All we have is a closed-loop photo bio-reactor. Our goal is to produce the greatest amount of biomass from algae that we can. By going vertical we believe that we can increase the yield by increasing the surface area and the volume of material getting exposed to sunlight. We have a system that continually recycles, it’s a dynamic system, in a closed-loop.

Algae goes down, starts out of a tank, gets picked up by pumps, goes up into the reactors, and then gravity heights control, lose it to the reactors, get exposed to sunlight, go back into the tank, and the cycle repeated over and over again. Algae is the fastest organism, fastest growing plant on the planet. And it sequesters the greatest amount of carbon dioxide, but in the same time, it produces lipids, basically vegetable oils, and a lot of it. So, if you look at a single-cell of algae in the right species, as much as 50% of its body weight is high-grade vegetable oil. So while we are sequestering carbon dioxide, we are also producing these high-grade lipids that can be used for a variety of purposes.

The beauty of the algae is the fact that we can actually be selective about what carbon chains are coming out of it. So for example, if you want to make jet fuel, we could give you a strain of algae that’s going to make the carbon chains necessary to manufacture jet fuel much more efficiently that you can in the other crop. If you want to make diesel for a truck, we can give you the carbon chains that are ideal for that. We can tailor the lipids based on the species of algae that we are growing.

If I grow an acre of corn and I’m looking at it from the stand point of producing oil, I can grow about 18 gallons of oil per acre per year. Moving up to the most prevalent, palm, we can get 7,800 gallons per acre per year; algae can go up to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. And that’s just from the open-surface system, and not from the closed bio-reactor system.

The problem with the open-surface system is that one: once the algae starts growing, light will only penetrate about an inch or an inch and a half to the surface; it blocks light from the rest of the surface. We also have an enormous amount of water evaporation so we’re losing enormous amount of water that causing us to replace. And third most critical thing to us, we get contaminants from other algae species that flowed from the atmosphere and landed there and become competitive with the algae that we want to grow.

We would try to recapture every drop of water that we can. And the only water we lose is what actually bound up in the algae and goes into the oil itself and the byproduct from the algae. And once we’ve extracted the oil, we can even use the byproduct for feedstock, for sour remediation to make fertilizer, or we can ferment it and produce ethanol out of that.

If we took one-tenth of the State of New Mexico and convert it to algae production, we could meet all the energy demands for the entire United States.

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Sulphur dioxide from burning fossil fuels and nitrogen oxide from automobile exhaust fumes react with the water vapor in the atmosphere producing acidic vapors that mix with the clouds. When the wind blows, these acid bearing clouds maybe move hundred of kilometers away from the source of the pollutants. The acid rain that results is damaging to water, forest, and soil resources and can corrode metals and the surfaces of buildings.

One way to address the problem of acid rain is to stop burning high sulphur coal. Coal with less sulphur releases less sulphur dioxide. Another solution is to equip coal burning power plants with scrubber technology. Scrubbers are placed in the smoke stacks and force the sulphurine smoke over suspended alkali particles such as lime. The sulphur oxide reacts with these particles to form an ash that can be removed from the stack as a slurry or powder. Scrubbers can remove up to 95% of sulphur oxide from smoke before it reaches the air.

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Traditionally, the waste get transported to one huge ethanol plant which is costly and time-consuming. In other words, completely wasteful. That’s when we understood we needed to turn around our way of thinking. We didn’t want to build one gigantic ethanol plant but many small ones instead. If the waste mountain won’t come to the plant, let’s bring the plant to the waste mountain. This thought brought about a completely new way of making bioethanol: dispersed production.

By building small ethanol units next to these factories, the biowaste and other leftovers don’t get sent to landfills anymore; instead, to a very efficient process of fermentation, they distilled into 85% alcohols. Even the energy to power this process comes from renewable resources. The leftovers from the fermentation process can also be used as feed for animals. And since the bioethanol plants are close to that build factories and farms, we save on transportation.

The same container trucks that re-stock from petrol station are used to move the ethanol from the small units to a larger plant. On their way back from the petrol stations, they simply fill their tank with ethanol, so we avoid driving empty trucks around. The ethanol needs to be boosted so it can be blended with petrol. We do that in a separate de-watering unit where the ethanol is turned into almost pure alcohols. Thanks to the day of advanced technologies, this process consumes very little energy.

