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2007 ENERGY TOUR: Day 17 July 11, 2007Today we had the opportunity to visit the Ecogenics Research Center (www.ecogenicsresearchcenter.org) in Sevierville, Tennessee where we met with the Founder and President, Marc Cardoso. Marc has been doing research into renewable energy for over thirty years, and teaching others about. The goal of Ecogenics is to provide very simple high efficiency kits at an affordable price. His facility was the first ethanol fuel producer in Tennessee.  Marc has a very diverse background. He has traveled the world, led a successful career as an industrial designer, worked in the entertainment industry, done architectural design implementing green practices in his design, including one building that actually produced energy to be pumped back onto the grid. He has always had an interest in and has been an avid advocate for the environment and renewable energy. As an engineer for Leer Corporation he had the opportunity to work on several solar power projects including a solar collector that generated electricity by means of a reverse rankine cycle process.  Marc tells a great story about building a high efficiency ethanol producing distiller with common materials and in very little time. In the early 1980's he claimed he could go anywhere in the world and have an ethanol producing machine built and functioning in a matter of hours (not including fermentation time). One man took him up on it and bet him $10,000 that he couldn't do it. He was flown out to eastern Washington and with some #10 cans from a restaurant, some common materials from a hardware store and a sporting goods store and some hoses from washers and dryers he was able to build a functioning machine within a matter of hours. The mash (biomass ready to be turned into ethanol) was prepared beforehand and put into the machine and out came 190 proof ethanol. He won his $10,000 dollars and has used this machine as his basis for fancier distillers.  These efforts have resulted in a very refined and inexpensive kit that you can buy online at his website www.ecogenicsresearchcenter.org. His motto is keep it simple and basic. He has produced ethanol from many items including snack cakes, carrots, waste food crops, beer, garbage, grains, dead fish, restaurant waste, and many other things. He has a very unique biofuel refinery that processes both ethanol and biodiesel, using the same equipment. His equipment is a small test-scale unit used for research and development. In addition to making ethanol out of many different items he has also produced biodiesel out of these same items including snack cakes, grease, dead fish, and even algae.  The afore mentioned fish and algae are important components of one of his more interesting experiments which is a closed loop ecosystem. In a greenhouse a tropical climate is simulated, tilapia fish and algae are grown together in a harmonious and mutually beneficial ecosystem. The algae can then be harvested to produce biofuels. Algae is cutting edge technology in the biofuels industry. Many hypothesize that algae could have far superior yields for biofuels that any current source. 
 Marc is interested in using all sorts of mediums to produce energy including garbage. There is a lot of garbage and Americans keep throwing more and more away and he is doing research into gasifying garbage to produce energy. Some countries, like India, are using gasifiers successfully, yet the United States is not putting much effort into researching gasification technology even though many experts agree that gasification has much more potential than many other technologies currently available.  When asked what Marc thinks it will take to get renewable energy to be the energy of choice in the USA he says "We must get the price of biofuels lower than the price of petroleum so that it becomes more attractive to the American public." When asked about the future of biofuels and the food vs. fuel debate, Marc says that there is a gold mine in America's waste streams. Food producers discard massive amounts of waste, which they could use to power their processes, or manufacture or sell to manufacturers of fuel. Landfills are overflowing with biomass, which could also be used produce fuel. Restaurants and bars could distill their own ethanol from their patrons' unfinished drinks. The possibilities are mind-boggling.  One of the reasons why waste streams tend to be overlooked as a resource is their highly variable makeup. As a scientist or engineer, we try to reduce variables. This effort to reduce variables can become overwhelming and result in nothing being done. It also leads to designs that will only function in a sterile environment. Marc says that variables are a fact of nature, and therefore follows his own modified scientific procedure, in which he designs systems to work in a real world environment, with all of the variables included. |
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