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Renewable Energy From Algae?
Ravalox writes "With alternate fuel becoming a fairly hot trend in recent months, some academics may have applied their theoretical know-how to give us a practical solution. They offer up the idea that certain types of algae are well-suited to biodiesel production as they are nearly 50 percent oil. The article speculates that large pools could be created to farm out biodiesel from algae in areas near waste streams and salt water. They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert."
Algae Rawks!! :D
do() || do_not();
So what do they feed on? We trading one fuel for another?
If this is true, I expect these guys will be involved in a "tragic fatal accident". *cough* Shell *cough* Imperial.
I wish them luck
Alge grows in the desert?
And people thought solar power was useless.
(I'm not saying this is useless, I'm saying it's a form of solar power that is cheaper and more efficient than huge metal arrays)
Father: Son, why did you drive the car into the pond?!
Son: I was low and fuel and I decided to look for some algea.
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I can hear the "People for Algae" advocacy groups getting angry already. They're people too!!
Mix that algae with vinger-producing algae, and then splice these into lettuce. You'll have a salad that dresses itself!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
My swamp land will make me rich!
I live in the Sonora desert. Now I would appreciate if if you don't cover up my living area with algea, you insensitive clods!
But really, it wouldn't makse much sense to have it all in one area. Lots of little farms of it all over the world would be quite interesting though. A few miles here, a few there, and the world is happy.
Buckethead
As more evidence comes out daily of the ties between the leaders of petroleum producing countries and terrorists (not to mention the human rights abuses in their own countries), the incentive for finding an alternative to petroleum rises higher and higher. The environmental problems of petroleum have finally been surpassed by the strategic weakness of being dependent on a fuel that can only be purchased from tyrants.
I must say, I wasn't expecting quite that sort of introduction to an otherwise very informative and logical essay.
That aside, I'll never understand why pure alcohol has never been seriously pursued as a substitute for gasoline.
The coolest voice ever.
At this rate, we'll be able to abandon the middle east in 5 years completely.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Using petroleum to save wildlife destroyed by harvesting algae.
For us to avoid a catastrophe with the US running out of fossil fuel and ending up in an awful post-apocalyptic scenario, "alternative energy" needs to be far, far more than "a fairly hot trend". It needs to be a serious movement. Getting all rosy-eyed talking about this bacterial production of biodiesel needing "only" 10,000 square miles is ridiculous. First, we need to persuade the Sheeple that (A) we are going to run out of fossil fuel, and (B) it it is imperative that we do devote those 10,000 square miles so that we can finally do so. (Or, alternatively, we could go with another alternative source of fuel, such as the TDP machines featured recently here.) Then, and only then, we can start patting ourselves on the back over devoting a 100x100 mile area of our own land to renewable fuel production, rather than depending upon volatile foreign nations to supply us with oil drawn from an ever-dwindling supply. At the moment, to the average Merkin, it will sound amazingly ridiculous to "waste" a 100x100 mile area "just so some pinko environmentalist wackos can stop using oil". (I'm sorry, but that's how the right-leaning folks in this nation will interpret it.)
The general public in the US is so amazingly ignorant, they probably never even bother thinking that we could run out of oil, much less that we will, and that is is only a matter of time before we do (if no action is taken, which is looking rather likely as always).
And half of them probably would say "Poppycock; there's no way we could run out of fuel. God wouldn't let that happen to us!" It sounds like an anti-religion troll, but I seem to recall actually hearing rubbish like that from the far-right...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
my pool is green.
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Now if only this could also work with fungi than I would finally have a use for my toe-jam.
I seem to remember seeing this on an episode of Extreme Engineering when they were talking about the city in a pyramid in Tokyo. They said they were toying around with the idea of having algae in the water underneath the city, but not to create biodiesel. The applications the scientist were discussing involved splitting water to obtain hydrogen. Now, I'm not sure if this uses the same principle, but if it does, wouldn't hydrogen be much more favorable than biodiesel as the only waste is water?
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
Just say no to algae!
Please people, don't let our wonderful natural resources such as this desert be wiped out by greedy algae. Think of the sand!!
Or we could switch immediately to hemp which also eats up CO2, require ZERO modification to current engines, and support farmers in the U.S. http://www.artistictreasure.com/learnmorecleanair. html
Hemp Car
Hemp For Fuel
Norml
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX had a plot involving an algae called OILIX that could create oil, and of course some bad guys kidnap the scientist and his creation. Kinda interesting that it can actually be done in real life though.
even though you eliminate the need for fossil fuels, there is still the fact that burning them creates chemicals harmful for the envrionment. Sure, we may have solved the problem of 'running dry' of fossil fuels, but there is a bigger picture to this.
The US government is acting like international terrorists, except with bigger guns.
I troll you not.
Some types of algae, in environments high in sulfur, when deprived of sunlight for a few days also give off reasonable concentrations of hydrogen. The cycle is repeatable without any damage.
Any spoon would be too big.
Algae ultimately get their energy from the sun, as do plants. Whether this is a more efficient way of harvesting the sun's energy than other ways remains to be seen. The major potential advantage is that in this casethe algae produce oils/hydrocarbons which (hopefully) could be used in place of fossil fuels (no need to design new machines)
___________________
and by the way, i blog
Kind of kills 2 birds with one stone. All the biomass sucks carbon dioxide while at the same time giving us a cheap energy storage mechanism.
Of course, the folks who profit from energy scarcity are going to keep a lid on it.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
If you put all the algae in one place, couldn't I set it on fire and destroy the world economy completely? Don't be dependent on flammable, easily accessed materials.
If there is hope, it lies in the prowles.
Renewable energy is NOT always "clean" energy.
Even if we could make this idea a reality, we will still be contaminating our enviroment.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I don't completely disagree with you, but instead of preaching doom, why not back up your claims with facts and cite sources?
Just how soon ARE we going to run out of fossil fuel? Next 5 years? Next 500 years? Next 500,000 years?
We're going to run out of water and light from the sun eventually too.
The general public is "so amazingly ignorant" because anyone can prove anything with numbers. Even the most accurate numbers we have are probably guesses at best.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Come on, you know better than I do that drinking and driving don't mix. ;o
Clearly such research is good. But beware the big numbers. First, they require large government intervention(otherwise, we needn't worry and the market will take care of things), which means that you shouldn't trust their figures to be that realistic. Second, they are talking about a change in a large sector of the oil economy. This would have to be slow by design.
Again, this is good, but more needs to be done. Anyone want to fund a Grand Challenge/X-Prize for the best price/performance renewable fuel?
What? You don't have $1B to blow?
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
welcome our new algae overlords.
As with all alternative energy sources. It's the cost that holds it back. Whether we like it or not, oil is still the cheapest source of energy we have. Not only because of the price per barrel, albeit the highest is been in a while, but also because of the infrastructure costs associated with any new energy source.
What we need in the US, and in the rest of the world, is a real effort to fund and off-set the costs of these alternative sources. Although I will support the free-market until my face is blue, I believe this is a good case for a the public sector to intervene in the business world. The problem is that this effort must come from the top. The presidential administration, who ever is in office, must be the one to lead this effort.
