BioSolar’s Breakthrough Solar Product May Change the Solar Industry

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BioSolar’s Eco-Friendlier Protective Solar Module Component Rids Solar Energy of Petroleum and Removes Fossil Fuels from Solar Energy Equation

BioSolar, Inc. (BSRC), developer of a breakthrough technology to produce bio-based materials from renewable plant sources that reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar modules, “has developed a ‘biobacksheet’ that may change the solar industry,” according to a July 22, 2009 article on Energy Boom.

“BioSolar is currently making steady strides in the commercialization process, and we are always pleased when members of the solar industry share our excitement. We received great feedback following our recent announcement of the successful prototype run of the new BioBacksheetTM-A,” said BioSolar’s CEO Dr. David Lee.

News of the development was also featured in New Energy World Network and Solar Industry Magazine.

Conventional polymer backsheets, the bottom-most layer of nearly all photovoltaic solar cell modules, are designed to protect the solar cell from environmental hazards like moisture and UV rays. One of the reasons solar power has remained expensive is because of

Live Algae Oil Extraction

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OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Process for Live Algae Oil Extraction

OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, a promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, recently announced that it has succeeded in extracting algae oil on a continuous basis without cell sacrifice. This new “milking” process will join the company’s Cascading Production™ technique to create a combined cycle promising new efficiencies.

Live Extraction™, or milking, is inherently efficient because it achieves continuous production of algae oil without destroying the algae cell. Therefore a single algae cell can produce more oil during its lifetime using lower amounts of energy. Unlike other approaches to live extraction, OriginOil’s process does not employ expensive consumables such as reverse osmosis membranes; furthermore, it is not limited to oil-bearing algae strains, such as Botryococcus braunii, that are known to excrete algae oil naturally.

Algae typically protect their oil behind a tough cell wall. The challenge of live extraction is to harvest the oil without causing permanent damage to the

Exxon to Invest $600 Million to Make Fuel From Algae

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Turning Living Algae into Mini Oil Wells

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On July 21, Exxon announced an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

New Scientist recently published the following interview with Mr. Venter about turning living algae into mini oil wells:

Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be true. How is this going to work?

Algae use carbon dioxide to generate a number of oil molecules, via photosynthesis, as a way of storing energy. People have been trying to make them overproduce the oil and store it. We’re changing the algae’s gene structure to get them to produce hydrocarbons similar to those that come

Plan to Revolutionize the Solar Industry with Breakthrough Cross-Industry Technology

Mass Production Technology to Bridge Gap Between Inexpensive Thin-Film and Higher Efficiency Silicon Wafer Technologies

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XsunX, Inc. (OTCBB: XSNX), an established solar company, recently announced that it is developing a breakthrough thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) cross-industry technology that may soon utilize the excess manufacturing capacity of the mature hard disc drive (HDD) industry to mass produce high efficiency, low cost solar cells to truly capture the power of the sun.

Joseph Grimes, XsunX’s President, stated, “XsunX is excited to announce its expanded plan for development. The breakthrough thin-film opportunity was developed from an initial idea last fall and has matured to a reality today. We are working rapidly with our strategic partners to commercialize this cross-industry technology. We believe that this breakthrough can overcome current solar technology manufacturing limitations and revolutionize the solar industry.”

Current techniques for the production of solar cells based on the use of Copper Indium Gallium (di) Selenide (CIGS) thin films, a solar technology that holds the record for

Use the Market Correction to Buy Green Stocks

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The Recent Market Correction Provides a Great Opportunity to Buy Green Stocks

Stock markets have just have finished a particularly strong quarter – with the S&P 500 Index gaining 15.2% for its best quarter since 1998, the MSCI World Index rising by 19.7% and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index adding 33.6% – but started to lag last month and are trading down in early July.

Volume has been declining on rally days and expanding on declining days, which can be construed as bearish action. As doubts persist over the strength of the global economic recovery, the S&P 500 Index, MSCI World Index and MSCI Emerging Markets Index have dropped by 5.0%, 5.9% and 6.3% respectively from their June highs.

While many investors may be waiting for a resumption of an upward trend, a cautious approach cannot be faulted. However, Green Investor thinks that green stocks are cheap and urges investors to take advantage of this current market correction.

