Tag Archives: alternative
Chempolis, ONGC Partner On Cellulosic Fuel, Chemical Production
By Chempolis Ltd. | October 15, 2013 Chempolis Ltd., a Finland-based biorefining technology corporation, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with ONGC, India’s leading oil and gas exploration company. The MOU acts as a road, mapping the first biorefinery project in India. The signing ceremony took place in New Delhi in the presence of Alexander Stubb, Finland’s Foreign Trade Minister and Panabaka Lakshmi, Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas. Beyond the first biorefinery, Chempolis and ONGC are targeting larger production of sustainable biofuels in India, which would reduce India’s dependence on imported petroleum. “India has huge biomass potential and after biofuel mandate by Indian government, the country is certainly taking steps to be at the forefront of biorefining. In addition, Indian companies already have a long tradition to utilize residual biomass from agriculture, especially combustion of sugarcane bagasse and production of electricity. The country also has existing production of bioethanol and related infrastructure. Indian agriculture produces huge volumes of residues that are largely not utilized,” said Pasi Rousu, president of Chempolis’ Asia-Pacific and Americas division. “In cooperation with ONGC, Chempolis would be looking forward to the establishment of biorefineries preferably in areas of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat. The company aims at delivering its technology in co-operation with leading Indian industry suppliers,” Rousu added. Chempolis’ third generation biorefining technology is based on selective fractionation of biomass and co-production of multiple products in a sustainable way. The technology is not just for the production of biofuels (e.g. ethanol), but the produced sugars and lignin can be used as a platform into a myriad of different products. Continue reading
Talking To Top International Perfumers
By Janetta Mackay 9:16 AM Wednesday Oct 16, 2013 Janetta Mackay talks to two renowned perfumers who collaborated successfully before finding their own fragrance fame. Christine Nagel and Francis Kurkdjian. In the 10 years since they created a hit fragrance together, perfumers Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel have each separately reinforced their standing as leading international “noses” with stellar solo careers. Both products of the tradition-steeped but commercially demanding French perfume industry, their innovative approaches have a boutique style that sets them apart. Their names are linked professionally as co-creators of the distinctively musky top-selling Narciso Rodriguez For Her perfume, but each has an impressive solo resume and a unique approach to their craft. Kurkdjian found early fame at age 25 when he created Le Male for Jean Paul Gaultier. He became a “go-to guy” for many luxury brands, among them Dior, Armani, Yves Saint Laurent and Ferragamo, most recently creating Elie Saab’s first fragrance. He has also opened his own bespoke boutique brand, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, in Paris and worked on art installations, including creating giant perfume bubbles spotlighted for public exposition at Versailles and in Shanghai. He combines artistry and accessibility, having also crafted Elizabeth Arden’s perennially popular Green Tea spritz and a shelf full of men’s top selling colognes including Joop, Kouros Sport, Davidoff Silver Shadow and, more recently, Rocawear for Jay Z’s company. He has reworked the classics for Acqua di Palma and bottled modern cool for Juliette Has a Gun. Christine Nagel’s newest fragrance, Si, for Giorgio Armani, is about to launch in New Zealand and, judging by sales overseas, seems destined to be another standout. Hers is the name behind a string of designer fragrances, including Miss Dior Cherie, Dolce & Gabbana’s The One and commissions for Kenzo, Lagerfeld, Lancome, Mugler and more. In recent years she has been busiest as master perfumer for the ever-so-English company Jo Malone, helping broaden its global reach. Like Kurkdjian, she is in her 40s, still relatively young for a perfumer. As their answers to Viva’s questions show, the pair’s working connection may have been brief, but the passion they share for perfumery seems set to ensure enduring excellence. Perfumer Christine Nagel. CHRISTINE NAGEL Do you have a signature style? I have the desire to look for new accords, new associations of ingredients. For [Jo Malone] Peony & Blush Suede, the peony flower does not exist as a natural essence in perfumery. This is where a poetic fragrant vision comes into play. The peony essence in Peony & Blush Suede is unique to Jo Malone London as it is my own interpretation, as a woman and a perfumer, of an English peony. The Jo Malone London collaboration runs to about 20 fragrances now, how is it evolving? I consider myself the olfactory instrument of the brand. I always take into consideration the values of the brand and create scents that connect with its philosophies and values. Even if the fragrances are from different families – fruity, woody, floral – there is the same philosophy. The brand has a real style and the fragrances are easily identifiable. I am extremely happy to create fragrances for it. Do you have a favourite Jo Malone London creation? English Pear & Freesia, one of my earlier creations, is a beautiful, light and refreshing fragrance. The newest addition, Peony & Blush Suede, is a very special fragrance