ARIES Portable Biodiesel System Successfully Demonstrated
13 August 2009
A collaborative effort by the US Navy, Biodiesel Industries, Inc. and Aerojet successfully demonstrated methods to produce cleaner and more reliable sources of renewable fuels for military use. The system, named ARIES (Automated Real-time, Remote, Integrated Energy System), is a highly automated, portable biodiesel production unit that can be controlled from a remote location.
These features ensure reliable process control and optimal production yields in a system that can be readily and widely deployed.
ARIES is the culmination of more than six years of research, development, demonstration and validation by the Naval Facilities Engineering Service Center (NFESC) and Biodiesel Industries. The addition of Aerojet’s expertise in integrated system design, fluidic management and control systems development, coupled with decades of experience in chemical formulation processes has allowed the partnership to make extraordinary strides in the last 12 months.
A key issue with biofuel production has been the ability to access inexpensive feedstocks that do not compete with agricultural land use or the production of food. The ability to use locally available non-food feedstocks for biodiesel requires a flexible production process and technical expertise and control not easily associated with smallscale facilities. However, with ARIES, one data and process control center has the potential to remotely operate hundreds of scalable facilities integrated with next-generation feedstock cultivation, producing millions of gallons of biofuel per year.
Biodiesel Industries’ years of advanced work with jatropha, algae and other biofuel feedstocks are critically important to the ARIES platform. In the coming months, we expect to announce several new developments with our proprietary methods of feedstock cultivation that make the ARIES system an ideal solution for the Navy with significant implications in the commercial sector as well.
—JJ Rothgery, Chairman of the Board of Biodiesel Industries
ARIES incorporates Aerojet’s systems control technologies to provide real-time sensing and management of key chemistry and processing parameters. These technologies, coupled with Biodiesel Industries’ 10-year production database, allow automation of the entire process, resulting in enhanced yields, reliable quality control and personnel safety assurance. Remote sensing also enables monitoring and operation from a single data and process control center for biodiesel production facilities in numerous locations around the world.
Following the recent successful demonstration of ARIES for the US Navy, additional capabilities are now being installed and the unit will be moved to the National Environmental Test Site at Naval Base Ventura County, in Port Hueneme, Calif. There, the ARIES system will undergo further demonstration and validation leading to integration with more complex systems.
It is nice that the people who are eating regularly can pretend that there are biofuels that do not compete in any way with the production of food.
If Germany, in WWII, could make edible fats out of coal there is a much simpler process to make edible fats from Jatropha oils and beer out of sawdust or grass. Ethanol from any source can be used itself as a food.
Just because a fast food place is discarding its frying oil does not mean that it is not valuable food.
Fuel for fires is just as important for people as is food. Obtaining fuel locally for war activities cannot even begin to meet the demand for energy.
It is possible to make ships and submarines that ingest any an all organic materials from the sea and use them for continued operation. The processes for doing this are well understood, but the only active submarines are Nuclear.
The defence department should now build an energy ship that has large nuclear reactors that supply energy to make hydrogen that is then made into liquid fuels such as jet fuel. Any and all equipment that runs on fuels can be made to run on jet fuel. The ship can get the CO2 that it needs to make liquid fuels from the air and the water.
Pebble bed reactors can be used to get high enough temperatures to chemically extract hydrogen from water. Pebble bed reactors are far safer than cellphones and cannot overheat. The hydrogen can also be changed into ammonia which could be used as a fuel or converted into explosives.
Liquid fuel from a fuel ship would always cost less than oil at $150. Fuel ships could also produce electricity that could be carried on underground cables to locations that needed energy.
At the end of WWII in Europe, many pipes were carrying gasoline under water from England to France. There is no way all of the forests and fields of France could have supplied that energy that had come all the way from Texas and other US states. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 13 August 2009 at 09:47 AM
Henry:
Are there any projects that use your method of H2 production from nuclear currently?
Posted by: sulleny | 15 August 2009 at 06:54 PM