumptive demands.

Sony recently announced their current activity in developing a new bio-battery. The battery generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. The sample battery has proven to be able to output 50 mW, or enough to power a portable mp3 player. This is the world's highest yet for a passive-type bio battery.

According to the Sony Press Release:

Sony developed a system of breaking down sugar to generate electricity that involves efficiently immobilizing enzymes and the mediator (electronic conduction materials) while retaining the activity of the enzymes at the anode. Sony also developed a new cathode structure which efficiently supplies oxygen to the electrode while ensuring that the appropriate water content is maintained. Optimizing the electrolyte for these two technologies has enabled these power output levels to be reached.

The newly developed bio battery incorporates an anode consisting of sugar-digesting enzymes and mediator, and a cathode comprising oxygen-reducing enzymes and mediator, either side of a cellophane separator. The anode extracts electrons and hydrogen ions from the sugar (glucose) through enzymatic oxidation as follows:
Glucose -> Gluconolactone + 2 H+ + 2 e-
The hydrogen ion migrates to the cathode through the separator. Once at the cathode, the hydrogen ions and electrons absorb oxygen from the air to produce water:
(1/2) O2 + 2 H+ + 2 e- -> H2O
Through this process of electrochemical reaction, the electrons pass through the outer circuit to generate electricity.

View article...

Ford to Convert Paint Fumes to Electricity

GreenBiz.com, 31 August 2007 - Ford Motor Corp. announced Thursday it will install its patented Fumes-to-Fuel system at its Oakville, Ontario, Assembly Plant, which will convert emissions from its paint shop into electricity.

The system will launch with an internal combustion engine before shifting to a stationary large-scale fuel cell to boost effectiveness. The company will buy the DFC300MA fuel cell from manufacturer FuelCell Energy Inc. The fumes from the paint solvent will get transformed into 300 kilowatts of green energy.

"The Oakville installation is the first of its kind in the world to harvest emissions from an automotive facility for use in fuel cell," said Kit Edgeworth, Ford's abatement equipment technical specialist for Manufacturing. "It is the greenest technology and offers the perfect solution to the industry's biggest environmental challenge traditionally."

It was developed as a responsible way to remove volatile organic compounds (VOC) from the painting operations' exhaust air. Carbon beads capture the VOCs for use in the fuel cell, which converts it to electricity.

The technology was launched as a pilot installation at the Dearborn Truck Plant using a 5 kilowatt fuel cell. A year later, Ford installed installed technology at its Michigan Truck Plant using a 50 kilowatt Stirling engine to generate electricity.

The Oakville system announced Thursday will launch with a 120 kilowatt internal combustion engine before shifting to the 300 kilowatt fuel cell, which is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 88 percent and eliminate nitrogen oxide emissions completely.

"By using the end-products of enamel and clear coat operations, we are eliminating the exhaust of thousands of tons of nitrous and sulfur oxides as well as CO2 -- a major greenhouse gas," said Andrew Skok, executive director of FuelCell Energy's strategic marketing. "As this application shows, the fuel flexibility of our DFC300MA opens up an entirely new, very large market for us."

The fuel cell unit is slated to begin use early next year, and could eventually spread in use at Ford' other plants.

Also on Thursday, the company said it is developing a new environmentally friendly anti-corrosion technology that reduces water use in automotive paint shops by nearly half, and lowers sludge production by 90 percent.

It is currently being field-tested on a small fleet of Lincoln Town Cars. It uses a zirconium oxide vehicle bath instead of the traditional zinc phosphate bath, which contains heavy metals such as zinc, nickel and manganese.

http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MjYwODg

Schwarzenegger Meets With German Minister To Discuss Carbon Trading

Aug 30 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, plan to begin talks today about how California could work with the European Union to create a system that would allow companies to buy and sell credits for emission reductions, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

In January, members of EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas’ staff met with Californian officials to discuss how to bring the state into the 27-nation bloc’s trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions. “We are trying to make their trading scheme harmonized in order to have them linked in the future,” Dimas said at the time.

California’s AB32 bill, signed last year, requires the state to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases to 1990 levels by 2020 and to draft the plan by 2011. The EU states have had dealing with emissions certificates since 2005.

“A big push in reduction will come from a carbon-trade system,” said BreAnda Northcutt, spokeswoman California’s Environmental Protection Agency. “It is the most effective way to achieve our goals.”

The Chronicle reports that, according to a report from Ecosystem Marketplace, California companies like Yahoo, Google and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have announced that they will buy offsets from voluntary markets.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an alliance of nine northeastern states, wants to start a cap-and-trade emissions program in January 2009.

GM Plant Eliminates Waste, Goes Landfill-Free

Aug 30 2007

General Motors’ Baltimore transmission plant has reached zero landfill status. The plant is the eighth GM facility to be tagged as landfill-free.

The GM Powertrain Baltimore plant will be the exclusive manufacturer of GM’s all-new two-mode hybrid transmission. GM says that the hybrid technology will increase the fuel efficiency of GM’s full-size SUVs and pickups up to 25 percent over conventional gasoline Powertrain systems.

This year, approximately 97 percent of the waste materials from the site (7,300 tons) will be recycled or reused and three percent (215 tons) will be converted to energy at a waste-to-energy facility. Items that are recycled or reused at the site this year will include approximately 510 tons of aluminum, 600 tons of steel, 10 tons of alloy metals, 360 tons of wood pallets, 3 tons of paper, 20 tons in empty totes and drums, 250 tons of used oil, 220 tons waste water residual, and 5,400 tons of returnable packaging.

Other GM landfill-free facilities include plants in Tonawanda, NY; Flint and Wixom, Mich.; Gunsan and Bupyeong, Korea; and Kaiserslautern and Eisenach, Germany.

In other GM news today, AP reports that the company has agreed to pay a $75,000 fine for failing to meet deadlines for cleaning up contaminated property formerly owned by the automaker in Sioux City.