Slashdot Mirror
Filling Up On Algae
grqb writes "News.com is reporting that GreenFuel Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass. based start-up, is using algae fed with sunlight, water and emissions from power plants to make biodiesel. The benefits are that heavy polluters can cut back on their emissions and at the same time make biodiesel. The algae consumes carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and they also break down nitrogen oxide, reducing the amount of polluting gas released. Once the algae are grown, the conversion to biodiesel is a relatively simple process. The company uses technology licensed from a NASA project. The only barrier now is to prove that it is economically viable."
"The only barrier now is to prove that it is economically viable."
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
from the article:
3-meter-high glass tubes fashioned as a triangle--to grow algae
How much biodiesel do you expect to get out of a 3-meter-high glass tube? Sounds to me like you'd need one hell of a lot of those just to fill one biodiesel 18-wheeler.
I definitely applaud this step in the right direction, but it seems there would be much easier and more efficient ways to reduce emissions, without having to use the guise of obtaining a pinch of "biodiesel."
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On similar lines, there is talk about using Methane Farming techniques to get bio-diesel.. Here is an article that says "Methane farming and Bio-diesel can meet the entire energy requirement of India." http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/950 402.cms
From the article linked above : We (in INDIA) have the world's largest livestock population of 250 million, which produces close to 125 million tonnes of cowdung. Using this we can produce enough methane gas to entirely replace LPG and kerosene in cooking, and substitute petrol in transportation. Methane gas can also generate enough electricity to meet all requirements, at least in rural areas. The by-product can serve as excellent organic manure, substituting chemical fertilisers which require LNG as feedstock.
It's not a panacea but at least it's an innovative approach. Countries under the Kyoto Protocol might get points for using this. As an added bonus the boffins gather every morning for an algea slurpie. On tv they all chugged down the thick green slop while bravely smiling.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The only barrier now is to prove that it is economically viable.
Ahh, but that's not so much of an issue. It can reasonably be assumed that the process will become more efficient as time passes and throughput increases, and oil will, of course, become more expensive. As these two trends progress, it can't help but become cost effective. It's only a question of *how* cost effective and when.
Well, that and how long it is before I replace my aging 240sx with a TDI Jetta. I'm fairly certain those can be cheaply adapted to run biodiesel, yes?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I once worked for a cattle rancher, picking up free grain from bear breweries. Next to the grain, there were always barrels of cooking oil waiting to be picked up. All these free resources need to have someone payed to pick it up, and we were always picking it up for free. Being a tight load balance between a 200 gallon water reservoir and 8 barrels of spent grain, it's not an option to fit that diesel Ford F250 truck with a filtration system and biodiesel reservoir. It's just too much space, and the gross weight of the truck was already about 4,000 pounds. If the bed was just longer, it would all work out.
Seriously, there are all these fuel solutions that don't compare well enough to the ease and general dissatisfaction with today's cars and trucks. Dedicating any more weight and complex mechanisms to the carriage is not helping such. There is a solution I like to see, and that is the less obvious compact electric bicycles with the wheel-drum motor system. They are an excellent ballance of design, and only is a quick replacement of the wheels on a bicycle and fitting a place on the bicycle frame for the batteries. See what I mean, compare this picture of three electric bicycles. Anything that starts looking complex, expensive, or such is most likely to attract those heal-clicking Polic Officers to demand a registration fee and license. By the way, the bicycle on the left is what will change the world, because it isn't a overly obtrusive solution to an original bicycle.
without prejudice
For some time I've thought the future of automotive fuel lies in biodiesel rather than hydrogen. Hydrogen is just very hard to work with because of its low energy density and the fact it is normally a gas. Generation, transportation, storage and utilization all face large challenges.
For biodiesel, all the steps except generation are already solved and the infrastructure in place, and the generation problems do not seem large. (Even without the existing infrastructure, I suspect biodiesel wins economically.)
Generation from algae is particularly promising, as it doesn't require arable land, and can use salt water.
