Technology development for the production of biobased products from biorefinery carbohydrates—the US Department of Energy’s “Top 10” revisited

23 Stereocontrol of Lactide ROP 6164 231 Isotactic Polylactides 6164 232 Syndiotactic Polylactides 6166 233 Heterotactic Polylactides 6166 3 Anionic Polymerization 6166 4 Nucleophilic Polymerization 6168 41 Mechanistic Considerations 6168 42 Catalysts 6169 421 Enzymes 6169 422 Organocatalysts 6169 43 Stereocontrol of Lactide ROP 6170 44 Depolymerization 6170 5 Cationic Polymerization 6170 6 Conclusion and Perspectives 6171 7 Acknowledgments 6173 8 References and Notes 6173

Controlled ring-opening polymerization of lactide and glycolide.

An overview of the recent developments in polylactide (PLA) research.

Poly(lactic acid) modifications

Most of the carbon-based compounds currently manufactured by the chemical industry are derived from petroleum. The rising cost and dwindling supply of oil have been focusing attention on possible routes to making chemicals, fuels, and solvents from biomass instead. In this context, many recent studies have assessed the relative merits of applying different dedicated crops to chemical production. Here, we highlight the opportunities for diverting existing residual biomass--the by-products of present agricultural and food-processing streams--to this end.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/337/6095/695.full.pdf

Valorization of Biomass: Deriving More Value from Waste

Revisiting Bonbright’s principles of public utility rates in a DER world

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Maine Distributed Solar Valuation Study

/pdf/transition-support-mechanisms-for-communities-facing-full-or-4fve995ygf.pdf

Transition Support Mechanisms for Communities Facing Full or Partial Coal Power Plant Retirement in New York

Conventional wisdom considers PV output curtailment as a last resort to be avoided at all costs. We argue quite the opposite: curtailment, coupled with strategic oversizing ofgeneration assets, is the key to achieving very high PV penetration at the lowest cost. In this paper, we employ a model that optimizes the use of this novel curtailment strategy, geographic dispersion, storage and demand-side management to deliver cheap, firm renewable power at high penetration without conventional generation. We use this model to quantify the premium that must be paid totransform low-cost yet intermittent solar PV into a firm, dispatchable resource at a total levelized cost below eight cents per kWh. solar resource, supply shaping, curtailment, storage, grid integration, high penetration.

Lowest-Cost, Firm PV Without Conventional Backup: Supply Shaping Through Curtailment

The electricity system in the United States, and indeed throughout most of the developed world, has remained essentially unchanged for nearly 100 years. It is a large, central stationdominated, one-way electron delivery system with relatively little intelligence, little or no cybernetic function, concentrated market power, retail monopolies, and very little choice or control by ultimate customers. With the advancement of clean distributed generation technologies and the systems to interconnect them with the grid, the stage has been set for a fundamental restructuring of the architecture of electricity systems. Biodiesel-fueled stationary electric generation has the potential to be a leader in the advancement of this transformation. Dispatchable, renewable, clean-burning, non-explosive, environmentally degradable, and now supported by federal incentives, biodiesel has the potential to fuel tens of thousands of megawatts of standby generators already in place in cities across the country. The staying power of the basic architecture of the electric grid mirrors the scale of capital investment that built it. Thus, despite attempts at electric utility deregulation on a retail scale, the introduction of wholesale competition, and fairly significant advances in electric technologies, the electric grid’s basic structure has not changed much over the past several decades. Essentially, modern electric systems are one-way electron delivery systems characterized by large central station generating plants and a network of transmission and distribution infrastructure dividing into smaller and smaller subsystems for the ultimate delivery of useful energy. And notwithstanding the advent of “distributed energy resources” thinking and advocacy, most system planners and operators today still

/pdf/a-strategy-for-developing-stationary-biodiesel-generation-v8h72b3usb.pdf

Karl R. Rábago

Papers

Revisiting Bonbright’s principles of public utility rates in a DER world

Maine Distributed Solar Valuation Study

Transition Support Mechanisms for Communities Facing Full or Partial Coal Power Plant Retirement in New York

Lowest-Cost, Firm PV Without Conventional Backup: Supply Shaping Through Curtailment

A Strategy for Developing Stationary Biodiesel Generation