Algae That Cleans Emissions and Produces Fuel

**$tarDu$t** writes "Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at MIT has come up with an idea for using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust. His research began 3 years ago in an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station. His idea consists of building algae farms near power plants to provide a means to reduce CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions. Emissions are filtered through the algae. Then the CO2 saturated algae is harvested and squeezed to produce a combustible vegetable oil (biodiesel) and a dried green substance that can be further processed into ethanol."

Comments

Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[eldavojohn]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2. I have seen lectures given where Alzheimer's susceptible genes were spliced into the genes of mice neurons using a strain of the herpes virus that had previously infected neurons of Alzheimer's patients.

Does anyone know if there are techniques like this to use to directly alter the genes of other organisms (like algae) using perhaps similar tricks?

Furthermore, what if this could be used for gases other than nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide?

Is there maybe a possibility of coating hot air balloons or zeppelins with this algae and letting them float about in the atmosphere until they become so heavy with algae they descend? I know it's kind of farfetched to propose that but stranger things that once were science fiction have become useful. The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Politburo]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2.

Well gee, please do enlighten the biologists then.

The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Did you miss this part in the summary in your rush for FP? "Emissions are filtered through the algae."

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Otter]

Three guesses, in decreasing order of likelihood:

1) The guy isn't a molecular biologist and doesn't know how to do that, but does understand how to do selective breeding.

2) The alga used here isn't a common experimental system so you don't have the tools available that you do for mice.

3) The CO2 uptake is controlled by a pathway such that hitting one or two genes isn't enough to change it significantly.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[mlush]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2. I have seen lectures given where Alzheimer's susceptible genes were spliced into the genes of mice neurons using a strain of the herpes virus that had previously infected neurons of Alzheimer's patients [nih.gov].

It should be possible to modify algae (plants require quite specialised protocols to deal with the thick cell wall) however why bother? messing round with a cells metabolism is a hairy subject simply upregulating the 'CO2 fixing' enzymes can easily result in a slower growing algae (because of complex knock on effects on other processes in the cell). Also fast growing GM algae in a pretty open system will have the greens jumping up and down...

The smart solution is to let evolution take over, in a mixed popupation of algae in a high nutrent enviroment, the fastest growing strain should take over. Shine a UV light on it to keep the mutation rate up and you can develop a prefectly natural algae population optimized to the local enviroment without even having to walk into the lab.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[eldavojohn]

Actually, I RTFA instead of the summary and as it turns out:

In 1990, Sheehan's NREL program calculated that just 15,000 square miles of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is more than eight times that size) could grow enough algae to replace nearly all of the nation's current diesel requirements.

They make it sound like you just need to grow it and it will clean the air. Why would you put that figure out there if you have to build just as much pipe filled with algae to clean the air?

The logistics of this process aren't very clear.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Amouth]

that example is alot like the burning lib of congress it is jsut giving you an idea of an amount that isn't known but they want to make it seem massive.

obivously it wouldn't work if they jsut set it anyware .. it needs to be near the food, i would suspect it would work alot like a combination of current scrubbers on coal/gas power plants and cooling towers on the Nukes

A semilar idea was once posted about using algae and massive (leaky) fiber cabels(to provide the most light) to stop global warming buyhaving them suck up all the co2, but that was considered dumb.. personaly i would have loved to see them do it for the reason this artical is was though of.. because it is neet and would be a greate way of getting fule

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[PaintyThePirate]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I remember reading that to produce a useful amount of algae, the air needs to be at least 13% CO2. Coal plant emissions reach that level. So it would be possible to run the nation's diesel fleet off 15,000 square miles of desert if that desert contained a few dozen coal power plants and a system of pipes to carry exhaust to the algae ponds.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Rhinobird]

The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Actually, I got the impression that they diverted the flue gasses from the powerplant and bubbled them through the algae; instead of just venting the gases right into the air.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with what you propose is this: There must be Zero (0) (none) (null) chance of the more-efficient algae escaping into the wild - or it could potentially disastrously affect our entire ecosystem.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Alcilbiades]

I don't think you read the article clearly. It discusses 2 corporations or research groups. 1 Builds a filter which is installed into a Exhaust stack and can handle a 1 mega watt plant currently. The other being the focal point of the story just soaks CO2 directly out of the air like a sponge soaks up water. The Tubes they describe are what the test algae are residing in bolted onto the Exhaust stack to get maximum exposure to CO2.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[arivanov]

Nope you are not wrong. Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow. They require loads of sun, loads of CO2 and the moment their concentration reaches a usefull level the broth tends to start dieing out, bacteria take over and contaminate the broth. So on. Of course, growing them for fuel is different from growing them for biotech where you need them "pure", but still. The idea of using algae is wildly optimistic.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Amouth]

that is what a scrubber is for coal/gas power plants..

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2. I have seen lectures given where Alzheimer's susceptible genes were spliced into the genes of mice neurons using a strain of the herpes virus that had previously infected neurons of Alzheimer's patients.

Isn't mutant, herpes-ridden, demented algae one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide."

The fact that the exhaust bubbles implies to me that the exhaust is filtered directly through the "soup".

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Alcilbiades]

Not if you have ever seen algae. Algae bubbles off oxygen even w/o being fed CO2. It fixes CO2 from the outside air and converts it into Oxygen.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[budgenator]

Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow.
I've a patented solution to the problem, just dig a hole, line it with pvc sheeting, add water and ornimental fish that you actualy want to see and BAM instant pea soup! Seriously I live in SE Michigan, not exactly prime sunlight area and my garden pond gets plenty of algea, keeping it under control is work. The only time the algea goes away when the food it needs is gone, primarily phosphates. My fish are fat and happy and I typically feed once a week in early spring before the algea blooms and about once a month after that. Mostly I make them graze for algea and you should see how brightly colored they are from all of the carotinoids in the algea. Algea grows everywhere, for the Sahara to Antartica

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[hankwang]

Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow. They require loads of sun, loads of CO2

Tell this to anyone who has an aquarium, artifical pond in the garden, or swimming pool. I'd say it is an extreme pain in the arse to prevent algae from growing in any water that is exposed to light. I have seen them grow in cooling-water hoses that were only exposed to fluorescent light tubes. Mind you, the cooling-water circuit was filled with deionized water, so all the nutrients must have been leaking out of the various stainless steel, brass and plastic parts.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[arivanov]

You are kind'a correct. True, algae grows everywhere. The problem is that it is not growing in a concentration for anything usefull. If you dip your fish in an algae broth that is as concentrated as necessary for it to be of any use for extracting food supplements they will die in 5 minutes or less because their gills will be completely clogged up. I assume that biofuel is the same (I may be wrong). And by the way - I used to study this (granted this was 20 years ago) and I used to have 8+ fish tanks around the apartment. So I know both sides of the story first hand.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[homer_ca]

"Is there maybe a possibility of coating hot air balloons or zeppelins with this algae and letting them float about in the atmosphere until they become so heavy with algae they descend?"

Plants need water to grow, even more so algae, which is an aquatic plant, and balloons have very little bouyancy for their size. I'm guessing you won't be able to life enough water to make this work.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biodiesel from engine and powerplant emissions isn't new. There was research back in the 1990s using algae in bioreactors which used cow manure and CO2 from the diesel engines. The fuel was 95% dried algae and 5% diesel fuel. As far as strains, it'd be easier to mutate and select for strains that are more efficient in the bioreactor you've built along with the feedstocks. CO2 is fixed by a carboxylase. It's a big enzyme and it's regulation is complex because it is central to the conversion of CO2 to sugar. It might be possible to metabolically engineer efficient strains, but considering all the variables, it would probably be most efficient to try different strains, select the most efficient of those, then mutate using expsoure to a mutagen or X-rays and positively select for mutants that do what you want.

jbmoore61@gmail.com

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Killall -9 Bash]

Only if the rest of the eccosystem is sufficiently similar to a tank with fossil fuel exaust bubbled through it such that the super efficient algae will have the same advantage everywhere. Biological diversity is the result of environmental diversity.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[kesuki]

well, if one grows algea on land you run into the issue of harvesting enough, unless you're using controlled environments where every nutrient level is precisely tuned to the needs of the algea. in which case you're not producing a huge volume, but it's very useful for cleaning emissions from coal power plants. and if every coal plant in the us used algea tanks insted of conventional 'scrubbers' enough algea to produce enough biodiesel to run a large segment of our diesel market would be produced. now that's not using a lot of land at all, to replace a large portion (say as much diesel as every farmer in the US uses annually, plus every schoolbus)

growing algea on land is kinda silly though, when it grows on the ocean. but you're right 'algea' needs to be seperated from the sea water, it's harvesting and it would take a lot of acres of ocean to produce enough algea to say fill a harverster tanker, since you are probally only taking the top inch of water, and getting about 1% of the content of that inch of water back as 'concentrated' algea.

Unless of course you harvest at 'low tide' daily through some sort of automated growing field that's anchored off shore... you'd be expending a lot of energy just trying to collect the algea. it's something that's never beeen tried before, something that's never ben tested, and never been proven, Of course it's full of uncertainty. the only certainty though is that as long as everyone says 'it's unproven' and looks for more ways to exploit fossile fuels the longer it will 'stay' unproven.

BTW, on land algea production in controlled raceways has been researched, and is considered viable, but only at a 'certain' price point historically that price point has always been above the price of oil, but that's changing. the most heavily exploited fields have long since peaked, many fields are projected to peak soon, and the number of untapped fields are projected to grow a lot less slowly than the old over tapped sites begin to run dry, at least here in the US. and in certain parts of the mid-east as well. the united states is likely to 'hit' a new peak somewhere between 10-30 years from now, and if there had been a large outcry against possibly the worst oil spill in the history of mankind, our offshore rigs (the largest sector of field growth potential in the US) could cause that peak to hit even earlier.

I strongly believe that someone is going to come up with a viable business model to produce enough algea from free floating ocean harvesting to make it commercially viable. there is just too much 'under utilized' ocean water. some slow release 'wires' on boyoys could 'fertilize' the crop of algea, as slow moving harvester ships make 'runs' that allow them to harvest whichever 'field' was ripe, to concentrate the useful algea for processing into diesel and ethanol and oils and fertilizers etc. what would really get this going though are subsudies on production of biodiesel and/or ethanol. everyone likes no risk investments, so a government promising that you'll make a profit makes it a no brainer. I believe once the methods are designed, tested and proven, the 'need' for government assurances will go away. Consider sugar farming, sugar was once something only the rich could afford, but increasing production has reduced costs associated so much that it's now a very cheap commodity, so cheap that some growers would rather turn their sugar into ethanol in the hopes that they'll make more profit.

The same should also be true for algea, it will take time, and money, and research and risk taking to make algea viable, but once that has been done it will seem so easy some people will be wondering why we didn't do it 30 years ago. it took some bold risk takers in the 1980's to make soybeans the commodity they are today, and it will take bold risk takers to make algea the commodity it can be in the future.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Anonymous Coward]

...the air needs to be at least 13% CO2...

Well, maybe deep down by all those "smokers" on the ocean floor the concentrations could be that high, but with all the crap we dump, not much of anything could live, much less clean up all the stuff outgassing from the planet's interior, which far outdoes us in the way of carbon dioxide or methane emissions. We don't need to "plant" algae. We just need to allow the oceans to live again.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[ToasterofDOOM]

Ever heard of a little thing called red tide? In sufficient numbers (we could easily support big numbers with all of our emissions) algae and other biological solutions work pretty damn fast. The fact that it's biological makes it all the better, as it's gcheap and multiplies for free. (w00t!)