to make, taking over two years to create. This fragrance is elegant and sophisticated. What is the fragrance you would have loved to have created? Feminite du Bois by Shiseido is a fragrance I admire; there is so much femininity infused in those woods. How do think women should approach the appreciation of fragrance? Fragrance to me is an aromatic message we send to everybody who has not yet perceived us. Therefore you have to feel at one with your fragrance . . . at this point, you are charming, appealing, seductive. In perfumery, there has been a return to authenticity, to fragrances with an asserted femininity. Once you have decided on a [fragrance] family that suits your style, spend time getting to know the scents to find your distinctive scent combination. Francis Kurkdjian. FRANCIS KURKDJIAN Is perfumery art, craft or a combination? I live my metier as an art. It is an “endless question” whether modern perfume-making is art, craft or business. No matter what, as a perfumer, you need the art of science and the science of the art. What matters to me above all are the emotions I have when I create and the pleasure I give to people who appreciate my work. What is your earliest olfactory memory? I have a lot. My grandmother used to wear Femme by Rochas. I recall the scent of my grandfather’s aftershave lotion he used to blend himself and of my grandparents’ apartments. My father used colognes at night only. The first time I smelled fresh-cut grass is something I remember still. The fragrance you wished you had created? Fougere Royale by Houbigant, the first fragrance that mixed natural and synthetic molecules in 1882. Is there a fragrance note you consider a signature? Notes/ingredients are my vocabulary. My technique is my grammar. Overall, I think my style is about balance and sensuality. I am a storyteller, using scents. In terms of a trademark I may have, it’s always difficult to have enough distance to be able to analyse. I do not know if my style has evolved over the years. I have always been a huge fan of essentials [oils]. Each ingredient must have its position and its reason to be in. Less is definitely more in fragrance-making; however, you have to be careful not to be anorexic. The scent has to be big enough and have a nice, appealing trail/aura. I have tried to touch all kind of fragrance families to cover the biggest olfactory spectrum possible. What is the costliest ingredient you have used and how does it deliver? The most expensive ingredient is orris root absolute (the root of the iris flower). It costs about €$75,000 per kilo. I have used orris in my latest fragrance, Amyris for woman and Amyris for man. The most exotic? Think about a lavender field under the sky of Provence, France, or blooming orange tree flowers in Sicily overlooking the Mediterranean, women hand-picking rosebuds in Iran or Bulgaria when the sun rises in May. To be honest, I do believe each of the natural raw materials I use in my fragrances is exotic. The last I have used is oud oil or agarwood oil, a natural raw material that comes from the south Far East. I have used it in one of my latest works, named OUD, as a tribute to this extravagant, extraordinary ingredient. Do you discern any particular emerging trends in modern fragrance styles? Trend is not something I look at as I work at least 18 months ahead of a launch for my own house and sometimes it’s 24 months for other brands. So by the time the trend comes, I am already working on another fragrance and I have moved on to something else. However, right now there is a comeback on very sexy, glamour and feminine fragrances. Couture fragrances are back to the prestige market while celebrities’ fragrances remain popular. Any advice you would like to share? Perfume is not a beauty product. It is not lipstick, mascara or a nail polish. Perfume is not even a product because perfume is invisible. So let it lead you by the emotion of what you smell and experience. Read about perfumer Christine Nagel’s work with Giorgio Armani here. – VIVA Continue reading
India Increases Effort to Harness Biomass Energy
Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers collect rice straw from the fields in Baghoura, a village in northern India. By AMY YEE Published: October 8, 2013 GHANAUR, India — THE hulking power plant set against the green countryside of Punjab state in northwest India does not look like a source of renewable energy. Yet filling its stockyard, instead of mounds of coal, are bales of rice straw. Machines break up the heavy straw cubes as men with pitchforks hoist fibrous mounds onto a conveyor belt leading to the power plant. Handkerchiefs cover their faces to protect them from dust swirling in the air. Manpreet Romana for The New York Times Workers inspect the machinery at a biomass energy plant in northern India. This is Punjab Biomass Power, a plant near the village of Ghanaur that collects the straw collected from farmers tilling the lush fields of the surrounding countryside. After harvest, they would normally burn this agricultural waste, inedible to people and animals, to clear fields for wheat crops, as farmers across India do, and in that way contribute to the country’s dire air pollution. But at Punjab Biomass, 120,000 tons of rice straw a year are instead burned to generate 12 megawatts of electricity for the state’s power grid. The plant produces emissions, although its filters reduce the amount that outdoor burning would generate. But such biomass energy in theory is considered carbon-neutral because of what