Merica Acquires Majority Stake in Choren

Today it was announced that my new company, Merica International, has acquired Shell’s stake in Choren Industries. This is something we have been actively pursuing for some time. This transaction gives Merica a great deal […]

Energy Potpourri

I am at the 2009 Gasification Technologies Conference this week, with a pretty full schedule. But there are three stories that I wanted to quickly hit. One is a follow-up on the previous cellulosic ethanol […]

My Point Exactly

I missed this story when it came out last week:Hydrocarbon biofuels’ promise tops that of ethanol, gasoline John Regalbuto, a chemical engineer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and director of the NSF catalysis and […]

Rentech Making Waves

The following story posed a bit of a dilemma for me. In my new role, there will be potential conflicts of interest in some of the stories I may post, and until I elaborate on […]

The Long Recession

Sometimes people ask me what I think will happen as a result of peak oil. Well, it depends. We could see alternatives – natural gas, ethanol, GTL, CTL, etc. – fill the gap of falling […]

Rentech Announces BTL Plant

Still on vacation, but an interesting announcement yesterday by Rentech: Rialto Project Our proposed Rialto Renewable Energy Center (Rialto Project) will be located in Rialto, California. The facility is designed to produce approximately 600 barrels […]

Renewable Diesel Primer

Given the recent news that biodiesel has caused buses in Minnesota to malfunction in cold weather, I thought this would be a good time to review the differences between diesel, biodiesel, and green diesel. In […]

The Lowdown on Miscanthus

Now that Blogger has determined that I am in fact a real person (see this note for an explanation), I am back in business. I notice the Barack Obama is now in favor of my […]

Visit to New Choren BTL Plant

Figure 1. Choren BTL Production Process. (Source: Choren) Introduction I had to dig way back in my Gmail archives to figure out how it was that I first interacted with Choren. I had written several […]

XTL: Promise and Peril

The following is a slightly modified version of an essay that I posted to The Oil Drum . Introduction I have stated on several occasions that I believe global warming is a greater immediate threat […]