The need to manage waste and its valuation raises the opportunity for promising environmental projects, like FUELCAM, by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, focused on the use of hydrogenated terpenes to create biofuel from orange peels or pine tree resin.

“This project originated five years ago to revalorize waste in the Castilla La Mancha region”, explains Magín Lapuerta, a professor at the Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha, where he coordinates the Grupo de Combustibles y Motores (GCM-UCLM) and assesses the Committee for the European norms on fuel. 

“The first part of this job involved working with turpentine, a terpene distilled from pine tree resin, that is after subject to hydrogenation, so that it won’t produce black smoke at combustion”, explains Lapuerta.
Then, it was the turn for orange peels, a readily available material since it is a byproduct that is not used by coopearatives and farmers. 

This project stems from David Donoso’s thesis. David is a researcher at the ETS de Ingeniería Industrial de la UCLM, that comprises three research lines with three different raw materials, the three of them terpenos hidrogenados: turpentine, hydrogenated orange oil and CST, which is sulfate turpentine, a paper industry byproduct.

“Our research confirms that fully hydrogenating fuel allows to reduce soot by 55%”, says David Donoso.
 

Turpentine isn’t really a byproduct. It’s extracted from pine trees, and it’s mainly used to produce substances like turpentine spirits. While its extraction would have major impact on the pine tree industry and have applications to prevent fires, this research line doesn’t show much promise.

For that reason, they focused on CST and orange peels. “The research to create fuel was done with a reactor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. We created enough to burn it with an engine”, explains Lapuerta.

The fuel was tested at Castilla La Mancha mixed with diesel fuel.  In the test formulas, 20% is hydogenated turpentine or hydrogenated orange oil, and 80% is diesel. 

 “The percentage of biofuel could be raised. We give added value with the hydrogenation”, researchers say. It could also be tested in gas engines. 

“Now we need to take the leap on an industrial scale, by testing biofuels mixed with JetA1 in aircraft turbines”, explains José Laureano Canoira López, professor at the Chemical engineering area of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM).

“We still need to find turbines to test out these results in the aviation industry. We need a refinery or biorefinery company willing to hydrogenate the materials for us and prepare a large amount to start testing on real planes”, researchers say.

However, there is a major gap that seems tough to close. In order to test out efficiently they would need to produce at least 100 liters, but for fuel companies to find the operation profitable, they would need to produce at least 1,000 liters and take the risk.

The  ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) lays down the possibility of using from 10% to 50% of biofuels in aviation, as long as they meet the requirements.

There are other research lines with potential. There are other types of terpene waste, such as biowaste from parks and gardens maintenance, mostly leaves, which could also be used to make biofuels. 

ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest single structure humans have ever put into space. It weighs about 400 tonnes and covers an area as large as a football field. Building it on Earth and then launching it into space in one go would have been impossible, according to the European Space Agency (ESA): "There is no rocket big enough or powerful enough." So it was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually assembled in orbit, approximately 400 kilometres above the Earth's surface, in an assembly that required more than 40 missions.

A dream more akin to science fiction

Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada and Japan have all been involved in the construction of this iconic structure. In fact, as ESA points out, the International Space Station is the world's largest international cooperative programme in science and technology. "The idea of a space station was once science fiction," explains the US National Laboratory of the International Space Station.

But what was only a dream a century ago came to fruition decades later. On 25 January 1984, US President Ronald Reagan ordered NASA to build the ISS: "Just as the oceans opened up a new world for clipper ships and Yankee traders, space holds enormous potential for commerce today." On 20 November 1998, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block blasted off its launch pad atop the Proton-K rocket into the cold winter skies above Kazakhstan. Zarya, which had been built in Moscow but funded by the US, served as a temporary control module for the nascent ISS. Although construction of the station took place mainly between 1998 and 2011, it is continually evolving to include new missions and experiments.

The International Space Station is the world's largest international cooperative science and technology programme. Credit: NASA

More than 260 visitors in two decades

Astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev became the first crew to reside aboard the station in November 2000. They spent four months there and kicked off more than 20 years of continuous human presence in space. Since then, the ISS has welcomed many more inhabitants. As of October 2022, 263 individuals from 20 countries have visited the ISS, including 161 Americans, 56 Russians and 11 Japanese. They have made more than 253 spacewalks to build, maintain and upgrade the station, according to NASA.

The habitable volume in the various ISS modules is larger than a six-bedroom room house. Typically, there is an international crew of seven people living and working inside the ISS. However, this number can vary during crew turnover; for example, in 2009, 13 people were on the ISS at the same time. The ISS has become a floating scientific laboratory where more than 3,000 research projects have been carried out. In just six months, up to 350 experiments are often conducted aboard the station, ranging from tests on all kinds of animals to sending one astronaut into space and leaving his twin behind on Earth, in order to compare the health of both men.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronaut Terry Virts perform configuration tasks on board the ISS. Credit: NASA

The Sun, the Moon and the International Space Station

The ISS orbits the Earth at an average altitude of 400 kilometres. It circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of about 28,000 kilometres per hour. According to the website Space, it covers the same distance in one day as a trip from the Earth to the Moon and back. The structure is one of the brightest objects in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon. To see it from Earth, look for a point of bright white light moving quickly across the sky. "The light will be constant, so if it flashes, or you see red lights, that's a plane," reports BBC Science Focus. NASA has a website to track when the ISS is visible from a given location.