Article on biodiesel.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Isn't it easier to produce methane directly from algae? That might not be quite as dense as other hydrocarbons, but it's not that bad and it's a lot better than hydrogen. It's also useful for producing oil from resources like the tar sands in Alberta (that requires a lot of natural gas eg methane).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
As far as oil supplies go, we are totally, royally and majorly fscked.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Lets consider the real endless waste stream, Sewage. Waste water treatment plants should be set up as energy collectors. Start with anaerobic digesters to break down waste products and produce methane. The methane can be collected to fuel the plant. The waste is then generally treated with chemicals to remove solids (flocculation) and remove nutrients. The waste should be run through an algae growth facility. Normal waste water is considered a pollutant mainly because of the nutrient load. That load should be put to use.
Sure biofuels still add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but utilize carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so in the scheme of things CO2 from biofuels represent CO2 already in the system and not added to the system.
Imagine Powerplants run from biodiesel made from algae grown off of the CO2 emissions from the powerplants themselves. There might be a scale where the efficiency approaches that of photovoltaics or thermal reflector arrays. This sort of plant might be cheaper to produce that photovoltaic plants, or prove beneficial from the standpoint of pollution created during production.
I have heard this exact same claim made of of
- Solar panels
- Hydro dams - they silt up and become unusable
- Nuclear power - only feasible due to goverment subsidies
- Wind power
And now I get to add biodiesel to the list.(I guess biodiesel is really just an organic solar panel anyway)
You know what, in every instance it's a myth, every one of those produces significantly more energy over its lifespan than it takes to manufacture - with the possible exception of a solar panel in the arctic.
Come on people, did none of the engineers realise that the hydro dam would cost more than it would produce? The wind farm? The algy pools? Did they need some slashdotter to come along and explain it to them.
Canola is a popular oilseed crop for biodiesel. I did a quick look, and found that the yield of canola is around 1.26 tonnes/ha and is around 40% oil by weight. This means that a hectare of canola will give about 0.50 tons of oil; if the weight of oil and the product biodiesel are approximately equal (MW of glycerol = 92, MW of methanol * 3 = 96) you'll get .50 tonne/ha/year. If it's equal in energy content to #2 petroleum diesel [119,110 BTU/lbm] (which it isn't, but this favors biodiesel) that half-tonne yields 6170 kWh of chemical energy; burned in an engine at 40% efficiency, the output is ~2470 kWh.
If the efficiency of a PV/battery electric vehicle is 65% from panel output to wheels, getting 2470 kWh to the road requires 3800 kWh at the panel. If you average 5 hours sunlight for a year (1825 hours), you'd need only 2.1 kW of average PV output to get that 3800 kWh.
Growing the canola takes a hectare (10,000 m^2) plus fertilizers and cultivation. The 2.1 kW PV system would fit on a 100 m^2 roof with plenty of space left over and requires an occasional rinsing if rain doesn't wash the dust off. The key advantage is that you can power most of your transport on next to nothing once you have made the investment in a GO-HEV, and conversion of "standard" hybrids to GO-HEVs is something that can be done by amateurs.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
As was pointed out in The Matrix, living creatures produce a lot of energy and can be used somewhat as batteries. With the right engineering we could probably create a plant/animal hybrid that generated energy from chemical intake in a similar fashion. Not on the level of the fictional protoculture of Robotech, but along those lines. It would of course have to be as simple a thing as a pumpkin or tomato without a nervous system or no one would go for it.
(We could of course use convicted criminals, spammers, etc.)
As energy storage and concentration devices mature, we'll be able to store enough compact energy to power a car the way gasoline does today and even more economically.
What do we do with the algae? We use it for food and use it to process our sewage and we use it as part of aquaculture/aquafarming.
Burning things is an inefficient and wasteful way of doing the same things living things do in their processing of food into energy and waste. We need to figure out more efficient ways of doing what nature does in us and how to do it on larger scales. Living machinery, biomechanics, techno-organics... that's where the future is for us if we want to marry our world of ease and leisure to environmentally enmeshed living.
Sack cloth, brown rice, bicycles instead of cars, not to mention these biomass burning cars are not the answer.
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