I'd rather not get into a heated political discussion, but I do believe that the Bush administration wants to see us move from oil (you can stop laughing now). But they want the oil companies to lead the way. You notice that many of them, Exxon-Mobile for instance, now bill themselves as "Energy Companies," no longer wholy concentrating on petroleum. Despite the cynic, these companies do develope much of the solar, wind, and other non-oil technologies today, but don't pursure them due to cost.
(That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes.)
True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process. It may be naive but I can hope.
This is an interesting idea. I've always maintained that a biodiesel industry would be best suited for a distributed model. Small installations around soybean farms to produce the oil and lower transportation costs.
I guess a model like hoover damn would work. Build a large central installation that would produce a vast amount of energy. In doing so it provided a state with an economy that would have otherwise ended up like maine.
No offence to maine but asside from lobster, timber, and steven king their aint much.
I'm sure there are other costs and payoffs but that's the biggest I see so far, aside from the forgone conclusion of a cleaner environment and energy independence.
What could possibly go wrong?
Imagine this scenario: A household is only entitled to use as much energy as it produces, without severe financial impact. A house would be forced to have enough solar collectors and be efficient enough to have zero-load (averaged throughout the day) on the grid. Add to that a basement pool of bio-diesel-algae to provide 'mobile energy' and we have a sustainable winner. Pity about those apartment dwellers, however...
nt, jk
What about those algae that produced hydrogen when deprived of something (nitrogen?) and exposed to UV light or something like that? Whats happening with those?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
...until they broke the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Last paragraph:
Now let us consider biodiesel. Based on a report by the US DOE and USDA entitled "Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus"5, biodiesel produced from soy has an energy balance of 3.2:1. That means that for each unit of energy put into growing the soybeans and turning the soy oil into biodiesel, we get back 3.2 units of energy in the form of biodiesel. That works out to an energy efficiency of 320%. The reason for the energy efficiency being greater than 100% is that the growing soybeans turn energy from the sun into chemical energy (oil).
M'kay. So you get more energy out than you put in. Right.
A few paragraphs before they had just argued that cars run from hydrogen produced by electrolysis had an efficiency of 0.36:1, which made sense given their assumptions. Then they tried to use the 3.2:1 figure for biodiesel...
Are these rhetorician or scientists?
Use Klamath Lake, several sqr miles of water and very shallow too.
10,000 square miles isn't that big; a 117 mile diameter pool. You could build that somewhere in Nebraska and no one would notice for years aside from airline pilots.
Sounds good to me. Supplant oil production with algae and we can stop attempting to protect middle east oil resources from theocratic dictators. The only reason civilization still persists there is to maintain enough control to pipe out the oil...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If we can get usable energy from pond scum, are spammers now a national resource?
I use about 800 gallons of gas a year, so according to their estimates of how much space it would require, would seem like I only need about 200m^2 (about 2000ft^2 for the metric-challenged) of space to produce my own biodiesel. So, could I just buy a 15mx15m biodiesel facility to put on my lot, and if it feeds on waste, we could pull that from the house, and we could buy in bulk the additional requirements (salt for the salt water and additional waste if our house doesn't produce enough). According to their cost estimates, the cost of a pond that size would be $1,200 with an annual maintance cost of $120/year, considering that I probably spend about $1,500 a year on gas, that would be quite a savings and it would be environmentally friendly.
What would the feasability of that be? Of course, while traveling I would have to buy someone elses biodiesel, but it would be nice to be able to save some money for people who have the 200m^2 to put a algae pond.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
This might have other good benefits such as being able to generate it within the confines of our own countries rather than depending on expensive foreign fuels (so much for that war in Iraq eh?), but is it worth the price of neglecting better alternatives for us AND the environment?
Using biomass does not add to global warming. Plants use and store carbon dioxide (CO2) when they grow. This is then released when the plant material is burned. Other plants then use that released CO2 in growing. So using biomass closes this cycle of storing carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a gas that, when there's too much, can contribute to the "greenhouse effect" and global warming.
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I only hope we don't have to go to war with the plecostomi to protect our financial interests.
The real question is how will this affect the Bikini Bottom Ecosystem? What about Sponge Bob?
I'm not sure hydrogen would offer terribly many advantages over biodiesel. This idea has certainly convinced me. Btw, this is dealt with in the article...
Besides, if you're using a biofuel, the net CO2 emissions are zero, and the only other significant waste product is water anyway (ignoring contaminants).
Do you realize that's the size of Maryland? Unbefreakinglievable.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Remember in the game fallout2, the folks living in New san francisco had this technology, hmm, interested portants of the future in apocalyptic roleplaying.
welcome out new algae overlords
It's more about mass production and convenience. For instance, waste vegetable oil is cheaper than gas, (and you can use it to run a slightly modified diesel car) but there simply isn't enough of it to run *all* the cars in the US. Other alternatives will include ethanol and biodiesel, but most likely only after it becomes more profitable to do so.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ended up taking about 1.5 gal in the tractor to grow enough corn to produce 1 gal of alcohol.
If you use corn you do get these negative results, but here in Brazil we use sugar cane. The alcohol program, started in the 1970s, produced millions of cars (many of which are still running) until a shortage in the early 1990s scare most consumers away. It is making a major comeback since the introduction of "flex power" cars about a year ago. These work with either gasoline or pure alcohol so the buyer doesnt have to worry about future supply problems.
At about $0.23 per liter (multiply by 4 for gallons) vs $0.57 for gasoline, alcohol is the current choice for everyone who can use it here even with up to a 20% loss in mileage.
Starting the car in very cold days has proved to be the only real problem in nearly three decades of continous use. This isnt a big worry in Brazil, but probably would be in other countries.
(I'm not saying this is useless, I'm saying it's a form of solar power that is cheaper and more efficient than huge metal arrays)
1. Make the Sonora Desert look like northern New Jersey or East Chicago.
2. Large concentration of Algae attracts/breeds organisms which feed on that particular algae
3. Introduce all sorts of chemical ways to defeat organisms and engineer resistant strains of algae.
Seems like we should be focusing on using LESS energy than figuring out more ways to produce the SAME AMOUNT we area already using.
In the event someone hasn't noticed, one of the primary reasons for the jump in petroleum prices is because China is a growing market, with a lot of room to grow. They're already banning bicycles in major cities like Shanghai to make more room for cars, cars which run on petrol. Get used to paying $3-4 per gallon. Too bad we didn't invest in better mass transit when we had the chance. Ah, well, tax cuts are attractive, aren't they?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Never underestimate the energy potential of algea
.. he's been electrocuted!"
...GREEEEEEEN SLIME!...
"Oh - my - god
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
I love the picture with the school bus and the token black kid... Propaganda-rific :) It would be better if he had a 'fro though!
We don't want all our energy coming from a one hundred square mile area. Maybe 100 one-mile areas. One nuclear bomb would render us without energy.
If promoting industrial hemp makes pro-leg's look dishonest, your idiotic (and very wrong) equation of hemp with marijuana makes you look like a member of Al Quaeda!