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[musiholic]

deionized water is not the same as distilled water - all because you stripped out ions doesn't mean it had no bioload in it. Deionized, distilled water is better yet, and DI/distilled water filtered through a .2 micron filter is even better. This is why some chemistry labs are so anal about water quality - it has to be really clean - no ions, no biomess, nothing... just water.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[budgenator]

Actualy I expect that it will be more difficult keeping the desired strain of algea reletively pure, rather than just getting algea to grow. I've never actualy considered or researched commercial scale algea farming, sounds like after 1 inch of depth there isn't much light left.

... I seem to recall ...

[ninjagin]

... seeing this in some documentary awhile back. It looked pretty neat. One thing that I wasn't so sure about is how the tubes that carry the circulating algae solution can be kept clean and leak free in any number of climates where it might be useful.

Still, very neat.

Re:... I seem to recall ...

[IAAP]

....seeing this in some documentary awhile back.

I saw it on "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS.

That was a cool show. They re-run those shows a lot, so check your listing. PBS' site has schedules on it.

Re:... I seem to recall ...

[drn8]

....seeing this in some documentary awhile back.

I saw it on "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS.

That was a cool show. They re-run those shows a lot, so check your listing. PBS' site has schedules on it.

They also stream them on the internets.

Re:... I seem to recall ...

[dkitty]

Yes, You are right. It is prracticed by a company called Greenfuel. Here is their news section which links to the pbs special: http://www.greenfuelonline.com/news.htm

Obligatory 'Soylent Green' reference

[trailerparkcassanova]

Isaac Berzin's algae IS people!!!!

OILIX

[HunterZ]

Nice, they've invented OILIX from Metal Gear 2 (MSX, not PS2)!

Re:OILIX

[Zantetsuken]

Damn... you beat me to it lol, was just thinking the same thing.

So does this mean a guy named Solid Snake is gonna have to go to Zanzibar Land and destroy a secret walking tank that coincidentally happens to be code named under "Metal Gear", and kill a guy named "Big Boss" that happens to be his "father" by way of being a clone??? In this case, all these years of playing video games will finally come in handy - gamers will be the only ones who know what to do lol...

But...

[c0l0]

...this does not sound like rocket science at all?!
;)

Re:But...

[coolcold]

no, this is biological science ;)

Algae

[mysqlrocks]

Can't algae itself get out of control and cause environmental problems?
http://www.google.com/search?q=algae+blooms

Re:Algae

[IAAP]

The only problem I can think of is that the neighborhood smells like a swamp. Which I think is preferable to the stink of fosil fuels anyday.

Re:Algae

[fireduck]

Yes, under the proper conditions. Stack emissions are primarily CO2, NOx and various sulfur compounds. What primarily keeps algae levels in check in the environment are various micronutrients (phosphorous, nitrogen, iron). Given that smokestack emissions should be fairly defined composition, it should be straight forward to supply the exact amounts of additional nutrients to stimulate growth without overpopulation problems. Besides, this is an engineered process, not simply dumping emissions into a river.

Re:Algae

[Anonymous Coward]

Algae blooms are when algae grows out of control in marine habitats. This algae would be presumably not be in open water habitat; it would be in big vats and regularly harvested for biodiesel.

Though I would not want to be under the vat if it sprung a leak...

Re:Algae

[gamepro]

You can never have too much of the "Green Stuff" What would be really interesting is algae that eats pollution and produces gasoline!! Well.... we can dream..

Re:Algae

[God'sDuck]

hmm...well, theoretically, if we combined a fast-growing form of algae which thrived on emissions with a form of algae that didn't mind cold, hostile environments, and then leaked a whole bunch out of a cooling tower, couldn't we cause an airborne algae bloom? perhaps growing in the sort of big circulating cloud which keeps water drops and hail airborne for several days?

Re:Algae

[kaiser423]

If by cause environmental problems, you mean follow the course of nature, then yes.

Algae blooms have been happening for a long time. It's not catastrophic. We can adapt. An algae bloom versus clean energy and pollution cleanup. Which one would you choose?

Re:Algae

[Alcilbiades]

Algae bloom would only be a problem if they allowed the Algae to mature. Which they harvest it daily. Also the biggest problem of Algae bloom is when it is in a water way with fish and it blooms dies then takes Oxygen out of the water to decompose the dead algae. Considering that none of the problems with an algae bloom will be availible to happen with an algae farm I would just chalk up talk about it to those who have never had a Ecology class.

Re:Algae

[Anonymous Coward]

In essence it fight algae blooms with algae blooms. The ocean is one big CO2 sink. Blooms happen when CO2 levels rise and the algae grows out of control. The theory appears to be to use artificial blooms in tanks or ponds close to the source of the CO2 emmissions so that those emmissions don't make their way back into the ocean to cause more harmful blooms.

Blooms will still happen in the ocean since that is a natural process. However they may be artifically large and frequent because of the amount of extra CO2 that we put into the ecosystem.

Dried green substance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soylent Green is TINY LITTLE PLANTS! Tell everyone!

Re:Dried green substance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! You beat me to the Soylent reference!

Soylent Plaid is people!

Re:Dried green substance...

[kfg]

Soylent Plaid is people!

If your Soylent isn't Scots, it's Crrrrap!

KFG

Cheap Solar Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fuel -> Power Plant -> Emissions
2. Emissions -> Algea -> Fuel
3. Profit!

Heere they come!

[AltGrendel]

Let the Soylent Green jokes begin!

Re:Heere they come!

[SnarfQuest]

You are wwwaaayyyy to late fot this comment!

Re:Heere they come!

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually not all that late, there was one Soylent Green reference at 2:56, and this guy tied for second place at 2:59.

UNH Biodeisel?

[ydnar]

This sounds very similar to a similar process documented by the UNH Biodeisel Group.

Re:UNH Biodeisel?

[PaintyThePirate]

The UNH study is based on a ~20 year U.S. DoE study on algae biodiesel. Anyway, while it is true that there is enough land in the United States to grow enough algae to replace all gasoline and diesel fuel use, it's not the ideal solution. The problem is that the algae requires something around 13% CO2 gas to grow in any useful amount. The level of CO2 naturally occuring in the atmosphere is about 0.035%. The only economical source to generate that much CO2 is burning Coal. So, the entire process still yields tremendoes amounts of CO2, contributing to global warming. Certainly, it is better to harness CO2 from existing Coal power plants for biodiesel instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, but it is not a permanent solution.

Re:UNH Biodeisel?

[Intron]

About 1/3 of CO2 emissions comes from point sources like coal power plants. If you could capture half that using algae, it would be a huge win for the environment. Other proposals, such as coal gasification, add cost. The algae method actually reduces fuel costs since the recaptured carbon is used as fuel.

Re:UNH Biodeisel?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about:

- Plant trees everywhere.

- Cut trees down, burn wood in power plants for heat and electricity.

- Grow algae in power plant exhausts for biodiesel to run cars.

New advertising campaign

[eclectro]

Now -- With the cleaning power of Slime!!!

Re:New advertising campaign

[jonthegm]

Yes, but can it run Linux?

Re:New advertising campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

And the taste of SLURM!!!

covered on PBS

[LEPP]

They had a Scientific American segment on this. Here is the segment transcript. It was quite interesting.

LEPP

Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[elrous0]

I wish I had a nickel for every "So and so scientist at so-and-so university has come up with such-and-such alternative to gasoline" story I've seen over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, we all still pull up to the pump and buy our gasoline and these "brilliant" ideas go *ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE*.

Five years from now, this "solution" will have amounted to nothing more than a bunch of wasted grant money (generously funded by the good old taxpayer).

-Eric

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA states "11 million in venture capital".

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how science works. Someone discovers something, puts it out in a journal and then other scientists repeat the experiment and apply it to their work. Discovery doesn't happen overnight, dumbass.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... we're talking about power plants, not gas stations, dude. Most power plants do not run on gasoline.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Dot.Com.CEO]

There are many alternatives for oil. You don't use them because you don't want to. Nuclear energy could solve all of our energy needs but we, instead, choose to use a non-renewable energy source for our needs.

Your approach is, therefore, wrong. The problem is not that scientists do not invent useful things, but rather that the oil oligarchy creates the illusion that what science invents is superfluous.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[idsofmarch]

Yeah. Comes nothing good ever comes from research, we should just stop trying.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[PaintyThePirate]

While I agree that we need to rely more upon nuclear energy, it can't (at least yet) replace fossil fuels. The trouble is obviously in getting energy from a nuclear power plant to a car. You can't just stick a reactor on four wheels and call it done. A convenient energy storage medium doesn't yet exist. Hydrogen is difficult to store, and batteries charge slowly and are absurdly expensive.

I believe biodiesel will succeed at least as a stopgap though, as it is already on the market and runs in diesel vehicles with no modification.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Uncle_Al]

> Nuclear energy could solve all of our energy needs but we, instead, choose to use a non-renewable energy source for our needs.

Nuclear power is non-renewable.

(Actually no power source that I know of is really "renewable"...it just gets automatically recycled thanks to the sun ;-)

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Red Flayer]

"I wish I had a nickel for every "So and so scientist at so-and-so university has come up with such-and-such alternative to gasoline" story I've seen over the last 30 years."

Wish I had a penny for every knee-jerk post made by someone who didn't even bother reading TFS, let alon TFA.

This isn't about alternative energy supply (mostly). This is about waste mediation, particularly CO2. The generation of usable fuels by the algae is just a nice little benefit, kind of like using an afterburner to generate extra power while reducing particulate emissions.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[SchrodingersRoot]

I'd like to point out that many alternative fuels are already used

Biodiesel is already in use, as it (as I understand) functions is normal diesel engines without and retrofitting.

Hybrid cars are becoming commonplace

Many companies are planning on making ethanol capable models--Ford even has the CEO of Ford making some promises on-air (not that that necessarily means they'll live up to them)

Various mass transit systems are putting hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol, and biodiesel into production. Mass transit systems, by the way, can provide an answer to the chicken/egg problem for alternative fuel vehicles. Since companies won't create a signficant number of vehicles until there's an infrastructure to support them, so people will buy them, and an infrastructure won't be built until there's a market, there's traditionally been a problem. However, governments have the money and the muscle to bring both of them into being at the same time, if in a limited capacity. Mass transit systems can have buses, for example, fuel at the depots, to start with. They could also open the depot up for public purchase. As more mass transit systems adopt alternative fuels, more fuel stations will arise, and more people will purchase alternative energy vehicles. Slow, maybe, but potentially very effective.

Things don't happen overnight, but they do happen.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[BluedemonX]

Actually, butanol will run in petrol-based cars just fine.

Why the corn lobby aren't trying to produce this out of their biomass rather than ethanol is beyond me. Ethanol is corrosive and has far less BTUs in it than butanol. It's much easier to distill though.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Zathrus]

Nuclear energy could solve all of our energy needs

You speak as if nuclear energy doesn't have its own issues. It's hardly perfect. And whether or not those issues are lesser or greater than the issues from fossil fuels is largely a matter of personal perception (I think they could be lesser, but not under the current regulations or infrastructure).

And no, nuclear energy cannot solve all of our energy needs. It does not solve the need for a replacement for gasoline. And no, electric cars aren't the answer -- they simply don't have the range yet. There are places in the western United States that have a longer distance between exits than electric cars have range -- and that's ignoring the minor issue that it takes far too long to recharge.

Biodiesel is a potential replacement, although not without its own caveats. If we can increase production of biodiesel by using the waste products of current systems though it's pretty much a win-win scenario. Hopefully this particular system is commercially useful.

And, contrary to your statement, there are not many alternatives for the other uses of oil. Fertilizer for example. That's a much bigger issue than gasoline. Most plastics are made from refinery byproducts as well. There are some replacements for petroleum-based plastics, but none nearly as economical.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[geoffrobinson]

Oil oligarchy?

