Company Name Solena Group	Company Web Site http://www.solenagroup.com/	Headquarters Washington, DC
Latest News Solena Group has a carbon-negative plan, which emerged from the decision by regulators in Kansas last year to turn down a permit for two new coal-burning power plants because of the millions of tons of carbon dioxide they would produce. The regulators insisted that the builder of the plants, an electric co-op called Sunflower, had to permanently remove the carbon from circulation. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and the Kansas State Legislature are still arguing over whether the plants should be built. Solena says it can use the carbon. The company employs a high-temperature process to break up anything organic into a flammable gas. The organic material could be algae, which have an extremely high energy value per pound. And algae eat carbon dioxide. Solena is in discussion with Sunflower to build a 40-megawatt power plant that would run on gasified algae; the algae would be grown in thousands of clear plastic cylinders, 3 feet wide by 10 feet tall, sitting in the Kansas sun and fertilized with sodium bicarbonate, made with carbon captured from Sunflower's coal plant. For each 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide, the columns would yield a ton of algae. A Solena subsidiary has been growing algae at a facility in Alicante, Spain. If built, the system would make double use of the carbon from the coal and avoid digging more coal for more power. Alternatively, the gas could be turned into diesel fuel or other vehicle fuel, if prices favored that.
Funding No additional funding information.
Technology Solena's biomass feedstock is fed into a plasma reactor, which holds one or more plasma arc torches. These plasma torches heat the biomass to roughly 5,000 degrees Celsius. Solena uses this high temperature plasma field to transform all organic components into a clean and useful synthetic gas (also known as syngas) containing principally carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases. The syngas from the reactor is cooled and cleaned, which involves the removal of any sulfur compounds, chlorides, mercury, other volatile metals, acid gas and any particulate matter in order to reduce pollution. Once this phase is complete, the syngas is fed into a gas turbine to produce electricity in a combined cycle. Energy production will be revolutionized by the production of algae-based biomass as a feedstock. Produced in industrial bioreactors, artificial light photosynthesizes the algae, which are then gasified for green energy. This economical system produces 400 times the amount of biomass feedstock on the same acreage of land compared to standard energy crops, sparing precious landmass for food production. Environmental benefits: Solena's plasma gasification technology is: * Fuel flexible offering high availability of base load power * Highly efficient, consuming less than ¼ of the energy it produces * Provides lower O&M costs than other "clean" renewable energy processes * Produces zero CO2 emissions, no toxic fumes, no heavy metals or hazardous ashes * Energy positive, producing four times more energy than standard combustion technology
Other Info Utilizing biomass as a fuel source, enables Solena's technology to be used anywhere in the world, currently throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe and South America. Among Solena's many projects: * Five 40- megawatt renewable energy plants in California using biomass to help utilities meet mandates and the Renewable Portfolio Standard program. * A renewable energy plant for a sizable hazardous waste management group in Europe to turn solid and liquid waste into clean energy. * Two 90-megawatt renewable energy plants for two major European cities that are prohibited from using landfill and incineration, in order to meet renewable energy mandates for the European Union. Solena is currently devising a revolutionary way to create bio-fuels for the transportation industry, eliminating the need for oil, gas and ethanol. This breakthrough process will not only reduce dependence on fossil fuels but will eliminate the emissions from transportation fuel, currently two-thirds of all global emissions. Using its groundbreaking micro-algae biomass as an energy source, Solena will turn the algae into syngas with its plasma gasification process. Solena will then implement an advanced Fischer Tropsch process to liquefy the syngas to produce clean diesel and commercial jet fuel. Benefits: * Reduce dependence on fossil fuels used for transportation fuel * Eliminate the emissions of transportation fuel * Solena's low sulfur diesel can be used directly in diesel cars without retrofitting the car engines as is needed for ethanol-based fuel * Solena will be able to produce 400 times more algae-based biomass feedstock on the same acreage of land compared to standard energy crops such as corn and sugarcane, sparing precious land for food production