Hey, I live in the Sonora Desert. And it's called desert for a reason. And the only way you'd ever begin to get me interested in wanting that in my backyard is if everyone here was profiting from it.
Did I mention we already have a mosquito problem, strange as that might sound.
Btw, has anyone considered what adding an additional 10K square miles of evaporation will do to the weather patterns? Of course not.
If you want to use the desert, why not hydrogen farming using solar cells? Much less impact.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now - seriously - I've got 100 m^2 of unused rooftop (in, admittedly, Boston rather than Phoenix). If these numbers are correct, I can grow up to 500 gallons of vegetable oil annually up there. That's quite a cash crop for an urban garden, and it'd take a big bite out of my environmental footprint.
There's an active do-it-yourself energy community out there. Lots of slashdotters have installed their own passive solar heaters, microturbines, and photovoltaics. Can we grow this oily algae at home? Could this be the ultimate green hobby?
But it is actually, much, much cheaper than wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in the Middle East.
Decentralize now!
I took a couple big BioMasses this morning, maybe I'll biomass some more later. I am an alternative fuel!
...how much energy would it take to PUT a 10,000 square mile pond in the middle of a desert in the first place? Last I checked, water was kind of heavy and had a really annoying tendancy to evaporate or sink into the soil. Ya'll might need to fire up a couple more nuclear powerplants before you go terraforming a bigass sandbox.
...Hey, wait a second - I see whats really going on here! Filling a desert full of water? You guys are trying to muscle in on the mud pie market, aren't ya? Oh you evil, capitalist pigs! I knew this story wasn't really about saving humanity from a power crisis! For shame!
Unless of course, someone has a really big garden hose nearby. I know thats how I did it back when I was 5... but I wasn't paying for power or water back then either. Sure did give me the "Step 4: Profit!!!" on my mud pies though.
The more the pro-legalization community uses this stupid tactic of lying about your motivations the less seriously it will be taken by people in power.
Believe it or not, there really are people out there who really couldn't care less about the smoking part. Some of us don't smoke it, but nobody really has any trouble getting it under the current system anyway. Unfortunately, you're right in that this post is so full of technical holes that nobody who isn't a marijuana reformer (not hemp, marijuana) would believe it. It's so bad, in fact, that it encourages people to disregard the GOOD reasons for ending prohibition.
The GOOD reason is that the current system of drug prohibition is expensive, abusive, harmful, and even counterproductive. If the harm of the system exceeds the harm of those things it's trying to stop, then the system must be fixed or abolished. That has nothing to do with smoking pot.
Robert Rapplean
PERDL
Oh, hey, Moderators. It isn't off topic if it addresses a main point of the parent's post.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
The poster might not even want to use hemp for its psychedelic purposes and was just throwing out an idea for debate. So for fuck's sake, go smoke a bowl.
Many types of algae would grow quite nicely in a sewage treatment situation. The aglae need nitrogen to grow and sewage is full of nitrogen. The algae could actually do double duty: cleaning up sewage and producing oil.
I wish people would stop assuming that desert is somehow worthless tracts of empty land - they've obviously never been to a desert!
If you're serious about being environmentally friendly, convert 100x100 miles of cotton fields (heavy pesticide users) or rice paddies (heavy water users) to bio-diesel factories instead.
The costs section looks big - $160b or so to create the farms and get us off the need for the middle east. Instead of attacking Iraq we could have just made them bankrupt by using our own fuel instead of the billions we've spent for the war.
till then, it's just acedemic masturbation.
I think alges is a perfect way to convert solar energy to chemical energy (oil), but I do not think the most energy efficient way is to use the chemical energy in the car directly. :)
Wouldn't it be smarter to produce electrical energy first? I think a bigger plant is more efficient to produce energy than a timy motor in a car. and an electrical motor is much more efficient than a conventional motor.
Then the algea will be a big solar-to-electicity plant...
But if so, I wote for fusion-plants instead
------- In the end there are no begining
Other motivations such as paper, textiles, building materials, composite fibers for cars, and so on? There's a killing to be made in the industrial hemp market because of the two different things the plant produces in quantity: oil and fiber. Oil for things like lubricants, fuels, polymers; fiber for things like fabrics four times softer than cotton, paper, rope, composite materials used to build houses and automobiles, and so forth. The thing to understand is that Industrial-Type Cannabis ("Hemp") and Drug-Type Cannabis (what is commonly called "Marijuana") are two different members of the same plant family.
NOBODY would want to smoke hemp. Seriously, "hemp" is classified as having less than one percent THC to CBD ratio. One type of cannabis gets you high (marijuana) and one doesn't (hemp) and though they look similar and share similar genetic heritage, they are different plants.
It's people who confuse these two DIFFERENT PLANTS who are holding us back from utilizing hemp to revolutionize industry. PRO-hemp doesn't automatically mean PRO-marijuana. PRO-hemp means PRO-HEMP!
Check out www.votehemp.org for more information.
It's actually uninformed people like yourself who accuse pro-hemp legalizers of being shady and dishonest which makes them look shady and dishonest. Please, stop it.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
This would be fantastic if it pans out. The Eastern Shore of MD would be excellent as salt water is available as is a lot nutrients in the form of poultry runoff. Plus it is close to the refineries of NJ. Anything to help clean up the Chesapeake would be a godsend.
Why?
Independance from the oil companies.
1: Charge from domestic supply.
2: Charge from PV on the roof of my house.
3: Upgradable range. You can get 250-380 miles from NiMH batteries, LiON and LiS should improve on that.
4: Acceleration, peak torque at 0rpm.
5: Servicing costs.
Deleted
They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert.
Wouldn't it make a little more sense to make 10,000 1SqMile pools? Make one and you still have to ship oil all over the world. Make many and keep the production close to the consumption.
I thought that starting the article out with a link between the oil industry and terrorists - i.e. the Bush family and Bin Laden - was a bit of an inflammatory way to start a discussion about alternative fuels!
Sure, if other cheap energy forms came along, oil companies would be interested. But don't forget, these companies (their exectutives, I should say) don't operate in a theoretical economy. They have real investments -- Billions of dollars -- in everything from extraction technologies and patents to real estate and leases on oil fields, to refineries, to private armies in Sierra Leone. These investments are not easily transferrable to another, albiet related, industry. PS Sorry about the italics
----
Not to be confused with Col.
<stands back and prepares for Dan Quayle/George W. Flame War>
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Given the crazy estimates from enviro fear mongering of how much we would need to reduce greenhouse gas consumption to make a real impact, the 10000sq.mile area is not enough. What would it replace? all... petroleum transportation fuels ... which account for only 16% of greenhouse gasses produces in America.
Yep, and most of the rest could easily be solved if we switched to nuclear power, but those same fear mongerers are primarily the ones that are opposed to it. So they can just blame global warming on themselves.
Besides, greenhouse gasses are not the only problem when talking about oil. Independence from the middle east and rising costs as the supply can no longer keep up with rising demand are top on my list. And those are not an issue for coal - IIRC the estimate US's coal supply is an order of magnitude larger than the worlds supply of oil.