Let's not look for vast conspiracies when we can find adequate, simpler answers.

1) If you make a car more fuel efficient, many people will just drive more. The limiiting reagent is money.

2) People don't switch because of economic reasons. It's hard to get a critical mass with a new technology when a well-established and relatively cheap alternative (oil) is entrenched. Will the industry try to protect itself? Sure. But who wouldn't? And it doesn't take them to twist the arms of people. If there was a will, there would be a way. Necessity is the mother of invention...blah...blah...blah

3) Environmentalists have been a big anti-nuclear force and people don't want nuclear reactors built. That's why nuclear energy hasn't grown more. Look at Europe, which is less prone to the oil oligarchy. They haven't built a new reactor in a while either and are considering it now.

When oil is expensive enough, alternatives will pop up. People will also drive less.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[brianf711]

I wish I had 2 pence everytime I heard an insightful reply (to someone who didn't RTFA), which enlightened them to the ideas covered by TFA.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, nuclear power is recyclable. Now if only everyone didn't have to ban the breeder reactors that could do so because of psychotic dictators threatening to nuke everyone...

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had a nickel for every "So and so scientist at so-and-so university has come up with such-and-such alternative to gasoline" story I've seen over the last 30 years.

I wish I had a gallon of gas for every story.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Dot.Com.CEO]

This must be the most pedantic comment ever made and I say it with no hint of irony! Congratulations sir!

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Quixote]

I was as skeptical as you until I read this in TFA:
(Berzin's company) GreenFuel has already garnered $11 million in venture capital funding and is conducting a field trial at a 1,000 megawatt power plant owned by a major southwestern power company. Next year, GreenFuel expects two to seven more such demo projects scaling up to a full pro- duction system by 2009.

If private VC money is going into it, there are decent odds that it'll work. If it was taxpayer money, OTOH, I'd be very skeptical...

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[SchrodingersRoot]

There's mass! It's convenient!
At least....it will be once we can figure out how to convert it efficiently... :)

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[RingDev]

Actually, WI is upping their ethanol blend again, we have a 200mil gal/year soy plant going in just out side of madison, and the new Milwaukee power plant could wind up being one of the most advanced clean coal burning plants in the US.

The big problem is not solutions, but cost. $3/gallon is the magic point for gas. Unless vehicles shoot way above 30mpg and gas prices don't increase past $3/gal alternative fuels will be cheaper. And the joy of capitalism is that the most financial sound path is the best funded. So yeah, hydrogen fuel cells have been possible for decades. But why would anyone invest in hydrogen when it costs the equivilant of $3/gal of gas today when gas has always been cheaper? If hydrogen costs 15 cents per mile, and gas costs 10 cents per mile, gas is going to get the investment. But when gas costs 13 cents a mile, and is only going to rise, people start looking into hydrogen.

That's where we're at now, gas is still cheaper, but just barily. As the hydrogen and alt fuel networks expand, and the cost of gas increases, alt fuels will become more and more popular.

-Rick

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[SchrodingersRoot]

With as scientifically ignorant as many venture capitalists are, I wouldn't use that as a barometer of plausibility.

I think Randall Mills was on slasdot a while back, but I read about him several years ago in Robert Park's book Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness To Fraud.

Mills has been around for years and years, with no evidence that there's anything behind his crank inventions, but "Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market"

If that's true, there are going to be a lot of severely disappointed people.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

The generation of oil is not "just a nice little benefit"- it is the ONLY reason to use this system. If you just used the algae to remove the C02 (i.e, you used this system solely to trap C02 from the smokestack and nothing else), the C02 would still be released anyway when the algae decomposed. But, if you use the algae to make oil, it leads to a corresponding reduction in fossil fuel consumption. THAT is where the pollution removal comes from.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Red Flayer]

Good point. Although, the algae produced could be potentially used for other things, too -- like landfill, etc, if it were baked to sterilization. Carbon sequestration is probably not the best use for it, though.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[sonofagunn]

Lots of Chevy and Ford vehicles are already capable of burning ethanol (E85 at least). People just don't know it. I drove a Chevy Avalanche around for a few years and it was E85 capable. I never was near a place to buy ethanol though :(

Seriously, most Chevy and Ford trucks are ethanol capable and have been for a few years. They just don't advertise the info b/c it wouldn't really be worth it if consumers don't have anywhere to buy ethanol. That will change soon.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[dbIII]

wish I had a nickel for every "So and so scientist at so-and-so university has come up with such-and-such alternative to gasoline" story

Consider modern history - in WWII there were a lot of alternatives to gasoline put into service in a short period of time even way back then because the knowledge was there and the need was there. Producing energy does not have to be rocket science, and there is no one true energy source out there but a wide variety of ways to get things moving.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[kiatoa]

You might want to rely on Nuclear energy, I don't trust neither the guvment nor the corporations to safely manage something with the damage potential of nuclear power gone wrong. Neither corps nor guvments have a history of integrity and acting responsibly. I say give them the least amount of rope for hanging us with possible. That is, keep dangerous stuff like nukenergy out of their hands as much as possible. You can't render thousands of acres uninhabitable for centries by a wind farm going awry because some official made a dumb short sighted decision.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Best replacement for petroleum fertilizers and pesticides is....

ORGANIC FARMING

Just dont use oil products, way healthier.

When you taxe out those petroleum products, biodiesel is much better net energy producer.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the industry try to protect itself? Sure. But who wouldn't?

A little pragmatic system analysis is in order. Whoever is not part of the solution is part of the problem. But, if you leave someone too strong to conquer out of the solution, you will never (one may argue that you even don't really want to) actually solve the problem.

Often cited "poor baggy whip producers starving because of new horseless cars" had no power to resist the change. Big players in fossil fuel industry by all means do have the power. Offer the strong & heavy losers in wanted "switch" a deal: no taxes and ban on competition (for long enaugh period to make it worthwhile) for them in exchange to complete conversion of their entire business to "green". That would mean their imperies will just shift, not ceise. Once they don't lose, but win big in that prefered change, they'll gladly give in.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[elrous0]

No, we should just stop HYPING. Research scientists use hype to generate grant and investment money, portraying their research as revolutionary when 99% of the time it turns out to be a total dead end.

And it works too. Because within one year you will have forgotten completely about this "revolutionary" new technology and the money that was wasted on it.

-Eric

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[elrous0]

You can't just stick a reactor on four wheels and call it done.

CVould make for some interesting wrecks, though.

-Eric

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[elrous0]

Discovery doesn't happen overnight, dumbass.

Considering we're still using almost exclusively the same basic internal combustion engine and coal burning power plants we've used for over 100 years, it must not be happening *AT ALL*.

As regards to how science works, yours is an extremly naive position. Let me tell you a little about how science REALLY works:

1. Scientist wants to keep his cushy job at university or company
2. Scientist cooks some numbers, throws in some unproven speculation, and discovers wonderful new thing that could "revolutionize the world" (his words, of course)
3. Scientist hypes said discovery, in professional journals and (hopefully) the maintream press
4. Scientist gets a buttload of money in grants and/or capital for his company or university
5. Scientist begins "further research" on his amazing discovery
6. Research never produces anything
7. GOTO 1

   -Eric

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[idsofmarch]

So, scientists want grant money, I fail to see the problem in *looking* at such a system and exploring whether it *can* be an alternative, this is how we get new stuff. How long have people been working on AI? Or quantum computing? How many times has the missing link almost been found? You can't just dismiss something out of hand because previous attempts have failed.

One of these days one of these projects is going to bear fruit and you'll get to be one of the naysayers muttering to yourself: "I told them it wouldn't work."

Stop being so damned judgemental.

What does the algae have to say about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Algae has rights too!

Nitrous?

[drewzhrodague]

I will personally take care of any spare nitrous oxide gas you happen to have. Please contact me via the email address attached to this account.

Re:Nitrous?

[richy freeway]

/me grabs the balloons. ;D

Re:Nitrous?

[Thud457]

I want yeast that produces THC.

Re:Nitrous?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably more feasible to create yeast that produce psylocybin. The relavent organisms are more similar to one another.

Re:Nitrous?

[DrSkwid]

kind of makes it had to code !!!

How does this really help?

[Bob_Villa]

From reading the article, the algae suck up the CO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides from the power plant emissions. That's obviously a good thing. The algae are then used to create methanol and biodiesel. What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

Does it take less pollution to create methanol and biodiesel this way, versus drilling them from the earth?

Re:How does this really help?

[Politburo]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, you are. See in the current situation, both powerplant CO2 and vehicle CO2 (and NOx) are being emitted from different energy sources. For the sake of argument, let's assume equal amounts of emissions are emitted from the powerplant and the vehicles.

So you put in the algae and you get .4x CO2 out the powerplant stack, and let's assume the remainder goes to biodiesel. You burn that 100% biodiesel in a car, get you get your .6x CO2 back. CO2 before: 2x. CO2 after: x. Obviously the real-world numbers won't be as good, but there's still an obvious emission reduction.

Re:How does this really help?

[EnigmaticSource]

Short answer, yes

Long answer, because you're only releasing the CO2 from the coal, as opposed to both coal and gasoline/diesel you end up with less emissions overall. And it's definitly better than drilling as we are expending energy to dig out new fuel twice.

As for your second question, look up "Algae Blooms"

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

These coal power plant's aren't going anywhere; the technology for cleaner power stations isn't up to production scale yet, and nuclear power will take a long time to replace all of the exisitng plants (if people ever allow it too.)

So, right now, we have:

Coal plants producing power and dumping C02 into the atmosphere, and
Oil-burning cars dumping C02 into the atmosphere.

Using the algea method, the top lines could be combined to create

Coal plants producing power and fuel for cars dumping C02 into the atmosphere.

Notice how there's no direct step from "dumping C02" to "not dumping C02?" That's how the power situation is going to make progress.

Re:How does this really help?

[slcdb]

am I missing something here?

Yes. The theory is that you'd get twice the amount of use from the same amount of CO2 emissions -- once to generate electricity, and again to drive some cars (or something else). End result is total CO2 emissions are reduced because driving the cars only emitted the CO2 that the electicity generation plant would have already emitted otherwise.

Re:How does this really help?

[TheLoneCabbage]

It's not carbon neutral is what your getting at. That's ok. It cuts carbon in half. The CO2 that was used from that plant to make auto fuels, would have gone into the atmo anyway. But we do save on the carbon output of the cars, since they are only spitting out CO2 that we took from the (already waste) exaust of the coal plant.

Oh, and you DEFINETLY don't want to sink the dead algee to the bottom of the ocean. Were as CO2 will stay submerged, rotting organics make methane... that doesn't stay submerged, and is infact 30 times more powerfull than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (but breaks down in only 25 years, so the debate roles on...)

Re:How does this really help?

[brewer13210]

Clearly the process isn't carbon neutral, but from the standpoint of CO2, it potentially has the effect of making it look like the power plant has disappeared. For example, right now the situation is:
Coal --> Power Plant --> CO2
and at the same time...
Gas --> Car --> CO2

With this system you have:
Coal --> Power plant --> Algae --> Biodiesel production --> Car --> CO2
You've essentially removed the CO2 produced by the power plant.

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the overall use in this process is that energy is being shifted from waste, exhaust emissions that do nothing but go into the atmosphere, to mediums that can be later used in other energy sectors. I would hope the energy shift would be less than that required by normal means to produce the energy in other sectors that come out of the new mediums.

Basically, if its more efficient to use the method stated in the article, than to actually produce biodiesel and ethanol/methanol via conventional/current production methods, I'm all for it.

