Audi’s E-Fuel Future: Bringing Carbon-Neutral Mobility to the Marketplace

[Bill USA]

http://www.thedieseldriver.com/2013/06/audis-e-fuel-future-bringing-carbon-neutral-mobility-to-the-marketplace/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=audis-e-fuel-future-bringing-carbon-neutral-mobility-to-the-marketplace

~~

Joule Fuels, a subsidiary of Joule Unlimited and founded in 2009, has focused on addressing the environmental and economic concerns resulting from declining fuel resources. Joule has centered its efforts on creating what it calls “liquid fuel from the sun” through a sustainable process involving widely available resources. In September of last year, Audi and Joule joined forces, combining their technologies and goals to advance the production of sustainable fuel.

Audi enlisted Joule’s strategies and technologies to create new sustainable transportation fuels called e-ethanol and e-diesel. These are biofuel alternatives based on Joule’s Sunflow-E and Sunflow-D fuels for use in ethanol and diesel powered vehicles.

~~
~~

The partners announced the construction of an industrial plant in Werlte, Germany, which will use Joule’s engineered microorganisms, solar energy, salt water, and waste CO2 to produce the e-ethanol and e-diesel. The plant is slated to be operational as early as next year.

~~

.... Joule’s proprietary microorganism takes in CO2, non-potable water, sunlight and other inexpensive and readily availably nutrients. Then it directly and continuously expels renewable e-ethanol and e-diesel fuel. Unlike organisms that are literally used up in biofuel production, Joule’s will continue to exude fuel for several weeks before dying out.

~~
~~

Joule provided estimates for production amount and pricing. The plant will produce up to 25,000 gallons per acre per year of e-ethanol and 15,000 gallons per acre per year of e-diesel. The e-fuels will be competitively priced and shouldn’t fluctuate in cost to any significant degree. The companies aim to ultimately price e-diesel at about $50 a barrel and e-ethanol at approximately $1.28 a gallon. These prices could eventually be even lower, however, as they do not reflect any potential subsidies. The companies are working hard to achieve these goals by 2020.

(more)

there is a bit more on Joule's process in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_Unlimited