Getting off of oil is a much more immediate concern than getting off of coal. And while we getting off of coal is only a political issue, we currently have no viable alternative for oil. So this is exactly what we need!
Clearly such research is good. But beware the big numbers. First, they require large government intervention(otherwise, we needn't worry and the market will take care of things), which means that you shouldn't trust their figures to be that realistic.
True, lab numbers are always to be taken with a grain of salt. I eagerly await real plants creating real biodiesel to see what the yields and cost comes out to, but this is more promising than anything else that has happend in the past.
Second, they are talking about a change in a large sector of the oil economy. This would have to be slow by design.
Why? There is very little infrastructure to change. Gas stations switch one pump to biodiesel, diesel owners take their vehicle to the mechnanic to have the seals changed, and thats it. There are already operating economical biodiesel pumps around the country. Biodiesel is easy to switch over to. Quantity that has been the hold back, and this might solve that problem.
Again, this is good, but more needs to be done. Anyone want to fund a Grand Challenge/X-Prize for the best price/performance renewable fuel?
Nah, as I mentioned, there is already a biodiesel market. Businesses who need to comply with new diesel emision regulations are saving money by using B20. The market will take care of the practical aspects of finding the cheapest solution. What is needed is more fundimental research like this.
The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $50.7 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the more than $100 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries.
The most pathetic part is that the entire cost of the project, all of it, is less than the money we have already spent in Iraq to give that nation as a gift to energy traders so that they may continue on their merry international price-fixing way.
Nobody seems to have realized that we have long passed the point where it is much more cost-effective to substitute fossil fuel consumption with something else than it is to defend our alleged interests in Persian Gulf oil with military might. And that does not include construction, production, and transportation costs, amortization, etc.
I like to tell people why biodiesel and linux are very much based on the same principles. Biodiesel is an Open Source fuel supply. Quite literally, anyone can make it, just by going to the supermarket and buying the ingredients off the shelf. Because of this, the knowledge to make biodiesel can't be stopped by the fossil fuel interests.
:) Biodiesel is the same damn thing.
Think about it....
Fossil Fuel companies == Microsoft
Biodiesel == Open Source and Linux
The parallels are just so numerous, it's astounding. There are many many stories of some kind of fuel efficient engine or other technology that has been bought by FF or Auto companies, and quietly disbanded so the technology was never applied. MS has done the same thing countless times, but look how far it got them with Linux.
Another parallel is how fast people are jumping on the biodiesel bandwagon. Fossil fuels are causing a world of catastrophic problems, and the obvious solutions are lacking. But biodiesel is an VERY obvious solution, that just about anyone can gravitate toward. It gives farmers jobs, and reduces pollution from any diesel vehicle, it increases energy security, it doesn't cause global warming... etc.
The Algae aspect is really the first nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel Age. Think about it... a year's worth of fuel for the USA, from just 11,000 square miles of desert. And those figures use 1996 technology for algae production... given a little bit more R&D, it will get better.
There's a lot more parallels for biodiesel and Open Source... for example the distributed nature of fuel production and the distributed nature of code production. You can think of more and reply to this post.
About me...
I have used B100 in my VW Jetta Wagon for two years straight, without a single problem. My car runs cleaner, quieter, and smells like french fries from the exhaust. I am one of the founding members of the GoBiodiesel Cooperative in Portland Oregon (www.gobiodiesel.org).
Kevin Whilden www.solarhifi.com
Farming only 6% of continental U.S. acreage with biomass crop would provide all of America's gas and oil energy needs, ending dependence upon fossil fuels.
Manahan, Stanley E., Environmental Chemistry, 4th edition.
Hemp is Earth's number-one biomass resource; it is capable of producing 10 tons per acre in four months. Hemp is easy on the soil,* sheds it lush foliage throughout the season, adding mulch to the soil and helping retain moisture. Hemp is an ideal crop for the semi-arid West and open range land.
* Adam Beatty, vice president of the Kentucky Agricultural Society, reported instances of good crops of hemp on the same ground for 14 years in a row without a decline in yield. Beatty, A., Southern Agriculture, C.M. Saxton & Co., NY; 1843, pg. 113. USDA Yearbook, 1913.
Hemp stems are 80% hurds (pulp byproduct after the hemp fiber is removed from the plant). Hemp hurds are 77% cellulose--a primary chemical feed stock (industrial raw material) used in the production of chemicals, plastics, and fibers. Depending on which U.S. agricultural report is correct, an acre of full grown hemp plants can sustainably provide from four to 50 or even 100 times the cellulose found in cornstalks, kenaf, or sugar cane--the planet's next highest annual cellulose plants.
In most places, hemp can be harvested twice a year and, in warmer areas such as Southern California, Texas, Florida, and the like, it could be a year-round crop. Hemp has a short growing season and can be planted after food crops have been harvested.
Each acre of hemp would yield 1,000 gallons of methanol. Fuels from hemp, along with the recycling of paper, etc., would be enough to run American virtually without oil.
Text from "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" © Jack Herer
These are pretty old resources but the government has put a stop to all hemp research fora while. This is a really crappy website but the Jackherer.com is down: http://www.electricemperor.com
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
There is actually another way scientists have found to use algae to produce hydrogen and oxygen.
Since the algae can survive as something as small as a single cell, it can thrive on simply sunlight and water algae def . When photosynthesis occurs the algae uses sunlight energy to break down the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The Hydrogen and Oxygen can then be captured and used to create fuel cells... When H and O are combined back together inside the fuel cell it creates water and a significant amount of energy how fuel cells work
i think this is a much better alternative than just burning up another resource.. why not just RE USE it.
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Sounds like the matrix to me.
I predict that members of PETA will join the resistance and free the algae.
In fact, even the designs of some of these algae-plants are small scale - a few tubes of algae sitting on top of the van/truck collecting energy, these being fed into a centrifuge at the back to seperate the water, then through some filters, and into the engine.
Nice idea but TOO small a scale - if you want to run the truck more than a few minutes per day.
Solar input at noon-intensity is on the order of a kilowatt per square yard. Solar input is equivalent to about five hours noon-intensity per day (varying by season, latitude, and weather). A horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 kilowatt. So if your truck is about 8 square yards and COVERED with algae pipes the ALGAE only gets about 8*5*4/3 = 53 1/3 HP hours per day.
Then derate that for the efficiency of the algae and the extraction plant. Let's be 'way generous and say 20 HP hr of fuel with GOOD algae. Then you're using it to run an internal combustion engine, so divide by at least 4. Now you've got 5 horsepower for an hour to run your truck, which hast to tote a LOT of algae water and extraction plant before you even start loading cargo.
Solar powered vehicles are possible IF they're ultra-lights, OR if they use a LOT more collecting surface than the vehicles themselves to make fuel.
That's why horses eat grass rather than having chlorophyl in their skin. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Might have lots of CO2, but they're kinda missing that other ingredient.
Look. The remaining energy comes from the sun, or haven't you heared of photosynthesis? Go put a bag over your head.