I think that is the whole point of this idea. Less TOTAL energy expenditure in the system of producing MEGAWATT's, biodiesel, & methanol/ethanol.

Who wants to bet the Government/Corps won't jump on it because the Cost:Operating ratio is not a high enough profit??
self serving bastards ....

Re:How does this really help?

[j1m 5n0w]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, it ends up in the atmosphere in the end, but you get to use it twice. If you're going to polute, you might as well pollute in a way that maximises the energy generated per quantity of carbon dioxide produced. Also, this could partially solve a political problem of reliance on foreign fuel.

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

I assume that the algae grows better in an environment with a high concentration of carbon dioxide, such as power plant exhaust. The gains from pumping regular air through an algae filter would be less dramatic (and you could probably acheive a similar result by, say, planting a tree).

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

You're missing something. The carbon is used twice before being lost into the atmosphere in this scenario-- once at the plant, then once as biodiesel. If that carbon had not been captured and recycled, then twice as much carbon would have been released into the atmosphere since the second user would be burning non-recycled fuel.

Re:How does this really help?

[jcorno]

But what about the other emissions? Coal plants put out a lot of arsenic and radioisotopes, among other things. Releasing it from smoke stacks is bad enough. When it's coming out of exaust pipes on busy streets, we're gonna have some problems.

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

From reading the article, the algae suck up the CO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides from the power plant emissions. That's obviously a good thing. The algae are then used to create methanol and biodiesel. What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, you are right that burning the resulting fuels will release the very same pollutants back into the atmosphere, but the alternative is to release pollutants from both the power plant *and* burning gasoline from oil. With this technique, you get two for the price of one.

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

Well, whose going to buy the land and pay for it? I heard somewhere that would work, you would need tens or hundreds of thousands square miles of irrigated land. And dumping it into the ocean will kill off a shitload of wildlife.

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like it might be a good idea, but then we might risk having an artificial bump in the marine ppopulation due to the increase of base food for sea life.

A few long term studies on the effect of dumping a few food source into the ocean (if they can even survive the salinity of the water) might be needed before doing that.

Re:How does this really help?

[Red Flayer]

"Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here? "

Sure it does. But you've gained more useable energy per unit of pollution. You've also gained more useable energy per unit of your original fuel.

The idea is that you are recycling the C and N, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. It's just bio-solar power.

Re:How does this really help?

[eth1]

"What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?"

That's what an Algaelytic Converter is for! You just grow the algae in your carpool and pump your exaust through it. :)

Re:How does this really help?

[LWATCDR]

Of course you could burn the bio-diesel and ethanol in the power plant to make more algae... Still wouldn't be a closed system but it would still reduce the CO2 per kw even more.

Re:How does this really help?

[hackstraw]

From reading the article, the algae suck up the CO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides from the power plant emissions.

I know thousands of hippies that would spend $5 a balloon for the nitrous oxide. Give the CO2 to some, err, plants, and everybody's happy.

Re:How does this really help?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Yes, because the algae will absorb 100% of the arsenic, and the conversion process to biodiesel doesn't remove even a little bit of it either.

Re:How does this really help?

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Another point is that it turns a low-value fuel (coal) into a high value fuel (biodiesel). No middle eastern entanglements and you get electricity to boot!

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants to bet the Government/Corps won't jump on it because the Cost:Operating ratio is not a high enough profit??
self serving bastards ....

Our government is currently run by a bunch of oil-wealth people. They won't jump on this new idea because it decreases our dependence on foreign oil (the last thing they want).

Re:How does this really help?

[deglr6328]

Does anyone have a brain anymore? I saw this story on PBS's Scientific Americain frontiers a few weeks ago and Alan Alda (in his ever unplumbed depths of cluelessness) had the same comment. WHO CARES how many times you are using the carbon!! It doesn't matter how many times it's used! All that matters is that its being used at all. All the guy is doing is using the CO2 as an energy store for a (hideously inefficient, photosynthesis based) solar power scheme. The amount of bullshit you have to go through to circulate the water, treat the algae, collect the algae, ferment it and turn it into ETOH, transport it and then burn it again VASTLY outweighs any CO2 savings benefit you could possibly get back with such a scheme. The guy would be ten thousand times more efficient at doint the exact same thing if he merely let the CO2 exhaust fly out into the sky and covered the same area as the current aglae farm takes up with solar cells instead! I mean DUH!! He would be achieving the exact same result at hugely higher efficiencies of solar energy collection.

Re:How does this really help?

[budgenator]

Actualy you could just pump air to the bottom of the ocean and the CO2 would condense out at those presures and temeratures, the CO2 would just sit on the bottom as a liquid and sink into the muck eventualy reacting with silicates and be sequestered until the material is swallowed up into the earth to be relaeased vulcanicaly many millenium later if ever.

Another way would be to make a hollow torpedeo out of water ice, fill it with liquid CO2. When you depresurised the torpedo, the liquid would just freze and just drop it over the side of the ship; solid CO2 is heavier than water.

Samething might be true for methane, I'm to lazey to google for the answer there. I don't think these methods would be economical, but they are possible.

Re:How does this really help?

[zippthorne]

since the "economy" is based on burning things that produce CO2, if it's not economical, it is by definition not possible. (to reduce the released CO2 using this method that is)

Re:How does this really help?

[zippthorne]

Drilling in alaska or off the coast of florida would also decrease our dependance on foreign oil. I guess they don't want that either.

Re:How does this really help?

[mydocuments]

Does it take less pollution to create methanol and biodiesel this way, versus drilling them from the earth?

Surely, the benefit from "creating" methanol, as opposed to drilling for it, is obvious. Creating it might take hours, whereas replenishing our stock of geologically produced methonal takes millions of years.

Also, where does the notion come from, that we are free to spend all the fossil fuels we are capable of drilling up? It's kind of like saying it's ok, because we can. To me, this represents an utter disregard for the needs of future generations. Sure, they might discover other efficient sources of power. But they're guaranteed to look back on this century of fossil fuel spending as the most egoistic wasting of resources that's possible to imagine.

Re:How does this really help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it take less pollution to create methanol and biodiesel this way, versus drilling them from the earth?

No one has ever drilled for methanol or biodiesel. Both are produced from organic once living sources. Just so you know.

Re:How does this really help?

[evilviper]

The algae are then used to create methanol and biodiesel. What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel?

An infinite loop :-)

Okay, that's not quite true, since you'd have greatly diminishing returns... Still, you'd get powerplants much, much closer to 100% effeciency on the fuel that they currently use.

Re:How does this really help?

[evilviper]

Coal plants put out a lot of arsenic and radioisotopes, among other things. Releasing it from smoke stacks is bad enough. When it's coming out of exaust pipes on busy streets, we're gonna have some problems.

What in the world makes you think you'd have those comming out of your car's exhaust? Your car isn't burning the coal...

Nobody is bottling up the exhaust and spraying it into your car engine. The algae is converting those particles it can feed-on into biodiesel, not more coal. You got that? It's CONVERTING it...

Finally...

[Itninja]

We can put the super powerful algae-into-fuel lobby to work! I've been saying it for 120 years, petroleum products are just a passing fad. I want a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs!

Food for thought:

[maynard]

"It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!"

Re:Food for thought:

[hotdiggitydawg]

Obligatory Simpsons quote: "Mmmm... Soylent Green!" - Homer

His idea?

[squoozer]

While he is certainly one of the first to moot this idea I struggle to believe he is the first. I have heard people talking about this sort of thing for years. I haven't read the article yet (naturally) but I do know that there are some big problems with this type of technology that aren't going to be solved in the near future. I suspect this is just another set of plans talking about how we could remove CO2 using algae rather than an in depth costing to see if it is actually worth it. By worth it I don't mean would people pay more for their leccy I mean worth it in terms of CO2 emmissions. If over all running this plant only saves us 5% of our carbon emmission it's just not worth the investment.

The fact that they are burning the oil produced by the algae means that there probably isn't going to be an over all saving.

Re:His idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that they are burning the oil produced by the algae means that there probably isn't going to be an over all saving.

But there are effectively two energy producing cycles now for the same amount of CO2. So the amount of CO2 "released" per Kilowatt drops. And if attempts are made to reclaim the bio-feul CO2 with the same process, it goes down further.

Re:His idea?

[JourneyExpertApe]

The fact that they are burning the oil produced by the algae means that there probably isn't going to be an over all saving.

While I suspect this is yet another alternative fuel scheme that just won't work, reclaiming CO2 emissions from a power plant by turning it into fuel (without non-renewable power input) would produce a savings in overall emissions. The savings is in the CO2 that would have been produced by the fossil fuels replaced by the biodiesel.

Re:His idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is somewhat of a savings because before you would burn coal to produce electricity leaving that CO2 in the atmosphere. The trucks would then burn diesel leaving that CO2 in the atmosphere. With this system you get both diesel fuel and electricity. (This of course ignores the ethanol that can be used to make E85 or other gas additives.)

So while you do have the carbon from the coal going into the atmosphere, you don't have the carbon from the oil going in to the atmosphere as well. It stays in the ground.

Didn't they say we have some 1500 years of coal deposits left? Shouldn't the environmentalists be happy about that? We reduce foreign oil use and CO2 emissions. This can spur the development of more non-nuclear power plants which have less dangerous waist.

Oh wait, I forgot, coal burning releases more radioactive waist then nuclear power plants.

And for the grammar / spelling nazis out there, I am sure there are some mistakes in this post. Deal with it.

Re:His idea?

[Red Flayer]

" I haven't read the article yet (naturally)"

Then please refrain from commenting.

"I suspect this is just another set of plans talking about how we could remove CO2 using algae rather than an in depth costing to see if it is actually worth it."

Rather than just bring it up, why not add something to the discussion by spending two minutes with google looking for cost-effectiveness studies of similar projects?

Or how about realizing that an in-depth cost study is impossible until the tech is refined?

Re:His idea?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

A coal plant with a 2000 acre algae farm might produce 40 million gallons of biodiesel. Sold at market value, that's $100million USD. Per year. Amortized over a period of many years, just how much could the system cost for that one coal plant, before it's not worth it?

Especially considering that it means staving off new regulatory costs when we have a non-asshat president and something like Kyoto goes through? (If we were going to have to spend $25 million per year starting in 2009 anyway, just to be clean...)

Economically, it reduces demand for oil, once there's less pressure on supply from all the diesel guzzlers out there, the economy would improve.

There are too many reasons to do this to list, supposing it works at all.

Re:His idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between "won't work" and "not economically feasible".

Re:His idea?

[JourneyExpertApe]

But the distinction isn't important. Any alternative fuel scheme could be said to "work". For example, you could use electricity to power a motor that powers an electrical generator, and call that a "clean energy source", but it's, of course, worthless. By "won't work", I meant it won't be feasible. Especially the part about turning the "green solid" into ethanol. Hell, I could turn grass into ethanol given the right reactants and catalysts and enough energy input, but that wouldn't be very efficient.

Poor algae?

[Dan East]

Maybe it's just me, but the way the story is worded makes me feel a little sorry for the algae.

Dan East

Re:Poor algae?

[xao gypsie]

I am with you on that one. I think PETA needs to get involved on this case of cruelty to algae.....

Re:Poor algae?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Algae isn't an animal, so you would need to go somewhere besides PETA.

BioD is great, except I can't buy a diesel car!

[brewer13210]

I've been interested in biodiesel for a long time, but folks like me in New York and people in other states with California emissions cannot currently buy a new diesel passenger car. Hopefully that will soon change when the US starts switching to USLD diesel later this year (Ultra Low Sulpher Diesel) which will allow manufacturers to install emission control equipment on their new vehicles.

