Our Work - VerdeNero

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These are some current and recent area of work for VerdeNero and its associates. Talks and presentations of relevance given to public forums are available for download in the Documents section. Please contact us for more detail and for references.

Algal Biomass

Algal biomass is today's everyone favorite bet for a biofuel feedstock that can be plentiful, inexpensive and does not conflict with food crops for land, water and other resources. While these promises are realistic, immense challenges needs to be overcome for algae to fullfill them. The industry while increasingly well fundend is still in its infancy and it is critical to distinguish hype from reality. VerdeNero is working closely with key customers towards the scale up a novel concepts for the cultivation, harvesting and fractionation of algal biomass with minimum energy and nutrient inputs.

Biomass and Waste to Resouces

Using biomass for energy predates the fossil fuel and industrial era and in certain geographical locations - e.g. Scandinavia or some tropical areas - remains an important part of the fuel mix for power production. Today dedicated biomass plant or increased co-firing of biomass and/or organic waste derived fuels with coals are seen as important tools to produce carbon neutral baseline power. Unlike fossil fuel biomass logistics are challenging on any but local scale and the integration with existing energy system is often limited. Pretreatment and densification methods need to be developed to make biomass and organic waste derived fuels more compatible with the existing technical and commercial infrastructure. We have supported an existing and established material handling equipment company in developing a business plan for a novel concept in waste biomass densification for energy applications and helped developers in selecting application specific technologies. We are also very active to design new waste to resource solutions aiming to a zero landfill approach to waste management.

Retooling the Ethanol Industry

The corn to ethanol industry, heralded just a couple of years ago as a key to solve US energy problem is slowly recovering from a period of crisis resolving in major corporate restructuring. Furthermore while economic viability is regained, doubts about the wisdom of using corn for ethanol and the overall environmental value of the industry persists. As the irrational enthusiasm of the past was unjustified, so is the negativity of the present unwarranted. Corn ethanol is enshrined as a key additive and component in the US fuel mix and while it is important to understand its limit, its role is important. The us ethanol industry can be profitable without subsidies and can considerably improve its carbon footprint. We are working with a consortium of innovative companies with a porfolio of technologies in an effort to redesign the corn ethanol process for better utilization of co-products, increased net energy balance and considerably reduced environmental footprint and energy consumptrion.

Novel Energy Systems

Small scale highly efficient distributed (co)generation system can provide great strides in energy efficient bypassing distribution losses and can help reduce the carbon emission for each kWh consumed by the users. They also can provide reliablity and redundancy to the power supply. This is the premise of a small scale (1 to 2 kW) fuel oxide fuel cell appliance developed for the European residential market. We are supporting an investiment group with identifying the best strategy to bring to the North American market this approach by assessing the opportunity to use the core technology around a US designed and manufactured novel energy appliance suitable for the unique technical and economic featurs of the North American market

Carbon Footprint

Many companies now carry out a life cycle analysis to determine the carbon footprint of their processess and systems. Once the this analysis is completed, one can identify the areas where intervation can be most effective. We help our customer - working closely with our partners - to identify which technology solution is most cost effective in the context of their operation.