Another good place to put it might be OVER the freeways in sunny areas as a sunshade. That area is lost to vehicles already, so why not ALSO collect the energy to fuel some of them without using up even desert land?
Use transparent pipes and let the green light through. Like a plesant drive through a forest rather than in direct sunlight.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If it's such a good thing, how come they don't
have investors lined up yet? Why don't they have a small prototype working, making electricity? This is just acedemic masturbation.
All it takes to succeed with something like this is to get the "cat out of the bag".
Diesel is already widely used - there's a pre-existing market for it. So, a company needs to exist that produces reasonable quantity and quality fuel at a price that allows it to make a profit.
That's all it takes, folks.
Turning 100 Sq miles of land in the desert into an algae swamp would have serious political issues if rammed down the throats of people by the Govt.
However, make it profitable to grow algae farms in the desert, and people will scratch, claw, and fight their way over to buy their own desert algae farmland, especially if they knew they could put a decent environmentalist spin on it.
This is the answer, folks!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In fact, algae might be a way to re-sequester some of that carbon, by growing large masses of algae then simply burying it deep, somewhere where it will not decay and release CO2 again.
In fact this happens in the oceans already. Algae die and sink. Some of the carbon they take down forms sediment and just sits (until it gets indorporated into rocks) Some takes millenia to be carried by the bottom currents to an upwelling.
A recent theory of ice ages has them partly resulting from a positive feedback loop:
- Ice sheets sequester water and dry the land.
- More desert area means more nutrient-containing dust carried into the air.
- Nutrient-containing dust settles into the ocean, encouraging algae production.
- Algae pull CO2 out of the air, reducing the greenhouse effect.
The critical nutrient was predicted to be iron. An experiment was recently done where traces of iron were seeded into some large and very barren sections of the Pacific, which experienced massive algae blooms.
This implies that if we ever actually have a problem with global warming we can turn it around by seeding the oceans - especially the south Pacific. This might even be easily and cheaply done just by adding iron compounds to the fuel of cargo ships going through appropriate regions. Or a couple C47s converted to oceanic crop-dusters could take care of it.
The main problem will be to avoid overdoing it and starting another ice age.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
For what it's worth, part of Kerry's platform is an "alternative energy Apollo Project" to switch 20% of our energy production to renewable resources.
Is that what he was going to fund with his $.50 / gallon hike in the gasoline tax?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Uh, there are about 10 million people living in the Sonoran Desert.
What does a 10-thousand-square-mile organism eat to make all this oil? And where would we grow that?
Fabulous alternative to petro based fuels, BUT ..... doesn't this also continue heating up our ecosystem which causes climate change and all the rest of havoc as we burn it ?
if u think about it, in essence, it's based on solar power.....as algae needs the sun to grow.
but hopefully, those polluting factories don't claim that they are doing good by making algae, blah blah blah.
Nobody seems to have realized that we have long passed the point where it is much more cost-effective to substitute fossil fuel consumption with something else than it is to defend our alleged interests in Persian Gulf oil with military might.
You're making a big assumption: That if the US was no longer buying (and defending the people selling) middle eastern oil, the terrorist would stop trying to kill us.
If, for instance, some of them are trying to kill us for ideological reasons unconnected with our oil consumption, THOSE terrorists will continue to try. And if the economy of the middle east crashes because we stop buying their oil, a lot of starving people over there will blame us for THAT. Such people will be easy recruits.
It doesn't take many terrorists to cause a problem. (No more than a couple hundred IRA (and predeceessor) "soldiers" at any given time have kept Britain hopping for a LONG time.)
So we might find, after we spend the money to become energy-independent, that we have to spend even MORE on defense.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Brian Baker smokes and drinks? If you don't know who he is, you aren't straight edge. Not meaning to troll, but I have some straight edge friends who are clueless about the roots.
That's right. All your base.
The government is even worse - remember the space shuttle was supposed to get us into orbit for $50/lb instead of $10000.
Everybody who remembers solar the solar tower in California raise their hand... Produces electricity fine if you don't mind paying $370,000/year for your own personal (one household) use. And that was supposed to be in the same ballpark as wind and PV cells.
Diesel/Electric Hybrid cars running off bio diesel that's generated by algae on the roof of my house (in Vegas this might actually work). Also powering my home would be nice.
Is the propsed hydrogen economy just another way to convince us we need complex high tech solutions that we can't possibly manage by ourselves? It's starting to sound to me like biodiesel is a much better storage medium: it works with existing infrastructure during the transition, is much easier to create, transport, store and handle, and is also clean burning (or so I've read).
Cheers.
It is in fact a business like any other business, run by average to slightly above average people. They have been making tons of money and have lots of power based on the way things have been. They don't want things to change - there might be something unforseen that upsets their apple cart.
From a purely selfish point of view, when what you've been doing has put you in a powerful place and kept you there, it's perfectly sensible. It's not some conspiracy to keep things from getting better. It's fear of the unknown in play to keep things from getting worse (from their POV).
It's selfish and wrong, but in an ordinary human sort of way. You can see examples of this (why don't paper companies all convert over to bamboo or other quick-growing renewable plants? It's not because there's something wrong with the idea. It's because changing might rearrange the power structure. They already know all the right people and right things to do to be very good at making paper from wood. Someone else might know the right people to take over if they start demonstrating it's profitable to make it from something else.)
Young companies have to try new things - they can't succeed if they don't figure out a better way to do it than everyone else.
Those towering kelp (sea weeds) growing at a foot a day in the ocean off the coast of California. There are billions of acre of ocean water out there ready to be farm.
The Department of Energy report cited in the article is a broken link. This one's live.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
"...ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert."
This seems to imply that the Sonoran Desert (Tucson, AZ, et al) is some sort of wasteland suitable only for inundating with 10k sq miles of algae pools.
Perhaps you meant the Saharan desert?
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
and seed the Mediteranean...
To build that massive algae farm - they need that expensive environment study and more study. Of course those Sierra clubs environmentalist will object to convert massive desert into a huge algae farms. Just think of all those desert tortoise and what else. They're destroying one eco-system.
What about raising kelp in the ocean? there are millions miles of open ocean, and kelp grows at a foot or two a day.
It's not the bicycle so much as the road. If you don't have a road, you don't get the big win. It's just too easy to forget how important infrastructure is. I remember calculating in my high school physics class that if you had a bicycle on a paved road on the moon, you could achieve escape velocity. Infrastructure is a problem with most alternative energy sources. The nice thing about alcohol and biodiesel is that they can be integrated with the existing infrastructure easily, unlike hydrogen.
I'm curious about this as a cottage industry. That's one way of getting around other infrastructure problems, (no major production, no distribution currently.) While it doesn't seem economical, if you look at moonshining, some of that stuff is sold almost as cheaply as gasoline. I'm not at all interested in begging grease from my local restaurants, or feeding and running an unlicensed still, but I'm just crazy enough to consider growing algae in a pond for an experiment.