Good News on Recycling CO2 into Fuel

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By Reducing Reaction Time From Hours to Minutes, Carbon Sciences Makes CO2-to-Fuel Process Highly Scalable and Commercially Viable

Carbon Sciences (CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other fuels, recently announced a significant technical development in reducing the reaction time of its CO2-to-Fuel process from hours to minutes. This achievement dramatically increases the scalability and decreases the costs of building and operating an industrial scale CO2-to-Fuel plant.

Reaction time is the time required to convert a unit amount of raw material to products in a fixed biochemical reactor and is a very important parameter for scalability and process economics. In the case of CO2 to fuel, a slow reaction time translates to a very large reactor size for holding and processing a continuous stream of CO2 from a large emitter, such as a coal-fired power plant. For example, if a 1 cubic meter reactor can process 1 ton of CO2 per day, then 5,000 reactors are required to process 5,000 tons/day of

OriginOil’s Audacious Plan for Algae to Overtake Petroleum

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OriginOil CEO Outlines Plan to Overtake Petroleum in Renewable Energy Conference at UN Headquarters

OriginOil (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, a promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, recently reported that CEO Riggs Eckelberry outlined a plan to overtake petroleum during a panel session at the inaugural Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (IREO) Conference, held at the United Nations on June 11, 2009. He warned that without a new approach, petroleum could remain strong until 2060. Eckelberry’s presentation may be read on the OriginOil website at  http://www.originoil.com/OriginOil_IREO_20090611.pdf

“In our planning for renewable energy, we have tended to follow old-school energy thinking which focuses on large, centralized facilities,” Eckelberry commented. “We believe the solution is networked and distributed and based on large-scale information sharing.” He continued, “We know that entrepreneurs worldwide want to start making biofuels now for their local communities and industries. That’s the model of the future – we call it ‘mushrooms after the rain’.”

IREO Secretary-General Robson Mello applauded OriginOil’s contribution

Another CO2 to Fuel Breakthrough

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Carbon Sciences Achieves Breakthrough in Biocatalytic Design

You may recall that Green Investor recently reported on Carbon Sciences’ breakthrough technology to recycle CO2 into fuel. Innovating at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering disciplines, the company is developing a highly scalable biocatalytic process to meet the fuel needs of the world. Carbon Sciences’ solution to energy and climate challenges is to enable a sustainable world of fuel consumption and climate stability by recycling CO2 into fuel. For example, Carbon Sciences’ breakthrough technology can be used to recycle CO2 emitted from fossil fuel power plants into gasoline to run cars and jet fuel to fly aircraft. Now, the company has achieved a breakthrough in its biocatalytic design

Novel Enzyme Encapsulation Technology Significantly Increases Functional Life of Key Enzymes and Speeds Commercialization of CO2 to Fuel Process

Last week, Carbon Sciences announced a significant technical development in increasing the functional life of key enzymes used in the company’s biocatalytic CO2 to fuel process. This development not only accelerates the pace of commercialization,

Green Plastics

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Imagine a plastic that is environmentally neutral, doesn’t require fossil fuels to produce and returns to nature without a trace. Such a material would surely be earth friendly.

Before the chemical revolution, our society was based on materials made from plants, such as corn, soy and sugar beets? Plants, not oil, used to be the primary raw material used to produce chemicals, paints, construction materials, clothing, and other household materials. In fact, the first plastic ever developed was a “plant-based plastic,” a cotton-derived product designed to replace ivory. According to a recent CHEJ article, Henry Ford was a proponent of plant-based plastics and he developed a demonstration vehicle in 1941 whose seat covers, dashboard, wheel, and tires were made from plant-based materials. Unfortunately, this all changed when the chemical industry captured the plastics market with the introduced low-cost plastics made from oil.

A Changing Market 

In recent years, the market has changed dramatically, driven by both the rising price of oil and growing concerns about the health and environmental impacts of plastics. Today,

Recycling CO2 into Fuel

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What if we could take CO2, an earth destroying gas, and recycle it into fuel?  If we could do such a thing, it would not only help address the problem of climate change, but would also provide us with a substantial supply of renewable fuel. For several years, that is exactly what researchers have proposed to do. The idea of recycling carbon dioxide is not new, but has generally been considered too difficult and expensive to be worth the effort. Unfortunately, the approaches taken in the past required substantial amounts of energy to perform this transformation. As a result, commercialization of this tantalizing process has appeared to be out of reach.

Sandia – Sunlight to Petrol

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using the power of the sun to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline. The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to

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