According to the recent Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report presented in Copenhagen by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPCC), to face the irreversible effects of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) need to fall by as much as 70% around the world by 2050 and to zero by 2100.
Implementing such reductions poses substantial technological, economic, social, and institutional challenges. BFS blue Enterprises has developed a technology to capture, neutralise and transform industrial CO2 emissions into products with applications in a range of markets including energy, pharmaceuticals, nutrition, cosmetics, and biotechnology. Using a sophisticated technology to accelerate the power of nature, BFS provide a feasible mitigation pathway for CO2 emissions.
CO2 Capture… and Conversion
Because of the way our cycles of production and consumption work, our food, energy and environment are intricately linked. With the consistent global development of the past century, it is increasingly difficult to satisfy our world with sufficient food and energy. Meeting these demands has a direct impact on the environment, especially through the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly atmospheric CO2, which is currently at an unprecedentedly high concentration of nearly 400ppm (September 2013).
According to the global scientific and environmental community (UN, NASA, IPCC, EPA, etc), if current emission rates continue, we will soon reach a point of no return: irreparable damage resulting in a lack of potable water, changes in food production conditions and increased mortality rates from natural disasters such as floods, storms, and droughts. Climate change is not merely an environmental issue; it has deep economic and social implications.
Though many of these natural phenomena have already been documented, energy from fossil fuels has allowed for most of society’s modern comforts, making it difficult to implement changes in behaviour. According to the International Energy
Agency, $1tn of investment is needed worldwide each year for the next 36 years to stave off the worst effects of global warming and keep the Earth habitable.
BFS technology presents some of the answers to the big problems we have represented so far, with lower investment:
- Technology based on the capture, neutralisation and conversion of the CO2 from flue gases. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology is a technology that removes carbon from the flue gases and stores it in geological formations to prevent it entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. The big difference is that BFS blue technology not only captures, but also converts the CO2 (not storage) into some other products.
- Food. Some other products can be essential goods for food.
- High value products (Omega 3, antioxidants, vitamins, sitosterols, polysaccharides, natural colorants, etc.) from a commercial point of view.
- True alternative to fossil fuel; storable, high-density energy to be used even to get all the derivate products that currently are obtained from fossil oils (plastics, paints, chemicals, etc).
The BFS combination of high value products plus blue petroleum, allows us to produce the first biocrude – fully competitive with fossil oil both in price and flexibility.
Unique Technology
Human activity is moving dangerously towards the Earth’s natural cycle; the CO2 absorbed during photosynthesis (reduction) is later reintroduced into the atmosphere through the natural process of combustion (oxidation). With the industrial revolution, humans have destroyed this natural balance by drastically increasing the concentration of CO2 .
To reverse this situation, BFS has developed a unique technology (3rd Cycle of CO2) to accelerate CO2 reduction based on Carbon, Capture, Conversion and Neutralisation (C3N). C3N is an alternative, or in some cases complementary, to the CCS technology. In BFS technology CO2 is captured, but instead of being buried, is used to feed marine phytoplankton (the building blocks of life) that capture the CO2 via photosynthesis and transform it into valueable bioproducts.
With patented technology, BFS blue Enterprises cultivates these marine phytoplankton on an industrial scale with a fully-automated, aseptic process to ensure high-quality, homogenous production throughout the year. Because of the modular nature of the plant (seen in Figure 2), production is divided into sectors to produce different products, making BFS technology highly adaptable to market demand.
Crude oil with 0 Emissions to produce 1 BBL of crude oil, BFS technology permanently neutralises 1 ton of CO2. Given the average combustion emissions of one barrel of oil being 390 kg of CO2, BFS completely offsets 2.5 barrels for every barrel of blue petroleum, ensuring a net emission of 0 from the combustion of the 3.5 total barrels.
In this way, we can maintain our present energy model without changing our current lifestyle or infrastructure, even after the end of fossil energy.
This means that, 3.7 Million of BBL per day of BFS blue oil will neutralise the EU’s CO2 emissions from crude oil (EU crude oil consumption is 12.7 MBBL/day).
To reach this production of 3.7 MBBL per day of BFS blue Petroleum, would require a much lower investment than $1tn/year (According to the International
Energy Agency, this is roughly the amount of investment needed worldwide each year for the next 36 years to stave off the worst effects of global warming and keep the Earth habitable). In fact the investment in total, from 2015 to 2050 would be
€1.4tn; €38.3bn/year, around 0.4% of the GDP every year up to 2050; from this point on, no additional investment would be needed and the plant would generate a revenue of €544bn per year.
Conclusions – Reflection
Is €38.3bn/year an expensive budget to neutralise 100% of the CO2 emissions coming from the crude oil in the EU? Clearly not. This budget is not so much if we take into consideration that the economic impact of climate change can suppose expenditures of more than 5% of the GDP every year.
There are also figures, unrelated to climate change that put into perspective the investment needed – proving it is not as high as it seems. For example, the Mobile Apps sector has revenues of more than €38 bn/year, and €1.7tn is the annual worldwide budget for military expenditure… spreading peace is worth it, but so is stopping the effects of climate change.
The potential of the technology goes beyond the European Union, and does more than just reducing the CO2 emissions coming from crude oil. Here, in figure 3, we can see an ex ample of the worldwide CO2 budget (before the non-reversible global warming) and the effect of BFS blue technology in a global project.
Eloy Chápuli Fernández
Scientific & Technical Management
BFS bio fuel systems
Tel: +34 966 388 278