Refining is not the same as with dino oil. That's the cool thing about diesels in general. They're very forgiving of fuel. For vegetable oils, it's just the usual physical seperation methods for vegetable oil. Then the oil is converted to biodiesel by esterifying it with lye and alcohol. In fact, vegetable oils can be run straight in a mixed fuel vehicle which starts on ordinary fuel, and then cuts over to vegetable oil.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
but Brian Baker was straight edge for a while. Then he says he "grew" out of it. (his words, not mine) I just think its a different perspective. He was there, near the core of the movement. Nowadays he's not straight edge.
Come to think of it, I don't know why I even brought it up. My Karma is bad, because my jokes get modded "troll" when the mods don't get the joke. Sorry if I've appeared crass and argumentative.
That's right. All your base.
> So I don't think cutting off middle-eastern
> oil purchases will leave the terrorists
> too poor to take further shots at the USA.
It's not the shots that are the problem. It's
the large coordinated and growing networks
that are the problem. These require energy to
survive. One form of energy is lots of money.
These organization take lots of money. The
other energy input is a burning reason to
hate, not just a smoldering reason to
hate. Killing the oil economy would
accomplish both.
Farmers already grow more of it than can be used, thanks to USDA policies.
The huge flaw with algae-created bio-diesel, aside from where the heck to put it, is the fact that these little buggers would still be producing OIL. Bio-diesel would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it does nothing from an environmental standpoint.
Diesel, whether it comes from fossil origins or from algae, still produces greenhouse gases when burned. These include: carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulfurhexafluoride along with many other agents.
The greenhouse effect is the primary contributor to global warming, a phenomenon whose negative repurcussions extend into fields such as agricultural productivity and economics. Since all reliable climate models show that increases in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are anthropogenic (man-caused), we cannot ignore the fact that we are causing it. The data further show that the burning of fossil fuels is one of the primary contributors to this build-up, along with industrial output. So, in short, we must stop burning fossil fuels and turn to alternative energy sources which do not produce greenhouse gases.
With electric vehicles and generators powered by hydrogen fuel cells, we could realize this potential. Additionally, "hot"-fusion power plants could become a reality in the next 30-50 years. The energy creation potential of this technology is staggering, and completely safe, with none of the nasty radioactive waste which results from fission power.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
for more information on global warming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
I did a rough calculation and figured that the sunlight energy incident on that 11000 square mile area is 280 quads per year. They are predicting 14 quads of biodiesel per year. That's 5% efficiency, 5 times better than the best claim that I've read until now.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Acres and acres of algae farms. Perfect for mosquitoes and malaria. Bring on the DDT!
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"That money would be better spent on _______." Where the blank is filled with anything besides what's being proposed -- space exploration, technological R&D, or, in this case, cheap, plentiful, ecologically sound, domestically produced energy. There's no frickin' miracle proposed that doesn't inspire someone to bray that something else is more important and we should quit thinking pie-in-the-sky. There's one in every crowd.
Do you realize what something like this would mean for our economy? For the economies of every blasted country in the world? Can you imagine what far-reaching effects it would have to remove one of the major drains on every economy in the world? Maybe making everything easier for everyone, including the fields of "education, health care and disease control, political stability, and a little bit of hedonism"? ("Political stability"...oy. If you don't think this would be a GIANT boost for that, I don't know what planet you live on.)
But, no, there are other problems in the world, so forget it. Let's just leave this one for last.
Dork.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I live in the Sonoran desert, you insensitive clod!
"They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert.
Let's flip a coin. "Heads" and we complain about fossil fuels and the need for alternative energy, "Tails" and we complain how such a project would ruin a pristine natural habitat such as the Sonora Desert.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I've heard of using algae (maybe not algae, they called it "pond scum") to break down water in to oxygen and hydrogen for hydrogen cells. It seemed like interesting research that could possibly lead to cleaner cars in the near future.
Sig withheld to protect the innocent.
Links please, this seems very interesting. I want this plant built.
"This reminds me of an article i read in New Scientist about 15 years ago."
:(.
Anyone have any links? Why wasn't it done in the past 15 years
Lets get it done now.
Under Hydrogen they say: To get a 1,000 mile range, a tractor trailer running on diesel needs to store 168 gallons of diesel fuel. When the greater efficiency of the engine running on biodiesel is taken into account, it would need roughly 175 gallons of biodiesel for the same range
Wouldn't needing more biodiesel for the same range be less efficient. I going to email them and ask. So I googled and found that biodiesel is more efficient then fossil diesel, here
I think though that someone should package this and sale it to the amish. Yes, they use electricity but they live off grid using diesel generators. They also have tractors.
The lake it created is huge, true enough. That means that it submerged millions of acres of land; not that it made them usable. Plus, we aren't allowed to use this water for agriculture or anything else; the resource is controlled by the corps of engineers, and it is designated for use downstream. It might surprise you to learn that the critical designated use is not farming use.
Why? Because there is not "more water overall" available as a result of the dam. There is simply some stored which didn't get to go downstream earlier. What they primarily use it for is to release it when the river downstream gets low, to keep the level up for navigation.
This use does not dovetail well with agricultural use. That's because the river is naturally at its lowest during the months when agriculture isn't irrigating - in the winter. When the inflow to the river proper is low because the water lays frozen on the ground, instead of coming as runoff. So it is not uncommon for the most water to be let out of the lake in the winter.
Currently, the lake's level is the lowest it's been in decades, and there is a problem even having enough to keep the river level where everyone wants it.
There's no huge amount of irrigation going on, at least, no more than there would be if the river was undamned in the first place. There's no free lunch - all the water in the lake, came from the river in the first place.
What having the lake does is allows the corps to even out the flow; when the river is flowing harder than required for navigation, we store it. When the river isn't flowing so well, we let water out of the lake. Barges and such generally keep off the sandbars, and the feds (the corps of engineers, specifially) are happy.
The primary significant, continuing benefit of the dam is to re-route the water from an artificially produced higher level to a lower level through turbines, continuously creating a great deal of electrical power. That higher level only exists in our region because of the dam - the slope downstream was not enough to run big turbines otherwise.
You couldn't (for instance) use water in the lake to flood the kind of area that the article postulates; it wouldn't suffice (despite the incredible amount of water stored in the lake) and whatever water you drop into an arid region is going to evaporate unless the region is covered, which is a huge cost I don't think anyone is going to want to put out for.
There are climate issues lurking here as well; if you significantly change the radiation-absorption characteristics and/or the humidity characteristics of a region the size that we're talking about here, you're going to have some consequences of some kind in the local climate at the least, perhaps more than local. It'll probably have an impact where you're getting the water, too.
There is another benefit for us locals; we get to boat and swim in the lake; I often go rock-collecting on the shoreline, which is quite rich in interesting minerals. The locals kick and scream when the corps lets the water out in the winter, because they see what limited tourist traffic the region gets decreasing with every foot the lake drops. It's a big story for the local paper, and the cafe here resounds with the bitching of the local businessmen, who of course have incomes tied directly to the condition of the lake.