Re:BioD is great, except I can't buy a diesel car!

[MtViewGuy]

One of the big advantages of biodiesel fuel is that it burns far more cleanly than regular petroleum-based diesel.

For one thing, you don't have diesel particulates from a diesel engine running biodiesel fuel, which contributes to far lower harmful exhaust emissions. Also, biodiesel probably doesn't have the high level of sulfur compounds found in petroleum-based diesel fuel; that means longer life for every component in the exhaust system.

Still Not "Green"

[ndansmith]

Wont someone please think of the algae?

The fact that innocent algae have to be subjugated to digest our waste will still irk some environmentalists.

Re:Still Not "Green"

[charstar]

not just subjugated, but also "squeezed" and "processed"!

Re:Still Not "Green"

[TapeCutter]

"The fact that innocent algae have to be subjugated to digest our waste will still irk some environmentalists."

If you knew anything about "environmentalists" you would realize they love frollicing in compost.

Energy policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy security advocates like the idea because algae can reduce US dependence on foreign oil. "There's a lot of interest in algae right now," says John Sheehan, who helped lead the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) research project into using algae on smokestack emissions until budget cuts ended the program in 1996.

Wasn't that during Clinton's term ?

Re:Energy policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the term Republicans controlled both the Senate and House and actually approved budget cuts?

who needs fuel cells?

[Anonymous Coward]

to me, this whole biodiesel/ethanol thing seems like it's a lot easier and smarter than hydrogen powered vehicles... and it doesn't require the massive conversion of every fuel station into a hydrogen station and every person needing to buy a new car...

It's basically solar...

[Erioll]

From reading the article, it's just plant-based solar power, with taking the emissions from the smokestack to help them grow. But still has all the pitfalls of solar (massive amounts of space required to soak up the sun's rays).

And this has an additional downside: won't all the absorbed CO2 just be re-released when the fuel the process creates is burned? Thus you're back to where you started with the same amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere.

This just seems like robbing peter to pay paul environmentalism, except instead of money, it's CO2. Same net output at the end of the day, though I'll admit, slightly more energy into the system. So basically more energy for same CO2 output. No actual reduction.

Re:It's basically solar...

[Anonymous Coward]

This just seems like robbing peter to pay paul environmentalism, except instead of money, it's CO2. Same net output at the end of the day, though I'll admit, slightly more energy into the system. So basically more energy for same CO2 output. No actual reduction.

A coupon for a free pizza is worthless. Same net cost at the end of the day, though I'll admit, slightly more pizza into my stomach. So basically more pizza for the same dollar cost. No actual cost reduction.

Re:It's basically solar...

[emidln]

Yes, but the idea is to make biodisel replace regular petrol and then we are reducing the amount of CO2 that would be in the air. In effect, we are taking emissions from the Power Plant, and making them useful before they become pollution. We still end up with the pollution, but it was useful, and replaces another commodity that would cause more pollution. Think recycling of energy.

Re:It's basically solar...

[Smidge204]

And this has an additional downside: won't all the absorbed CO2 just be re-released when the fuel the process creates is burned? Thus you're back to where you started with the same amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere.

As opposed to INCREASING atmospheric CO2 by burning fuel you've sucked out of the ground? I'll take it.

Besides, you will not get 100% of the carbon back out of the algae. Even after you've extracted the biodiesel and fermented the remains to make alcohol, you will have goop left over that contains carbon-rich biomass. This can be packed into abandoned coal mines (for example) and thus remove that portion of carbon from the cycle.
=Smidge=

Re:It's basically solar...

[Erioll]

Ya, basically, but you've still got the land area problem (I wonder how much area would be needed for an actual large coal powerplant to scrub effectively), and the article is exaggerating somewhat with the claims of reduction. It's really only reducing by the amount of fuel that is NOT coming out of the ground, not "really" the 40% that it takes out of the stack.

Though I'll be the first to admit that this might be worth it for the smog benefits alone. IMO that should be the biggest headline (NO2 is smog).

Re:It's basically solar...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Not quite. As is, we only get to use that CO2 once, before it's in the air. With this, we get to use it from coal, for electricity, and then again in trucks/cars, before it's released. Basically twice the energy, for the same amount of CO2 production (or to look at it another way, half the CO2, for the same amount of energy).

Re:It's basically solar...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Read the article, up to 2000 acres.

Though even if they only have 500 acres to work with, that's still quite a reduction, don't you think?

Re:It's basically solar...

[Erioll]

I'll admit I didn't read it all the way to the bottom of the article. Quite interesting that there's 1000 plants in the US with enough space to do this.

If it's economically viable, go for it.

Sucks to be algea

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucks to be algea in this plan.

Not only that you have to spend your entire life absorbing all the shitty gases frikin humans create by the tons, at the and they will turn you into a fuel, so that they can move their asses. Totally sucks.

Hmmm

[pHatidic]

Sounds a lot like perpetual motion to me:

1) Burn oil fuels

2) Oil turn into CO2

3) Turn CO2 into oil.

Rather, rinse, repeat.

Now I know it isn't literally perpetual motion because of all the energy that goes to work, heat, etc, but still if this is true then it sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

Re:Hmmm

[Mastadex]

4) ???

5) Profit!!

Re:Hmmm

[bmalia]

Rather, rinse, repeat.

Rather?

Re:Hmmm

[khallow]

The other energy source is solar power. To capture all the CO2 of a large power plant would require extensive surface area (my guess is on the order of a square meter per 10-100 Watts of continuous power) in a sunny location. But I see no reason in theory that this couldn't be made into a closed loop system aside from some periodic insertions of small amounts of nutrients.

Re:Hmmm

[SchrodingersRoot]

Well, algae are photosynthetic organisms, so don't forget the solar aspect.

Re:Hmmm

[Shadow Wrought]

Rather, rinse, repeat.

Busted! You talk while you type. I always fumble that expression the same way when I try to say it, too;-)

Re:Hmmm

[fizzup]

Missed a step:

1) Burn oil fuels

2) Oil turn into CO2

2.5) Shine light on algae

3) Turn CO2 into oil.

Re:Hmmm

[Nefarious Wheel]

Well, algae are photosynthetic organisms, so don't forget the solar aspect.

Yes. Can't forget the solar aspect, all those poor little solar beams are being exploited too. Aren't sunbeams alive too? It's unfair to exploit them.

Sigh... no, the 60's were not good to me at all...

Re:Hmmm

[civilizedINTENSITY]

How is nuclear energy solar power?

Re:Hmmm

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Opps, sorry: read "other" as "only"...please disregard previous post.

while these veggie environmental cleanup stories..

[ChrisGilliard]

are interesting, the real solution as I've pointed out in the past is cost effective Solar power. Solar power has been coming down in price exponentially for years and the latest breakthroughs in nanotech promise to make it cost effective when compared to even Oil and Coal. This company is one of the many companies that are working on this type of technology. And no, I do not have a financial interest in this company.

sprayers vs bubblers

[G4from128k]

I'd bet that this will work more effectively if the algae/water mixture is sprayed into the power plant exhaust rather than bubbling exhaust gas. Spraying will maximize the surface area exposed to the exhaust and reduce the system's energy use. It will take much less energy to compress a small volume of algae-liquid and make small drops than it does to compress a massive volume of gas to make small bubbles.

I can even imagine a multistage sprayer. A hot-stage sprayer injects matured algae-mix into the hot exhaust gases to both cool the exhaust stream and create a desiccated algae powder (for fuel production). A cool-stage sprayer injects living alga mix into the cooled water-saturated exhaust stream. Even with the two stage process I'd bet that the "cool" stage will still run at a relatively high temperature. Perhaps the engineers will need to adapt a thermophilic algae (such as live in hot-springs) to make the system feasible.

Re:sprayers vs bubblers

[Red Flayer]

"Spraying will maximize the surface area exposed to the exhaust and reduce the system's energy use"

The idea is not to maximize exposure of the algae to CO2, but to maximize the exposure of CO2 to the algae. Also, bubbling the exhaust through is passive, spraying requires energy input, as well as a more complicated mechanism.

"A cool-stage sprayer injects living alga mix into the cooled water-saturated exhaust stream."

For new plants, maybe. But for existing plants (especially since few new plants are being built), the idea is to be able to cap an exhaust stack with a fermenting tank. Lower initial costs.

I do like the spray idea, however, if the intent is to maximize energy production from the algae.

Re:sprayers vs bubblers

[Chuckstar]

Couple comments:

1) How is small droplets of algae in a stream of exhaust different from small bubbles of exhaust in a pool of algae? Surface area is the same either way, isn't it? (Assuming the bubbles and the droplets are roughly the same size.)

2) Surface area between the water and the exhaust is probably not a limiting factor here. I'd be surprised if the water wasn't at equilibrium with the exhaust.

3) I have a hard time in your system imagining how all that happens and still provides the same exposure to sunlight that the bubbling-through-clear-pipes system provides. Remember, this is a solar-powered system.

Re:sprayers vs bubblers

[budgenator]

Why not just run the exhaust through a series of troughs covered with glass or plastic, and place ultrasonic foggers every so far to get really intimate contact with the water? The disolved CO2 would make the water acidic, the algeal photosynthis would return it to slightly basic so the process would be easy to monitor.

Placing yet another nail...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the coffin of ID.

Oh wait. This was a scientific article without mentioning ID??? Say it ain't so.

Re:Placing yet another nail...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It means another screw for the boffin.

Re:Still Not "0x00ff00"

[Gzip Christ]

The fact that innocent algae have to be subjugated to digest our waste will still irk some environmentalists.

Can this MIT guy perhaps develop a separate strain of algae that will feast on hippies?

Renewable vs Non-renewable

[hotsauce]

Who cares if it's non-renewable? As we use the most cost-effective resource, we discover others. Even the sun is non-renewable on long enough time-scales.

I'm more interested in the side effects, ie pollution. But your pet technology doesn't fare so well there, so I've noticed all the mindless slashbot "nuclear is cool!" crowd doesn't like to mention it.

An objective assessment of pros and cons serves everyone well, including your tech if it happens to be the most effective.

Re:Renewable vs Non-renewable

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the way I understand it, nuclear power plants produce less volume of pollution than coal plants. Yeah, it's more dangerous, since it's more concentrated, but it also makes it easier to isolate and control.

Nuclear plants also produce a sort of heat pollution since they rely on nearby ponds and lakes to cool the reactor core. Over time, these ponds and lakes increase in temperature a few degrees, which can kill off lifeforms living in and around them.

As far as actual radiation from a properly operating nuclear plant.... you get more radiation daily from the sun than you would from standing next to a power plant for 24 hours.

And safety.... Three Mile Island was a result of poor decisions made by the operators when something started to go wrong. Chernobyl was a result of just poor safety in general. Graphite as a cooling medium? Why not? Graphite doesn't burn. *rolls eyes* In a normal situation, when a nuclear core begins to overheat, power is cut that supplies electromagnets that hold special rods above the reactor, which when released, enter the core, absorb the neutrons that are flying around splitting atoms, and stop the nuclear reaction. And remember that containment building? Even if the core melts down, that concrete building is designed to collapse/melt under the heat and contain the radioactive waste. Oh, and those huge towers? Just in case you didn't know... they're cooling towers, and the "smoke" coming out of the top is non-radioactive steam.

It seems to me that the media has sensationalized the "dangers" of nuclear plants and scared the general ignorant public.

Oh, I almost forgot.... No, a nuclear plant WILL NOT and CANNOT explode like a nuclear bomb. The fuel isn't a high enough grade, and even if there was enough of it there to achieve critical mass, it just wouldn't produce a high enough rate of reaction. Submarines and aircraft carriers, on the other hand....

