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More Update
07_05_2008
Nowadays, the term Green is used
as a symbol to denote being "environmentally friendly",
however, initially, the
expression "environmentally friendly" was really used to mean being
biodegradable. The reality is that the term Green as
now used embraces alcohols that can be determined to be net-neutral
-though preferably net-negative - GHG emitter after their
combustion. Effectively, then the use of the term Green Alcohol
therefore has not bearing on the inherent chemical property of any
alcohol, but rather on the impact on the environment.
Green alcohols however fall
into two categories: Biochemical Green Alcohols, and Chemical
Green Alcohols; as a result of the two modes of production that
satisfy the definition of Green.
Biochemical Green
alcohols are produced through biochemical reactions including
microbial fermentation and enzymatic formation of alcohol from biological raw materials. Chemical Green Alcohol, currently applied mostly to methanol,
is proposed to be produced from non-biological raw materials, though
some bio-materials could also be used if such is required.
Chemical Green Alcohol
Processes
Chemical Green Alcohol
is proposed to be produced from the GHG in the atmosphere, hence the
application of the term "Green" given the prospective
fundamental environmental impact. The chemistry of this reaction, of
course, is the
chemical combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. In
principle, the process is driven by removing GHG from the atmosphere
and the GHG reacted with hydrogen to produce methanol. The proposed
chemistry however was not explicitly supported with a process
for accomplishing the production.
Yet such a process can be
engineered by the combination of the Los Alamos Lab
Green Freedom
Technology for atmospheric carbon dioxide extraction as
adopted for GHG remediation technologies
and a
source of hydrogen together with a chemical reactor that reacts the
carbon dioxide and the hydrogen to form methanol.
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Although the initial
proposal did not definitively suggest the use of biogas hydrogen,
the source of hydrogen certainly can also be biogas such as may be
obtained from town-gas produced from large scale
waste fuel recovery
or from biogas produced from cooperative
edible-waste energy recovery. The adoption of such source for
hydrogen, of course, would somewhat modify the qualification of
"Chemical Green" as used in this process category.
The design for the methanol
reactor is conceptually achievable in such myriad of approaches that
none needs to be addressed in specifics.
Although, so far the
feasibility analysis of producing Chemical Green Alcohol
has focused on the production, from non-bio sources, of methanol
only, in theory, the common biofuel alcohol could be produced by the
same chemistry. However, the production of such alcohols are
suspected to be so energy intensive that whether or not there is a
net gain in energy requires further analysis. The fact is that the
process would require a set of Radiolytic Chemical Reactors the
required implementation knowledge of which is firmly based within
Particle Physics. None the less, the process is conceptually viable.
Biochemical Green Alcohol Processes
Biochemical Green Alcohol
is proposed to be produced from mostly plants biomass
materials, and accordingly the term is applied to all the different
common alcohols: Methanol, Ethanol, Propanol and Butanol derivative
of the viability of their production from such bioprocesses:
Methanol BioProcess,
Ethanol Fermentation,
Butanol Fermentation, amongst others, which have been extensively
researched and reported on. The chemistry, however, as defined
through the facilitating metabolic reactions is either by the Embden Meyerhoff Panaff
Pathway or by the Entner Dudouroff Pathway,
depending on the method of fermentation. Ethanol fermentation,
however, offers the most readiness to the public at large hence
becoming the process on which is most
engaged in the production of bio-fuels; hence there is currently all the rage about the production of
ethanol as
auto-fuel by all sources for personal use.
In essence, the processes for the production of ethanol are
virtually the same for the specialization for the feed. Generally,
the sugar-feed is fed into a bioreactor impregnated with a microbial
species capable of supporting fermentation of ethanol from the
sugar-feed. Most of these
production operations, however, have been heuristic and bordering at the
practice of art so much so that even the determination of the
completion of fermentation has been by imprecise process markers
such as "with yeast, fermentation takes |
about 3 days"
or "with yeast, fermentation could require more than 10 days" and
"the mash is ready to 'run' once it stops bubbling". Of course, when
it stops bubbling means all the microbes have died from the
characteristic product inhibition. The ready mash is then distilled
to extract the alcohol from the reaction broth. The Biochemical
Green alcohols analysis as reported so far are driven by
fermentative reactions.:
None the less, there is
methanol which is produced not by fermentation bioprocess, by
enzymatic bioprocess, and therefore also comes under the
qualification "Biochemical Green".
The Quality of Green
In this regard then, the term Green alcohol, is meant
to be alcohol that is produced from
non-fossil fuels; and the term Green can effectively be
associated with all the different types of common alcohols:
Green Methanol,
Green
Ethanol, and
Green Butanol, irrespective of any
considerations of toxicity. Noteworthy of remark is that methanol is
biodegradable, as is ethanol and butanol, however, methanol as butanol has known low toxicity;
and so the characteristics by which butanol qualifies as a green
alcohol also qualifies methanol as a gereen alcohol. By this meaning then, Green alcohol is meant to
describe alcohol that is produced from non-fossil base and is also
biodegradable as is ture of all alcohols, without regard to its
toxicity.
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