Personally, I benefit when the lake is low, because minerals that are rarely exposed are avaialble for collection. But I'm the exception, not the rule.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
However, I don't know that the oil produced by algae can't be turned into gasoline in any case, with some loss in efficiency which would be reflected in higher energy cost at the pump.
If this stuff can be turned into gasoline cost-effectively, it's time to start building these energy farms NOW.
The $200B that's gone into the War on Iraq could have been spent instead on biomass projects, and we could stop dealing with the Middle East.
Tech Public Policy stuff
could you perhaps provide evidence for this claim? the website the grandparent linked to claims only 6% of us land would be required to supply US demand and make the US energy independent from the rest of the world - a lot of land perhaps, but hardly matching your claim that 'You could replace all the cropland in the world with it, and you wouldn't cover worldwide motor fuel consupmtion. '.
2 100a.htm ) of its vehicles on pure ethanol. presumably the crops to supply this must be taking up the whole of brazil by your calculations?
also, as other posts have pointed to, brazil runs almost 50% ( http://autorepair.about.com/cs/generalinfo/a/aa10
someone please moderate the parent down if he can't justify his claims.
I've been following the news around the Changing World Technologies/ConAgra TDP plant for a couple years, now. Wouldn't it be somewhat more efficient to simply grow the algae and then pump it into the TDP process to output the oil?
It seems some armchair arguement could be made that producing the oil by using the algae as raw feedstock (or even to just keep the feedstock regular when other stock runs low, i.e., lack of turkey parts in Missouri) for a TDP plant would be more efficient than producing unrefined oils directly from the algae.
Since TDP produces more reliable product when the feedstock is regular, it may even be possible to develop algaes that have similar post-TDP properties to the regular feedstock (i.e., algae that generates products in similar proportion and quality as turkies).
I always get the shakes before a drop.
AFAIK, here in the UK it is illegal to use anything other than government licenced fuels for vehicles. There have been people (farmers mostly) who have been prosecuted for using vegetable oil, and other types of oil on public roads. Whether they were prosecuted for using particular types of oil or just for not using the "official" fuels I'm not sure.
According to this site, the reason for the prosecutions may have been that the culprits weren't paying tax on the fuel !
Whats the price of a gallon of petrol at the moment? Over $2 right? vs $1.85 for biodiesel, a price thats falling as production increases and economies of scale set in.
Made from real humans... If you think about it it makes perfect sense. Human fat can be used to produce biodiesel and 7 out 10 USians are overweight. Everyone who's fat gets a liposuction every few months, fat is turned into fuel and the American Way of Life of guzzling fuel and gobbling burgers like there's no tomorrow becomes selfsustaining !! Yay !!
So is there a vegitarian issue here? Am I killing animals to drive my SUV?
The batteries *are* very expensive at the moment, largely down to the lack of manufacturing capacity but they are not discarded when worn out. They are recyclable.
They last about 100,000 miles worth of charges, the NiMH ones anyway.
It's certainly not a panacea, they take 8-9 hours to recharge fully, which doesn't compare well to 2 mins at a filling station but it's worth it to get away from the requirement that you visit a filling station every week.
The technology is here, now and it works. It's been available for 8 years now. What's holding it up?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The current battery technologies are:
Lead acid: 200 year old technology. Give this a performance index of 1. It's cheap and simple.
NiCd: Heavy metals but good high current. Performance of 2x the lead acid. Performance 2.
NiMH: Getting rid of the heavy metals. Lighter as well. Performance of around 3x that of a lead acid battery.
LiON: Light, performance 5 x that of a lead acid battery.
They obviously get more expensive the more advanced they are. You can expect to get around 70-80miles out of a lead acid battery. Multiply that by the performance factors for the newer technologies.
New technologies, still up and coming. Used in small scale applications, mobile phones, laptops.
Li-Poly. Lighter and can handle more cycles than LiON but not much more power.
Lithium Sulphur batteries (Li-S) promise to more than double the capacity of LiON batteries, 10X that of a lead acid battery. That's a 700-800 mile range on a single charge, not even Diesel vehicles get that. I think these will do the job of killing petrol vehicles. Superior performance, superior range.
Basically. You don't discard the batteries when they wear out. Trade them in at 100,000 miles and get a "new" or refurbished set.
This *is* all nifty technology but still expensive due to manufacturing capacity.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I have very cheap access to a 1/3 acre greenhouse that is set up for hydroponic food production. I think it would be fairly simple to convert it over to alge production. There is even a 20KW generator we could play with! It currently runs propane, but it wouldn't be all that difficult to put a diesel engine on it, hell, I think it's even wired to the house.
I've been itching to do some R&D on something. I bet the algae sludge would even make good hog food and their waste good algae food. There is room to try. If anyone would like to help with knowhow or money or whatever please respond here or get ahold of me at geek-ranch.org. I'll also contact gobiodiesel.org.
The greenhouse is good for three reasons. 1. It is easy to get it to 140F to simulate desert temperatures. 2. It will keep rain out of the growing solution. 3. The concrete floors make for stable pools.
http://www.marxist.com/
The Gulf of Mexico. It already has a chemical-triggered dead zone where algae bloom and die, causing oxygen depletion. Might as well produce oil.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Human and Agricultural
And it was Sam Kinnison's answer to the starving Ethiopians..... "Don't send them money. SEND THEM LUGGAGE. THEY SHOULD MOVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!"
Solving the world's problems is too easy.
by all of the carbon dioxide we are pumping into the atmosphere? and this is the straw that will break the camel's back?
I think it's very important to remember here that fuels (both alcohol and biodiesel) can be made quite readily not just from a farmed crop (sugar cane, hemp, algae, whatever), but can also be made from waste in a large variety of ways ranging in efficiency and applications.
;)
Alcohol can be made from newspapers or any other cellulose, starch OR glucose rich biomass. There is even currently large tax subsidies in the US for the production and use of alcohol as fuel. Alcohol of several forms can also be made from methane gas, which is a biproduct of the decompositon of shit without air.
Biodiesel is far from being a new idea that the FIRST diesel engine, premiered by Rudolph Diesel at the world's fair in Paris in the year 1900, ran on peanut oil. The most interesting thing about oil is that behind nearly every grocery store and restaurant (in the US as well as some other industrialized countries) has a big bin that contains anywhere from 50 - 300 gallons of oil, used to fry french fries and chicken and all the other deep fried goodies that American's (not to mention the Brits!) enjoy so much. I know so many hippies that run their buses (and other diesel vehichles) on this oil, it just needs to be filtered first and heated before putting it into the engine. Obviously this is not a solution to large scale commercial production, but in this situation now, it gets a lot of people around.
I just bought a diesel bus yesterday.
Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
We'll run out of clean water before we run out of oil.
Research is being done right now on alternatives.
Oil will be around for a long long time because by the time we start to run out we'll have a ton in reserve. The price will skyrocket but that will just force alternatives out. I have a feeling we won't come out with good alternatives until we really start to run out of oil regardless of whether it's 5 or 500 years.
And if it is 500 years we will have some other plan ready by then. More efficient windmills or solar cells or something.
Stop preaching doom.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
>They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert."