Re:Renewable vs Non-renewable

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually burning coal releases considerably more radioactive material into the atmosphere than a nuclear power plant will.

It works for heavy metals too

[skiingyac]

I don't know the details, but Dr. Ray Crist at the college I went to worked on getting algea to clean up heavy metals since like the 70's until he passed away last year at the age of 105. Hopefully more people will work on this type of stuff... I don't think it takes a rocket scientist... though it probably helps that Dr. Crist was the director of the Manhattan Project for a time.

Real world implementation

[ikornalot]

This has been under discussion here since 2004.

Sweeet

[Orionetheus]

Green peace is going to have a ball with this...killing plants to make clean fuel.......

Re:Sweeet

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

...killing plants to make clean fuel

Algae are not generally classified as plants. Traditionally they are protista, although some are calling for green and red algae to be added to the plant kingdom.

Re:Sweeet

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing Greenpeace with PETA, though PETA wouldn't really care either because algae are not animals.

More CO2 scrubbing/sequestering

[greg_barton]

Check out this dangerous idea

What's more comforting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is more comforting than being on top of the food chain.
God bless The Creator.

I've got some links to related research

[Anonymous Coward]

cellulosic ethanol: involving enzymes to break down any biological material into ethanol.

Widescale biodiesel production from algae: Summarizes a study which shows that to grow enough algae to fuel America's current oil needs, would require 15,000 square miles of algae ponds.

Biodiesel from algae: Summarizes a news article describing GreenFuels technology and a similar plan to grow algae from power plant exhaust.

Biodeisel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two points. (1) If we grow stuff specifically for biodiesel the numbers do not add up, but if we combine that with the oil we used to cook with I think biodiesel has a future. (2) Biodiesel doesnt' have to replace all cars, it just needs to be the next step to get us away from gasoline. After that they'll work on biodiesel/electric hybrids and biodiesel/ethonal hybrids and of course the hydrogin car which is only/still 20 years out.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[Quintios]

This is only my second post here, but I'm sick and tired of hearing about solar. Solar solar solar. Bah. Right now, for the average consumer, solar is just about completely useless. I looked into putting solar on a new house I was building. Maybe I didn't have enough contractors to choose from, but the best I could find would pay itself off in 26 years. 26 YEARS!! Sorry, but no thanks. I will have moved to another house by then, and I won't get my money back for that system.

Solar, right now, is not a viable option for the average consumer, and if it were so cost effective then we'd have lots of power plants working on converting. You would think this would be happening right now by default because of the high price of gas and oil and the continuing pressure from the EPA to reduce emmissions (for coal plants as well as oil and gas). But it's not. Why? Because the overall conversion of solar to energy by the cells is quite low (thus reducing the ROI), they are fragile, and they are very expensive "out of the box".

I WANT solar. I want it now, but I won't get it if it takes two decades to pay off. A year or two, yes.

snniff

[johnnyblade111]

I'm sure some junky has already figured out how to make meth out of it. :p

Re:snniff

[lazy genes]

Dymethle sulfide, To be more exact,I cant spell it correctly.Definetly dymethle sulfide tho .Maybe dimethl sulfate.Small arisol very small.

Related Yahoo group

[flicken]

The Yahoo group, oil_from_algae has many knowledgeable people who are currently looking into the best strains of algae to grow, as well as methods for extracting oil from the algae.

Re:Still Not "0x00ff00"

[hamburger lady]

my god, the dead milkmen were right.

all time favorite

[alex_guy_CA]

This issue was previously reported on Slashdot. last year

I have to say, as an environmentalist, this line of research is one of the most hopeful I have seen. Besides cleaning power emissions, it can clean farm and industrial waste while generating fuel.

While at a farm products convention I talked to the bio- diesel and ethanol people from Iowa about this stuff. They had never heard of it, which is a shame. It seems like there should be better ways to get good ideas out there, but I guess market forces are the best we can do considering the government is so in line with the status quo.

This might actually work. But does it scale?

[Animats]

It's not actually processing any significant fraction of the flue gases. It's just connected to a sampling line from the smokestack. The big question is how much equipment you need to process the output from a power plant. Numbers like a thousand acres of tube field are mentioned. And how much manual servicing does this gear take?

Here's the technical paper.

Re:This might actually work. But does it scale?

[dbIII]

The big question is how much equipment you need to process the output from a power plant.

I suppose the good thing is the really hard part is already done - in most places water is already used in the pollution control systems to get rid of the NOx, SOx and ash. Doing other stuff with this water later on (or pretreatment of the water) away from the hot parts of the plant can be done on a spare patch of ground at the end of a pipe.

Re:This might actually work. But does it scale?

[Animats]

No, you're not getting what this really is. This is a hydroponic farm of algae in glass tubes. Sunlight makes it grow. Excess C02 from the flue gases makes it grow faster. But you still need huge acreage. The farm for a power plant will be much bigger than the power plant. Their numbers indicate that we're talking about a square mile of glass-tube algae-filled solar collectors for a reasonable-sized coal plant.

Re:This might actually work. But does it scale?

[dbIII]

Why is real estate an issue next door to a thermal power plant? Also, why does it have to be flat - some cooling towers I've seen already look like the hanging gardens of Babylon on the inside from all the algae - you may not need full sun all day.

The practical issue would be is it worth getting a reasonable amount out or trying to get almost all of it.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[temojen]

This is a method of producing cost effective solar power; in a stored form with good energy density and handling characteristics, to boot!

Check out the original

[brianerst]

I've long been fascinated by the UNH and GreenFuel proposals for algal biodiesel, so everytime it pops up, I take a look. No big changes lately, but the GreenFuel process still seems like the one that could actually have a real impact in our lifetimes.

Check out the original Slashdot thread on GreenFuel from back in May, 2005. The news.com article link has changed.

News.com had a few followup articles as well here (about investing in clean tech) and here (about J. Craig Venter looking at bioengineering more effective microbes for doing this kind of stuff).

algae in space

[lazy genes]

Nasa was trying to find out how algae could feel gravity.It was another eather experement if you ask me.I think there is more to this than they are telling us.I think they are just looking for investors. How does somthing in a vacume feel gravity?The algae I am growing floats to the surface on new moons and full moons.I keep it in a closed jar. And I am a retard so what.

Not a very new idea...

[EvilPickles]

Not a very new idea, science fiction authors and I myself have dreamt up similar workabouts. I would love it if this actually got made and wored :)

vaporbreakthrough?

[Douglas Simmons]

Every other article is about someone coming up with too-good-to-be-true ideas that over the past five years tend not to come into existance. Even something like this that blends into a larger effort. It'd be nice if we could filter out some noise (not that this isn't an exception).

Just like EcoQuest

[poulbailey]

Anyone remember Sierra's EcoQuest? It taught me that algaes are perfect for this thing and that was in 1991!

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/ecoquest-the-sea rch-for-cetus/screenshots

Your governor wants to fix that

[Flying pig]

Isn't he proposing legislation to make biodiesel available? Biodiesel IS low sulfur.

Unfortunately, although all my Diesel engines can run on bio, my aftermarket Eberspächer won't. You've been warned...

Re:Your governor wants to fix that

[SteveAstro]

What is the Erby for ? Engine preheat ?
Just curious -I have one in my ex-mil Landrover ambulance.
Best regards
Steve

Devil, as always, in the details

[CFD339]

The question that comes to my mind is how much surface area do you need to disperse the exhaust emissions of the power plant through in order to have a significant enough level of C02 for the algea without too high a level for it to thrive, and for that emmission gas to move fast enough through the algea bed to avoid a rapid accumulation of either heat or backpressure? Doesn't the plant produce waste gas at a high enough volume that the algea beds would quickly be overwhelmed?

Re:Devil, as always, in the details

[Quintios]

It's like anything else, you design correctly for the volume you're going to have to deal with.

This idea is not new (using bio to remediate waste). I used to work for a very large chemical company that used engineered "bugs" (essentially bacteria and other critters) to remediate waste streams from the various processes. You'd have these huge 100' diameter tanks that would contain the bugs, and you'd send your waste streams through those tanks. The bugs would thrive, and your waste was taken care of.

You would, of course, have to monitor closely the streams to make sure they maintained an optimal flow rate to keep the bugs healthy.

The devil *is* in the details. Design for success!

Re:Devil, as always, in the details

[CFD339]

I recall seeing a documentary on a bio process for dealing with sewage that use some fairly minor pre-treatment and made use of UV light to kill much of the nasty germs, but then essentially used a man made wetlands area that ultimately fed a stream and a very large lake. As I recall, the result was so clean that salmon had begun to repopulate teh stream (and I understand they are a very sensitive species).

My memory is hazy on it, but I think it may even have been Chicago or Detroit that was the source of waste -- I can't recall that for sure, however.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[ChrisGilliard]

I believe you are thinking of Biodisel. Yes, biodisel is solar power. So is coal and oil since they originally derived their energy from the Sun (just over a longer time frame). I should have refered to this as photovoltaics to be precise. The advantage of photovoltaics over biodisel is that we can improve on Biology by using technology.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[Red Flayer]

"Solar power has been coming down in price exponentially for years"

Exponentially: I do not think this means what you think it means. I think you mean the decrease in cost has been increasing logarithmically.

Did anyone balance the energy "budget"?

[rdmiller3]

It's great that they're thinking up ways to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions and producing fuels at the same time... but I didn't see any mention in the article of how much energy it requires to accomplish the process.

1. Building a set of this sort of processing equipment large enough will take a lot of work using big machines.
   (Burn fuel.)
2. Getting the CO2 from the flue gasses into aqueous solution requires blowers and/or pumps.
   (Burn some fuel.)
3. Tons of fuelstuff means tons of algae, and it's not going to crawl to the processing vats by itself.
   (Burn more fuel.)
4. Heat, press, pump, and scrape the sludge to get biodiesel.
   (Burn still more fuel.)
5. Climate control and more pumping and scraping to get ethanol.
   (Yep, burn even more fuel.)
6. How will a power-plant pay the people who run all this? Hey, I know: sell electric power!
   (You guessed it: burn fuel.)

Unless they find some other breakthrough, the whole process is going to cost more than it produces because ultimately the only energy being harvested is what little sunlight the algae manage to soak up and store.

Without knowing the true cost including construction and maintenance, it's not possible to decide whether the effort is worthwhile. Oh, and in order to be accurate about the benefits, you should also factor in the CO2 generated by all that fuel burned in the process.

Wouldn't it be funny if the CO2 produced in the process was more than it would harvest from the flue gasses? Well, we may as well start laughing.

Re:Did anyone balance the energy "budget"?

[dbIII]

Unless they find some other breakthrough, the whole process is going to cost more than it produces

Obviously - it's a pollution control cost and not magic beans.

Without knowing the true cost including construction and maintenance, it's not possible to decide whether the effort is worthwhile

That's what the design process and small pilot plants are for.

Wouldn't it be funny if the CO2 produced in the process was more than it would harvest from the flue gasses

It would be very funny and lots of people would be scratching their heads trying to work out where the extra carbon came from and who put it there. Outputs are limited by inputs.

We already get algal blooms in cooling water - and in some cases as many diatoms as can exist limited by the silicon available in the water (they are hard spiky little critters).

Re:Did anyone balance the energy "budget"?

[Bryansix]

You are missing the point entirely. Let's take a look at the alternative of using gasoline in cars.

