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Friday, June 15, 2007

DuPont Fuels Biofuel Talks

New energy and bioenergy sources are discussed all over the world. The talk about climate change is also leading into new energy source innovations and developments.

I learn from The Rude Awakening: British Wind and Energy Association (BWEA) has set lofty targets, hoping to capitalize on growing public interest in, and support for, renewable energies. "Consent for an additional 660–1,000 turbines or 2 GW onshore is needed to meet almost half the UK's 2010 target," the BWEA reports. "This 2 GW of capacity must be consented by the end of 2007 in order to be built by 2010."

DUPONT CEO CHARLES HOLLIDAY TALKS BIOFUEL WITH PRESIDENT BUSH

www.newszap.com: "DuPont fuels fire up Bush; President visits research station in Wilmington.

President Bush chats with DuPont Co. chief executive Charles Holliday Jr. during his tour of the experimental station on Wednesday. Submitted photo/DuPont Co.
By Randall Chase, Associated Press

WILMINGTON - A day after calling for increased use of ethanol and other alternative fuels, President Bush praised alternative fuel research under way at DuPont's experimental station in Wilmington.

Helge looking for more information on the web: Let's take a back to basics look at how it all started 1802: “I have bought property on Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, State of Delaware.” These words, written by E.I. du Pont in 1802, signaled the beginning of a mutually beneficial, 200-year relationship between the DuPont Company and the city of Wilmington. Established by Quaker merchants in the 1730s, Wilmington was a milling and grain-shipping center for farmers in Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania...

CELLULOSIC ETHANOL PROCESS

During a quick trip to Delaware on the heels of his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Bush toured the experimental station to check on DuPont's research on cellulosic ethanol. Unlike traditional ethanol derived from corn kernels, cellulosic ethanol can be made by breaking down entire corn plants, woodchips and other plant materials into fermentable sugars.

Bush picked up bottles of milled corn stover, poked his fingers into a beaker of wood chips and picked up a handful of switchgrass.

Helge: Read also Des Moins Register.

'I was really impressed with his knowledge. He knew the technology, he was really engaged,' said DuPont chairman and chief executive officer Charles Holliday Jr."

Helge: "Bush spent the first 15 minutes of his address focusing on other energy sources, and made a call for increased use of nuclear power, a source that he described as clean and essential for the country's development of energy independence. " This is a clera indication for the close connection between nuclear energy, biofuel and global warming. It's no accident that these things are connected.

UK

BP, London, U.K., and DuPont, Wilmington, Del., have been working together since 2003 in this area and are now poised to commercialize their first jointly developed product. “Biobutanol” will be introduced as a gasoline blendstock in the U.K. in 2007. Current European regulations allow up to 10% by volume of the alcohol in gasoline.

The biobutanol will be produced from sugar beets by British Sugar, a subsidiary of Associated British Foods (ABF), at a 30,000-metric-ton/yr plant currently under construction at Wissington, Norfolk, U.K. That plant, originally designed to make ethanol, will require some tweaking of fermentation and distillation to produce biobutanol.


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