The Anonymous Widower

Rubbish Green Fuel

Or more correctly British Airways are going to buy aviation fuel created from London’s rubbish.

British Airways and the US bioenergy company Solena are to establish Europe’s first green jet fuel plant in the East End of London.

When it is up and running in 2014, the factory will turn 500,000 tonnes of landfill waste – including household and industrial rubbish – into 16 million gallons of carbon-neutral aviation fuel every year.

It will produce enough fuel to power all of BA’s flights from nearby City Airport twice over. And with 95 per cent fewer emissions than traditional kerosene, the plan will be equivalent to taking 48,000 cars off the roads.

It all sounds very feasible.  Even if it doesn’t end up in aircraft, because perhaps of safety concerns, it will still save a lot of landfill and the fuel can always be used for other purposes.

This will be one to watch.  But as it was published in the Independent rather than a tabloid, I would suspect that the story will be a success.

I also looked up the company mentioned, Solena.  This is their mission statement.

Solena is a next generation zero emission bioenergy company that has developed integrated end-to-end solutions that would help satisfy the world’s growing energy demands while reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and high expense normally associated with the usage of fossil fuel-based energy. Solena’s suite of integrated solutions includes patented plasma gasification technology that is Six Sigma optimized after more than ten years of development, an integrated plasma gasification combined cycle process, and a CO2 capture-to-algae growth and harvesting system. The core of Solena’s solutions is its patented Solena Plasma Gasification Vitrification (‘SPGV’) technology which is capable of producing a synthetic fuel gas (“BioSynGas”) from the thermal conversion of bio-based hydrocarbons with the highest energy conversion efficiencies in the industry. Solena’s SPGV-produced BioSynGas can be used as a natural gas replacement to power combustion gas turbines (CGT) for power production (“biopower”) or catalytically converted into synthetic liquid biofuels, such as biodiesel or biojetfuel.

Solena addresses two significantly underscored energy problems: the need for (i) for baseload renewable energy sources; and (ii) carbon harvesting solutions. Through its highly efficient, thermal conversion technology and ability to gasify whole algae species into biopower or biojetfuel, Solena addresses these issues. Solena works in close collaboration with leading industry participants as strategic partners to help develop various projects promoting the Company’s design and systems expertise and the sale of its proprietary equipment and services. Dr. Robert T. Do, M.D., founded Solena in 2001 and brought more than a decade of gasification experience to Solena.

A company to watch?  I hope so, as if they can solve the baseload requirements with renewable energy then they have got something.  After all wind power only works when the wind blows and it often blows harder a long way from where the power is needed.  But as rubbish is usually produced where power is required, they would seem to have a strong distribution advantage.

A word of warning on cost though is contained in the report here. 

I suspect though as this project is backed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, that BA/Solena will be paid to take the rubbish.  After all there will be large costs for the disposal of that amount of landfill.  Then there is the employment that the project will create in the East End of London, a place where it is needed.

It just shows that in any project like this you should bring all of the parties and costs together before making a judgement.

February 17, 2010 - Posted by AnonW | World | Environment, Flying, Global Warming/Zero-Carbon, London