1) Drill for Oil
(Burn Fuel)

2) Pump Oil up to the surface
(Burn Fuel)

3) Pump oil in pipeline to tanker ships
(Burn Fuel)

4) Transport Oil across world's oceans
(Burn lots of Fuel)

5) Truck Oil to refineries
(Burn Fuel)

6) Refine Oil into usable form and add MTBE
(Burn Fuel and harm the groundwater)

7) Truck gasoline to gas stations
(Burn Fuel)

Yet with all of that it is still economical to do. So any process designed to replace it doesn't have to be that effecient to beat using fossil fuels.

Re:Did anyone balance the energy "budget"?

[Darth Liberus]

Without knowing the true cost including construction and maintenance, it's not possible to decide whether the effort is worthwhile. Oh, and in order to be accurate about the benefits, you should also factor in the CO2 generated by all that fuel burned in the process.

Wouldn't it be funny if the CO2 produced in the process was more than it would harvest from the flue gasses? Well, we may as well start laughing.

Yes, you've certainly proven your point with all that hard evidence you've given us... I'm chuckling already!

Well it's certainly better then what we have now..

[infra.0]

Most Power plants are close to some body of water, they draw in the water, de-mineralize it, deaerate it, add chemicals so that the ph level is about 10.5 or so, and add sodium phosphate. Unfortunatley the phosphate has a side effect. It's a chemical fertilizer and promotes alge bloom formation, but it's needed to keep undissolved solids from hardening and sticking to the inside of boiler shells and, well lets not get into that.

Anyway, for the most part, the blowoff from these powerplants are deposited back into whatever they are taken from, but, not before they undergo cooling and chemical treatment. This is obviously an expensive proposition. In canada they are required by law to keep their water till it returns to a cool state before putting it back into the sewer or lake, and many places have set up cooling ponds for just this. Now say they allowed the alge to bloom and harvest it from there, they would make up some of the costs of treating the water in the first place, which is VERY expensive, and it would have no immediate forseeable effects on the environment.

This would mean no more (or less at least) alge blooms in lakes and rivers as it would be harvested for cash and best of all, likley increase plant efficiency leading to us saving money (or maybe just more money for them =/ )

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[njh]

I presume you are ranting about PV, because otherwise what you say makes no sense. Solar hot water pays itself of in a year or two, so I presume you installed that. You very likely use more energy to heat water than all non heating electrical demand combined.

Incidently, this algal technology would give a lower efficiency than PV cells. The mitigating factor might be the low cost of construction, but to be honest I expect that the maintenance costs will swallow any real advantage.

You are wrong about the overall efficiency of solar panels, even the cheapest ones are 15% these days, and there are plenty of new solutions in the mid 30%s. That's more efficient than most cars (and I'm only talking about the engine efficiency, not well to wheels!). For example, a good solution: http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au/

people please

[circletimessquare]

just go nuclear, ok? no green house gasses, no well-funded religious extremists, just drive electric cars

modern pebble bed reactors don't go china syndrome: no silkwood, no three mile island, no chernobyl

additionally, old style fuel rod reactors only used 5% of the fuel, requiring tens of thousands of years of high grade waste storage and a constant bomb threat

the new reactors use 90% of the fuel and only require a couple hundred years of low grade low threat storage

so, review: modern nuclear tech has no greenhouse gases, no bomb threats, low grade waste problem

nuclear should be, if everyone understands the tech, an environmentalist's best firend AND a national security policy analysts best friend

nuclear is the best solution to our security and environmental problems

the scientists understand this, we're just waiting for the public and the politicians to catch up to the implications of the latest nuclear tech

Re:people please

[Yergle143]

'Just go Nuclear OK'

This scientist considers the problem a bit more carefully.
World Power consumption tallies 12 TW annually.
Recoverable Uranium deposits tally 3.4-17 million metric
tons with a total energy content of from 60-300 TW.
So after 6-30 years and all of the U is used up the world
will be left with the same quandary it had before (assuming
that WMD proliferation and/or an acute waste problem have
not forced the issue sooner).
Nature (2002) v 298 p 981
The trouble with coal is it is very cheap.
The trouble with 'just' type answers is that somebody
has probably not done their arithmetic.
537

Re:people please

[mtaff]

Modern nuclear should be a part of our total energy solution, in addition to wind farms, hydroelectric, and solar-thermal engines, plus others. We ought to leave petroleum as a backup-only fuel source. Let's not end our dependence on oil only to replace it with a dependence on nuclear. Lets get some balance in our energy supply.

I submit that for national security and flexibility reasons, that we don't let any single energy source be more than ~25% of our total energy use.

Solar-thermal engines + storage are now able to make up at least 50% of US electric needs, but we should have modern nuclear power as a partial backup (as opposed to mostly using petroleum for backup).

In some cases, H2 can already make a feasible energy storage, and with the inevitable improvements in electrolysis and fuel cells, it will get even better.

Re:people please

[dbIII]

so, review: modern nuclear tech has no greenhouse gases

Please stick with reality - the fuel is made from a rock dug out of the ground and processed, so there are greenhouse gasses, but with high grade fuel it comes out at about one third less than the next contender (gas turbines). This still makes nuclear look very good on that point but has the advantage of being real and not just being advertising spin. If you want to advocate nuclear power on an unrelated article first learn about how it works and the entire process.

Re:people please

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Doesn't that total energy content come from one trip through a thermal reactor? You get about a 1000 kilowatt per gram, but you also produce plutonium.
octave:1> kw_per_gram=1000 kw_per_gram = 1000
octave:2> kw_per_metric_ton=kw_per_gram * 1000000
kw_per_metric_ton = 1000000000
octave:3> 3.4 * kw_per_metric_ton
ans = 3400000000

So this agrees with your calculation. But we aren't at this point "right back where we were before", because the "waste" is actually a fuel (which France's and Japan's breeder reactors make use of, and "actually produces more fuel than it consumes"). There are also thorium breeder reactors, with "thorium reserves estimated to be 5-6 times the known availability of uranium sources"

So 6 to 30 years becomes an estimate that ignores the energy content of the fuel produced, and also ignores thorium reserves. In fact, "recoverable" is based on current market prices. If you allow for the inevitable doubling of the market price,

Thus, while today's low uranium cost equates to about 50 years of assured resources (3.1 Mt) using conventional reactors at the current usage rate, a doubling of the market price increases this time roughly ten-fold. In all, conventional estimated resources account for about 250 years' supply (16.2 Mt) at the current consumption rate. This does not include advanced uranium-extraction scenarios (phosphate deposits accounting for 22 Mt, seawater accounting for up to 4000 Mt) that require 10-15 times the current market price.

Bottomline: there is a lot more to nuclear power than the numbers you sketched out.

Re:people please

[/dev/trash]

Ok. We'll build the first in your backyard.

Re:people please

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, for the love of god, LEARN ENGLISH. You do the nuclear movement no good when you sound like an eight year old who can't handle simple things like capital letters, punctuation, and proper (hell, just readable would suffice) sentence and paragraph structure, let alone more complex things like global energy policy. Nobody takes eight year olds seriously about anything, however right they may be.

Near-zero emmissions possible?

[cr0sh]

I might be missing a step here, but I think a transportation system could be built that would be reduce emmissions output to zero (or near enough).

Start with a vehicle that burns the biodiesel. Capture the emmisions into some substrate(s) to sequester the CO, CO2, and NOX. Add a system which monitors this and displays it on the dashboard. When you go to fuel up your tank, depending on the level of the emmision capture modules, you can trade them in for new, empty modules (what would be even cooler is if the substrate was liquid based, then the pump system could vaccuum out and store the used stuff, and replace it with new). So far, so good, right?

The used modules (or substrate liquid, etc) get sent back to the processing plant, which takes the modules/substance, and using a combination of heat/chemical processing, causes the substrate to release its load of CO, CO2, and NOX which is then bubbled (or sprayed, as another poster noted) through the algea tanks, which with sunlight, create more biodiesel. The used substrate/modules, after they have emptied, are then recycled into new substrate/modules (and sent back to the filling stations for reuse).

Could this work? Seems like it is too simple for it to work. I imagine that it wouldn't be perfectly emmissions free (best case scenario is you will have at least some waste once you have processed/reused the substrate/modules enough). Have I missed any steps?

It also...

[Anonymous Coward]

It also cleans AND straightens you teeth!!

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You really think we can best algae at converting sunlight to useful energy? The little buggers have been around billions of years. We've been screwing with photovoltaics for decades. There's this thing known as "expertise"...

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[ChrisGilliard]

Sure we can do it more efficiently. That's like saying that since Oil is currently the cheapest form of energy, we cannot possibly beat it because it's been around for billions of years or whatever. We're getting close with photovoltaics and in the next 50 years (maybe way less) photovoltaics will be the cheapest form of energy and used the most. Already, if you are not on the energy grid, it's cheaper to use photovoltaics than it is to extend the grid to your home.

Just burn the algae again

[HermanAB]

in the power station. Hey, perpetual motion, sustained by some solar photosynthesis to make up for the inefficiencies.

Re:How does this really help? Yep.

[Jaywalk]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

The only thing your missing is what it's replacing. When you use diesel made from petroleum you release carbon that's been sequestered below ground for millenia. Furthermore, petrochemical diesel has a high sulfur content, which leads to acid rain. Biodiesel -- whether from algae or other sources -- is "carbon neutral" because the process of making more (i.e., growing algae) takes just as much carbon out of the air as burning the fuel puts back.

It doesn't clean up the air, but it doesn't make it dirtier either. Theoretically, you could grow algae -- or trees, for that matter -- and just bury them to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but that costs money. Biodiesel production, in theory, could pay for itself by replacing petrochemical use.

Use the algae to fire the powerplant...

[knarf]

OK, this proposal would make it possible to get some more use out of the carbon in coal or other fossile fuels before it hits the atmosphere. Nice, but...

Why not use those algae - or a fuel made out of them - to fire the powerplant itself? Then use the power produced by the plant to do... (insert whatever you want to do with electricity, eg. drive cars? produce hydrogen to drive them? etc.). This way the carbon stays mostly put around the powerplant, ergo no or hardly any CO2 emissions. It might not be the most efficient use of the fuel produced from the algae but it does lead to a greater reduction in emissions.

Can the loop be closed?

[Jaywalk]

The problem is that the algae requires something around 13% CO2 gas to grow in any useful amount. The level of CO2 naturally occuring in the atmosphere is about 0.035%. The only economical source to generate that much CO2 is burning Coal.

Hmm. I wonder if there is a process which would remove some of the non-CO2 gases from other kinds of exhaust, raising the percentage of CO2. If so, you could make a closed-loop and eliminate the fossil fuels. For example, an electric plant which used diesel generators runs on biodiesel. The exhaust is processed to remove non-CO2 gasses. The result is then bubbled back through algae ponds to create more biodiesel.

It would still release some CO2, but it should result in a net improvement over coal.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[valkraider]

Maybe I didn't have enough contractors to choose from, but the best I could find would pay itself off in 26 years. 26 YEARS!! Sorry, but no thanks. I will have moved to another house by then, and I won't get my money back for that system.

First off, you are assuming that it will not add any value to your house. Sure you may not get your money back in actual utility bills (although the utility rates always go up) - you will get it back with increased resale value, and possibly tax incentives to boot!

But second, there are a whole host of ways that you "get your money back" from things like this that are intangibles. Things that cannot be directly amoritized, but should be considered. Much like biofuels.

Using solar you put less demand on the utility infrastructure. That can mean reduced infrastructure costs and help keep rates down and reduce things like blackouts and whatnot.

You reduce demand for power generated by dirty sources like coal plants or disruptive sources like hydro. Which can in turn save money by reducing pollution that needs be cleaned up, or reducing negative effects of pollution that have to be dealt with, like increases in asthma cases or reduced fish populations.

Solar can help reduce heat island effects, and put to use some of the non permeable building surfaces we have created.