As the International Space Station orbits the Earth, its four pairs of solar panels absorb energy from the Sun to provide electrical power to the structure. In early 2021, NASA announced their refurbishment: "Though they are functioning well, the current solar arrays are showing signs of degradation, as expected." In addition, the ISS also has a water recovery system that recycles about 93% of its wastewater. This is a tricky task, according to NASA's Bob Bagdigian: "In space, it becomes quite a challenge to distil any liquid in the absence of gravity."

Over the years, more than 253 spacewalks have been made to build, maintain and upgrade the station. Credit: NASA

The end of the International Space Station

Current plans call for the ISS to be operated until 2024. But, according to NASA, this date is likely to be extended to 2030. Maintaining this station costs about $3 billion a year, about a third of NASA's annual human spaceflight budget. In July 2022, Russia announced that it will withdraw from the ISS after 2024. The country, internationally condemned for its invasion of Ukraine, aims to build a new Russian Orbital Space Station around 2028. In theory, the Russian withdrawal will be gradual.

It is unclear what will be done with this structure once 2030 arrives. Various alternatives have been explored: from de-orbiting it to recycling its components for future commercial space stations in orbit. Until then, NASA hopes the structure will serve to explore deep space, conduct research to benefit humanity, lead and encourage international cooperation and boost the US private spaceflight industry. The International Space Station still has much to contribute, as Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters, says: "It is entering its third and most productive decade as a groundbreaking scientific platform in microgravity."

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Tungsteno is a journalism laboratory to scan the essence of innovation. Devised by Materia Publicaciones Científicas for Sacyr’s blog.

We have created a truly unique additive for asphalt mixes, formulated with recycled vegetable oil and byproducts olive oil processing.

With this additive, the need to use standard petrochemical fossil melting agents is eliminated, as its composition contains 30-50% of recycled vegetable oils and 20-30% of other residues such as olive oil derived amurca. Repurposing of these by-products has been achieved thanks to nanotechnology through the use of graphene.

Thanks to Bioroad, asphalt mixes can be manufactured at lower temperatures, thus reducing energy consumption and the carbon footprint generated by traditional hot manufacturing processeses. These asphalt mixes are manufactured at 120-140 ºC (40 ºC less than the traditional process). 

On the other hand, thanks to Bioroad it is also possible to manufacture what is commonly known as durable asphalt mixes. These are asphalt mixes that once manufactured can be stored either in bulk or in sacks and applied or used up to 5 years post-manufacture.

The additive not only makes the asphalt less polluting, but also provides greater resistance to fatigue and road wear due to the effects of water, temperature and use. As these materials are manufactured at a lower temperature, the aging of the bitumen is slower.

Bioroad was invented by Jorge Coelho, founder of Único Asfaltos, which has merged with Sacyr Green into Sacyr Único, a new Sacyr Green company, which will join CIRTEC in its strategy of developing sustainable products and solutions for the road in the field of the circular economy.

"With Bioroad, producing asphalt mixtures at lower temperatures that allow to be applied on site several months after manufacture is a reality and without sacrificing quality of conventional asphalts", explains Guillermo Rodriguez Marfil, Project Engineer at Sacyr Green.

The asphalts, which are durable post-application, have been measured for their rapid trafficability, fast curing, and macro and microtexture values, and are in accordance with the values required for the continuous granulometry mixes manufactured in the traditional hot method.

Application at AUNOR

Last November 2, concession company AUNOR, with the technical collaboration of CIRTEC, Sacyr and Único Asfalto, applied this asphalt mix on part of junctions in the Concession area.

The section in question was on the Autovía del Noroeste, a P3 company of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia. This highway is the axis connecting the Northwest Regions with the city of Murcia. The junction between the RM-15 highway and the RM-532 road that connects the highway with the town of Cieza was selected as the section to apply the asphalt mix on.

"Accessways 3 and 4 were selected and half of each was treated with the hot mix asphalt and the other half with the semi-hot asphalt mix manufactured with Bioroad, in order to be able to compare the future performance of both types of mixes," says Juan Carlos Ruiz, head of AUNOR's Operation and Maintenance Department.

"By doing both sections simultaneously, one section with a semi-hot mix and another with a standard mix and monitoring their performances in the coming years will allow us to demonstrate through a real use case study that the quality of semi-hot asphalt mixes exceeds that of hot mixes, opening a new path to sustainability," explains Carlos Rodriguez, director of the Spanish Highways Department of Sacyr Concesiones.

Prueba noticia