I propose that households with with swimming pools be legally obliged to turn them into diesel production farms with adjecent micro power-plants and resell surplus power to neighborhood households.
If you look at the resulting MPEGs from MOPITT, the Canadian project that tracked CO emmisions through the atmosphere, you can clearly see great gobs of CO breaking off of Asia and drifting across the Pacific to North America where they are absorbed. An interesting side note is that you can clearly see the CO being produced by one of the large scale forest fires that occured that year in the Northwest.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
Seems to me that if the ultimate end-product of this energy produciton method is vegetable oil, then perhaps using it to produce food grade oil might be a good first step for this technology to gain widespread adoption. Without all the hassle of using farmland to raise, spray, harvest and process corn, there's bound to be huge gains in store (instead of grains in store) for companies like Riceland Foods, Cargill Foods, and Archer Daniel Midland.
That is, should they be able to adapt quickly enough...
A little googling turned up this essay that references the aforementioned companies. It suggests that something like what we're talking about here might actually cause them some trouble:
The major problem that would force the Vegetable Oil Industry to disintegrate would be technology based. For example, genetically engineered products are becoming more popular.
IMO, although algae is a loose fit for 'genetically engineered [crops]', the impact would be profound for industry outside of fuel production.
"yikes, I've been besieged by emails! Yargh! :-D"
_ ID= 2714
Give him your sympathy -
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC
The Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives is currently shotgun-sequencing genes from the world's oceans to find genes that would be useful for producing fuels with high energy content in an environmentally sound fashion using genetically engineered microbes.
One of them is that just as it is with oil, uranium, too, will eventually run out. It is not a renewable source of energy like the algae would be.
We've a much better timetable on Uranium than Oil, though, even without the breeder reactor option (which puts the Thorium supply into play). And oceanic extraction is not out of the question; while not presently economical, it's been done, and demand would encourage further research to improve the technology. (It would also do bad things to the price of gold, but that's another story.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Okay, so you need a pond the size of the Sonora desert to begin working on replacing fossil fuels. What about the flora and fauna displaced by these ponds? Where will the water come from? Klamath is a desert, which means there's little enough water for the local fauna. Do you intend to kill off species for this project? Oil drilling by comparison takes up much less local resources and space. For ANWR, you won't even need to pave a road out to the site. Interesting idea, good supplement, not an oil killer.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
What is the photosynthetic efficiency of these algae? Photosynthesis has a max theoretical (QEDynamics) efficiency of 12%; sugarcane, for example converts CO2 + sunlight + H2O -> sucrose at 8%, the highest known in land plants. This entire system is a biosolar converter - with insolation in their chosen Sonora desert an average (across day/night, seasons, weather) of about half a KW:m^2, the algal efficiency actually determines the amount of energy in the resulting oil. What is that coefficient?
--
make install -not war
"A plant in Hawaii is using the flue gas from a small power plant to supply the CO2, required in microalgae production. Microalgae ponds are also extensively used in many countries for wastewater treatment and at least one plant in California is using the methane obtained from the harvested algal biomass to produce electricity."
If, like me, you can't afford a $50,000 USD Mercedes, take a visit to you local VW dealership and checkout their lineup of diesels available in every model they sell save the brand-new minivan.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
It is perhaps unrealistic to ask America to unilaterally cut energy usage in the face of energy-gobbling competition from other countries. It simply is not feasible.
Hence the drive to find large earth-friendly energy sources. Imagine, if you will, the Very Strangest Bedfellows:
-- Greens, who don't like fossil carbon getting into the air
-- Heavy Industry, which realizes that a viable challenge to oil means the price of oil and the alternative both go down.
-- Entrepeneurs, who slaver at the thought of a new ground floor to get in on
-- Politicians, who can "take credit" for Saving Da Oith.
-- Nationalists, who dislike dependence on foreign supply of oil.
The mind boggles.
Also, the NOx emissions from biodiesel are NOT worse than those from diesel. The EGR on the vast majority of diesel engines is tuned for the combustion temperature of diesel. Biodiesel has a higher combustion temperature, resulting in more NOx if the EGR is not tuned for biodiesel. On most vehicles (like VW TDI, which comprise the overwhelming majority of passenger diesels in the U.S.), increasing EGR is as simple as changing a value in the computer. So, it's not the biodiesel that's to blame for higher NOx, it's the lack of adjustment of EGR that's to blame.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
The last info I read on this was about a year ago adn I think it was from Oak Ridge National Labs.
Yes, the algea can produce the oil and yes, this is a very good idea. The problem was infections. They so far have been unable to keep a healthy population growing.
I think these problems can be solved. But we better do it pretty dman soon becuase if we have passed peak world oil production, then we can expect decline rates of about 5% per year and I'll leave it to the reader to do the math.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerizat ion
thermal depolymerization just exrtacts the energy in the waste iteslf..
i didn't read every post but it was said many times that there's no net from the system, carbon in=carbon out, so it won't contribute to pollution and climate change. that's just plain wrong, unless the fule is burned very carefully there will be other emissions, like methane, N2O and particulates
they make a smaller percentage of the emissions but over 100 yeras N2O is 310 and CH4 is 21 times as powerful as CO2 as far as global warming is concerned.
My posting speed exceeded my reading speed - very bad mojo. You've given me things to investigate; thanks!
The environmental impact of nitrogen oxides goes beyond smog.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for biodiesel. Read upwards in the thread if you want the full context. I was replying to a +5 Insightful comment which sought to dismiss any concerns about harmful chemicals by saying that there is a "closed loop" in the CO2 cycle. My point was simply that there is more to biodiesel emissions than CO2, which is rather pointless to deny.
What's the temp get up to in the desert? 120 F isn't too unreasonable in the desert, right? So then you put a big clear jug of alge out in the sun... what does the tempurature of the water inside your jug get up to? What is the optimal growth temp of alge (and the curve of growth efficiency vs. temp)?
If you aren't staying with me here, I'm suggesting that you might end up with big jugs of dead, boiled alge in the desert. The cost of keeping the alge/water at livable temp might impact the bottom line.
If you intend to evaporate water to cool the system remember that we're talking about sea water - it's full of minerals that will be deposited on something upon evaporation.
Sorry, it just sounded funny ;-). But what about using the electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen? I have heard of some photovoltaics that do just that: they don't collect the electricity, instead using it to split water right on the cell, collecting the hydrogen. Energy density is still a problem, but you have very low transmission losses.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
While gasoline and diesel are obvious and major uses for oil, they're not the only ones. Could this stuff be used as a feed for plastics production? At what increase or decrease in the cost/quality of the plastics?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It is below sea level. Potentially we could drop a straw into the Pacific and draw as much sea water as we would like. Maybe this would also slow down the rise of the oceans from global warming.
Those aren't pieces of "Chinese parabolic cookware," as the author describes.
They are ancient Ming Dynasty era signalling devices created by ancient wizards. Dontcha know the Chinese invented everything first?
They were used to signal the mother planet before knowledge of their operation was lost throught the depths of time.
They were simply designed to resemble cookware in order to protect the important secret from marauding barbarians.