these plants use as fuel — like sugar cane pulp and nut shells that took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as it grew. Biomass power plants are eligible for carbon credits that translate into cash, and Punjab Biomass hopes to eventually earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the plant. Yet biomass is far from a solution to the enormous energy needs of India and its 1.2 billion people. Alternative energy, like wind, biomass and solar, accounted for less than 8 percent of India’s power generation in 2009. Still, because India imports about 70 percent of its oil and natural gas and relies on coal for more than half of its electricity generation, it must consider all options for energy. In April, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for a doubling of India’s nonconventional energy supply, including biomass, from 25,000 megawatts in 2012 to 55,000 megawatts by 2017. “Energy is both scarce and expensive and yet it is vital for development,” said Mr. Singh at the Clean Energy Ministerial in New Delhi. Developing countries “have to expand all sources of supply, including both conventional and nonconventional energy,” he said. Agricultural waste in India is abundant, since roughly 60 percent of its population relies on agriculture for a living. Sunil Dhingra, a senior fellow at the Energy Resources Institute (TERI), a Delhi-based policy center, estimated that India produced 600 million tons of such “agro-waste” each year, 150 to 200 tons of which are not used. This is “a big resource that needs to be channelized,” he said. Some European countries have already successfully harnessed biomass energy. In Finland, biomass such as leaves and wood from its abundant, managed forest industry accounts for 20 percent of the energy supply, according to the European Biomass Industry Association. Sixteen percent of Sweden’s energy comes from biomass. And nearly half of upper Austria’s renewable energy comes from biomass; the region aims to use renewable energy for all of its heat and energy demand by 2030 . Punjab Biomass began operations in November 2010 after converting the existing coal power plant at the site, an option less expensive than building a new plant or solar or wind farm. In Britain and other parts of Europe, some coal-fired plants are converting to biomass to comply with new European environmental regulations, said David Hostert, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London. In India, biomass has the potential to generate at least 18,000 megawatts of electricity, according to the country’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Biomass energy can be produced through big power plants but also in small, rural gasifiers for grass-roots industries like brick kilns. Mr. Dhingra of TERI estimated that there were 800 to 900 biomass power plants and 3,000 small thermal gasifiers across India. Biomass energy also generates extra income for Indian farmers. Punjab Biomass pays 15,000 farmers about 500 rupees, about $8, per acre of rice straw that would otherwise be burned. But there are many challenges to expanding biomass energy, especially collecting, storing and transporting the agricultural waste to power plants. Most farms are fragmented, without organized disposal operations, so energy companies need fleets of threshers and tractors to collect agro-waste from fields. Enough fodder to run a power plant for 11 months must be collected and stored. Punjab Biomass runs mainly on rice straw, but it is considering other agro-waste unfit for livestock, like corn and cotton stalks and sugar cane waste to supplement its current supply. Biomass is stored in enormous depots and must be kept dry even in India’s heavy rains. Companies must get clearance for large swaths of land to store fodder — no easy task in bureaucratic India. Murad Ali Baig, director of Bermaco Energy Systems, one of the partners in the Punjab plant, admitted that getting the plant running “should have taken 18 months but took four years.” The logistics of storing and transporting fodder and maintaining fuel-guzzling equipment is far more complicated than it seems in unpredictable India. “It’s been bloody hard work,” said Mr. Baig. The company is operationally profitable, but still has losses from its first couple of years of business. Still, the company aims to build eight more rice-straw energy plants in Punjab state to generate 96 megawatts of electricity by 2017. Across India, Bermaco hopes to set up about 20 biomass plants generating 240 megawatts during the next three years and about 1,000 megawatts in the next six years. While there is potential for biomass energy in India, the country lacks the efficiency, logistical infrastructure and investments of countries like Finland. There, the public and private sector have invested heavily in research and development. Huge warehouses store leaves and wood to ensure steady, efficient supplies of fodder from well-managed forests. In India, biomass “is low-tech, but let’s invest, like the example we’ve seen in Europe,” Mr. Dhingra of TERI, said. “Industry, academia and government all work on one platform there. You don’t see that happening here.” This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 11, 2013 An article on Wednesday about turning rice stalks into biomass energy in India misstated an estimate by the Energy Resource Institute in New Delhi of the nation’s annual amount of unused agricultural waste. It is 150 million tons to 200 million tons, not 150 tons to 200 tons. Continue reading