That’s the idea behind St1′s dispersed ethanol production: We scatter small units all around the world next to food factories that produce biowaste and farms that can use the leftovers. We keep an eye on energy consumption and we keep the environment clean. This is how we create the world’s cleanest bioethanol without producing any extra greenhouse gases.

St1 energy company is implementing through operations its vision of being the leading manufacturer and vendor of CO2 -free energy products in Europe. St1 now operates more than 400 service stations in Finland, 41 stations in Sweden and 4 distribution units in Poland. St1 also sells electricity to consumers and smaller companies and is a large scale vendor of heating oil all over Finland.

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Since water is a natural resource – one in limited supply – many communities are recognizing that they have to act today to ensure they’ll have enough water for tomorrow. Enter water recycling, a two-step process that uses advanced technologies to turn wastewater into clean water. First, a technology called membrane filtration filters harmful solids and bacteria from wastewater through thousands of straw-like micro-porous filters. Then, the clean water passes through an even finer membrane filter. The result: water that is purified above drinking water standards.

This water is then used for other purposes – such as watering golf courses and parks, as well as industrial and construction projects.

Recycled water has saved the region more than 65 billion gallons of drinking water since 1995 and water recycling plants are popping up more and more around the country.

Produced for Siemens Water Technologies

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At the same time, the carbon in our atmosphere is higher that it is been in 420,000 years. And it is still climbing. The evidence lies in the rise of sea levels, unusual fluctuations in the seasons, more droughts, storms, floods, and significant threats to public health. The world’s scientific community has reached consensus: Humans are playing a major role in climate change.

“Climate change is like life-cancer. If we waited to long to be assured, we’re too late to do anything about it.”

The world’s appetite for energy is increasing. A generation ago, China was powered by human sweat. A generation from now, it will surpass the United States in greenhouse gas emissions.

Global energy consumption is expected to double by the year 2030 and to triple by 2060. Today, most of our energy comes from burning fossil fuels. This alone causes more climate destruction than any other human activity, contributing 80% of the contaminants that cause air pollution and more than 88% of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.

Yet, we rely on energy to sustain life and to grow our economies.

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Namun, teori kimia seperti demikian kurang dapat menggambarkan kita, khususnya bagi para mahasiswa baru, bagaimana sebenarnya fenomena molekuler tersebut terlihat bila dipandang dari kacamata manusia.

Di atas terdapat sebuah video yang diharapkan dapat menggambarkan bagaimana interaksi natrium saat ‘bertemu’ dengan air. Saat natrium dikontakkan dengan air (H₂O), reaksi kimia yang sangat eksotermik terjadi antara kedua reaktan tersebut dan membentuk natrium hidroksida (NaOH) dan hidrogen (H2).

Reaksi tersebut merupakan reaksi yang amat eksoterm dan cukup untuk membuat hidrogen terbakar karena keberadan oksigen di atmosfer. Reaksi hidrogen dan oksigen kemudian membentuk molekul air yang baru.

Nah buat teman-teman semua yang masih berada di awal studi Teknik Kimia, berhati-hatilah saat praktikum khususnya praktikum Kimia Dasar. Baca dan lakukan prosedur praktikum dengan sebaik-baiknya. Gunakanlah peralatan safety yang dianjurkan dan jangan ceroboh dalam melakukan praktikum.

“Wahh.. tapi kan pengen iseng pas praktikum.. Lagian kan praktikumnya udah beres.. Ini senyawa masih nyisa-nyisa.. Dicampur-campurin aja.. kali aja nemu teori baru..”

Iseng tuh bisa menambah ilmu dan pengetahuan kita, bahkan penemu-penemu dunia pasti memulai segala sesuatunya bermodal awalkan iseng dan rasa ingin tahu. Tapi ingat, iseng yang tidak bertanggungjawab bisa membawa bahaya.. Hehe.. Natrium: it’s something you’ve got to handle with care.

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Di atas terlihat sebuah video yang menggambarkan bagian dalam sebuah kolom fraksionasi saat sedang beroperasi beseta sedikit penjelasan mengenai mekanika fluida di dalamnya. Sebuah suplemen menarik untuk kuliah Proses Pemisahan yang Anda pernah atau sedang ikuti.

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