Solar systems can help you keep your power for most things during power outages or storms, or natural disasters.

I am just imagining things - but I am sure that there are many intangible ways that using solar reduces your tax dollars spent, and other benefits as well.

Just something to think about. Not an exact science - just food for thought.

Squeezing Algae...?

[dbucowboy]

PETA is going to throw a fit...

Bezin's Calculations ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bezin claims the following fuel production for
a 1000 MW electric plant with a 2000 acre farm:

40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons
of ethanol. (per year)

Ok so biodiesel contains 147 million joules of energy per gallon and ethanol contains 88 million joules per gallon.

So total algae conversion of energy per year is:
40e6 * 147e6 + 50e6 * 88e6 = 1.03e16 joules

The plant electric energy production per year is:
1000e6*3600*24*365 = 3.15e16 joules

So the algae can make the equalvant of 1/3 the plants
yearly energy output ! (?) I DONT BELIEVE IT.

Linear vs exponential

[dbIII]

are interesting, the real solution as I've pointed out in the past is cost effective Solar power.

Photovoltaics are great in situations where you are not on the grid and don't need a lot of power, but they don't scale up. It is an additive situation - double the amount of equipment and you get twice the power. Due to this really big photovoltaic installations don't make sense and the the concept of them is just used by the nuclear crowd to make their technology look better. Where heat is involved you can get more than twice the output for twice the amount of equipment - so eventually you'll reach a size where very expensive electricity generating equipment like nuclear will get ahead of an additive technology that is far better at a smaller scale.

You'll all notice it was heat that was the issue, not the source of heat - so beyond a certain scale various types of solar thermal energy are a lot better than photovoltaics. Photovoltaics are useful in a wide variety of places but for large amounts of base load you want to use a variety of other things (and not any single "one true energy" - that's for impractical fanatics).

A recent photovoltaic design using organic polymers and carbon nanotubes will probably push their use a lot furthur. You don't get anywhere near as much power out of them as a lot of other photovoltaic technologies but they have the potential to be very cheap and could go on a variety of surfaces - so we may see a lot of cheap portable low power electronic goods with their own solar rechargers built in.

I'd add a plug-in hybrid.

[Jaywalk]

Start with a vehicle that burns the biodiesel. Capture the emmisions into some substrate(s) to sequester the CO, CO2, and NOX.

I think that capturing the escaping carbon and shipping it off for processing is where the plan's going to break down. It may be technically feasible, but it's going to be expensive because it means hauling the captured carbon around with you, shipping it off and then processing it. All those extra steps are going to cost money and energy. You'd be better off using a car with a primarily electrical energy system. Since an electrical plant is stationary, it won't be necessary to transport the captured carbon. And "shipping" electricity is relatively cheap.

The plug-in hybrid is essentially an electric car with one important difference. When it runs out of electricity, a motor kicks in to recharge the battery. Optimally, it can run all day on electricity alone, but you're not stranded if you need to travel farther than the car's all-electric range. And if the car's recharging motor ran off biodiesel, so much the better.

I don't think we're ever going to get to zero-emissions, but we should be able to do a damn sight better than we're doing now.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I had a physics prof. who went with solar hot water. He said that with the tax break, he expects to breakeven in the long term. Our physics dept. chair is less enthusiastic about solar, solar cells especially. He claims it takes more energy to create a solar cell than the cell generates over its useful lifetime. I understand that after their useful lifetime, new cells can be built recycling the old cells, and averaging over the original cycle and the first recycle, you break even. It is the third generation that has any net energy production.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Actually there are exponential decays. If the exponent is positive, you have an increasing exponential (growth) curve. If the exponent is negative, you have a decreasing exponential (decay) curve.

Oil eating bacteria - Oh no, not again

[murderlegendre]

This reminds me of the gasoline / oil eating fungus that was created over a decade ago to clean up oil spills. I realize that this is a slightly different scenario, but it still has some disturbing parallels.

The engineered fungus (naturally) made it into the environment, and eventually ended up in the gasoline supply chain. It wasn't a problem for vehicles that regularly burned through tanks of fuel (it acts slowly), but for vehicles in storage, it was a mini-disaster.

Starting in the mid-late 1980's, we (motorcycle mechanics) started seeing a new form of carburetor fouling on bikes that had been stored. Once the gasoline had sat for a few weeks, and many of the volatiles had fumed off, the fungus would sttack the stale gas - turning it into a nasty, sticky green slimy mess with a distinct odor. This was some of the worst, most difficult to clean fouling you can imagine - and unless you had a real pro to handle the cleaning, the carbs were on the verge of being scrap metal. Normal carb cleaning products wouldn't touch the green residue, only one particular product from Yamaha that was designed for just this type of fouling. I can only imagine how much monetary damage this caused to motorcycle owners, shops and manufacturers. I assume the situation was similar in the seasonal power equipment field.

I can visualize an engineered algae or fungus, that thrives on hydrocarbons and their products of combustion, setting up a dinner table in my car's oilpan. Just some food for thought (ugh).

probably nonspecific

[BitterAndDrunk]

It's probably a pain the the ass to grow specific strains of algae. But as an aquarium owner, hell yes it's easy to grow algae. The trick is NOT growing algae.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[budgenator]

In the Honolulu area its solar water heaters or cold water period. I'm amazed at how hot the southern facing front door on the house gets; I've been playing with the idea of putting thermally operated vents in the top and bottom of the door to use the heat that otherwise gets wasted; I'm in Michigan. I suspect that just opening and closing your house's drapes at the oppertune times could drop heating fuel use by a 5 -10 %.

How is this not cruelty to plants?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone think of the plants, or before you know it they'll be harvesting your children!!

Back-O-Envelope calcs cont'd

[zippthorne]

(2,000 acre)*(400 (W / (m^2))) * (1 year) = 1.021×10^17 joules
area * average insolation * 1 year = energy

which makes the algae about 10% efficient if your figures are correct.

I'm with you on the skepticism. I find it hard to believe that anything living could be 10% efficient at creating useful products from sunlight. Of course, I don't know anything about algae though.

Senior Design Project at WSU

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is old news to me since I was part of a senior design team researching possible methods for CO2 handling for a fuel refinery in this state. My project was in the Fall of 2000. We found the most promising algae projects were already underway at the University of Hawaii (http://www.catalog.hawaii.edu/academic-units/ctah r/plant-biotech.htm) but the point was not lost on us that converting CO2 into fuel didn't actually remove it chemically in the end. Burn the fuel later and you have CO2 again.

Our proposal actually involved using the 99.95% chemically pure CO2 to enrich the atmosphere at a hypothetical hydroponic greenhouse complexe offsite but nearby the refinery while using low-energy waste heat to keep them temperature-controlled all year. Unfortunately, as the parent points out, large amounts of light are needed to encourage growth and Washington does not live at a light-intensive lattitude (especially the western half of the state which is famous for rain).

The difficulty is that this is more of an environmentalist's idea of poetic irony rather than function: fuel plants that make environmentally-friendly and robust crops as well. Image-wise, how do you convince people that crops grown right across from an oil refinery are healthy? Good luck. We can't even convince people that nuclear power is clean in this state (Hanford, anyone?).

Other industry proposals involve sequestering the gas at extreme oceanic depths or in spent wells where they currently pump brine anyway. It is good to know they are looking into it but "they" have been for awhile and I keep hearing about researchers doing the looking and no plants doing any building...

Why use the biodiesel in cars?

[grahamsz]

It seems like there's a lot of overhead in having a powerstation have the equipment to create biodiesel, and then setting up a distribution network to deal with a relatively small amount of it.

Why not have the power station burn the biodiesel and use it to create electricity, it already has a distribution network for getting the electricity out.

I'm not sure about this, but...

[SheeEttin]

I'm not sure about this, but I don't think algae can contract STDs.
Algae doesn't do that.

Well Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying for a long time that our continuing contamination of the oceans is much more responsible for any climate or chemical changes in the atmosphere than anything we've done on land. It is the life forms that we kill off in the oceans that gave us the air we breath today. They are the scrubbers. This talk about reducing emissions is a joke. Bring the oceans back to life and all will be well.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[ambrosen]

Nice explanation of how to maximise energy production from solar photovoltaics. It's a shame for your theory that they atually recoup energy costs in the first year or two after installation. Which is not so shabby really. The embedded energy in a coal power plant is equivalent to its first 4 months of generation, for example.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[Anonymous Coward]

This IS solar power.

What do you think plants use to generate energy?

The main problem with traditional solar energy, apart from the inefficiency of solar panels, is that it is most abundant in the places & at the times when it is least needed. This means expensive batteries & a large & complex distribution network.

Photosynthetic plants can store lots of this solar energy easily & cheaply.

No single energy source will solve all our problems, solar should be a small part of the energy mix, larger than it is currently, but suggesting that solar pannels will solve all our energy problems is rediculous. How is someone living in a northern climate supposed to heat their homes in winter? Electric lines running from africa?

old as the hills

[cdn-programmer]

This story is as old as the hills. I personally was looking at research in this area in 1998. You can find a lot of literature on bio-fuels. Just do a google search on biofuel algae and you'll see that research is being conducted worldwide.

Oil eating fungi have been around for eons

[cdn-programmer]

Nobody has to bio-engineer an oil eating fungus. They have been around for millions of years. An example is Stropharia rugosoannulata.

You might try using some fungicides for your carbs. Well - I suppose we could say you've got some rotten carbs on your hands!

Oh give me a break!

[cdn-programmer]

Oh give me a break! You are a scientist? If so then you haven't even caught up to what we knew in the 50's and 60's.

Following is a copy of my post to "Europe warms to nuclear power" I titled it "solutions for waste"

It is amasing how much disinformation and outright lies have been told over the years. Without a firm grasp of the facts many solvable problems are viewed as impossible. In part - this was the objective of the disinformation campaigns.

First some terminology:

Natural uranium......... 99.3% U238, 0.7% U235
Depleated Uranium....... 99.7% U238, 0.3% U235 (varies: 0.2%-0.4% U235)
Reactor grade uranium... 96.0% U238, 4.0% U235 but this varies also.
Slightly enriched(CANDU) 99.1% U238, 0.9% U235 (varies: 0.9%-2.0% U235)
Spent fuel.............. 95.0% U238, 1.0% U235, 1.0% Pu, 3% crud (varies)

Reactor grade here refers to Low Enriched typically used for the USA light water pressurized reactors.

In the spent fuel, the U235 fraction can be as low as 0.4% and the Pu fraction is composed of Pu239 and Pu240. The Pu isotopes are practically impossible to separate and the Pu240 is so reactive that it is questionable - although probably possible - to have use as a bomb. A dirty weapon is possible.

The Candu fuel cycle starts with 99.3% U238 and 0.7% U235. The spent fuel is about 0.23% U235 and 0.27% Pu.

The Thorium fuel cycle converts Th to U233 which is as good as U235 for weapons and which can be easily chemically separated from the thorium.

---------------

It should be painfully obvious to just about everyone that only about 3% of the mass of the spent fuel is crud. This is the nuclear waste and it _can_ be burned up several ways including spallation. The _other_ 97% is fuel. Furthermore the spent fuel from a light water pressurized reactor would generally be considered enriched for a CANDU reactor.

Fuel reprocessing removes the "crud" and allows over 97% of the "spent fuel" to be elegible to be stuffed right back into the reactor.

So why isn't reprocessing used? Well - in Europe it is. The USA in a magnificent display of stupidity and circular thinking decided to go it alone and proclaim that a once through fuel cycle is the _only_ way to go. Part of of the political support for this stems from the build up of stock piles of "spent fuel" which the public is told has no use. It does - it's future reactor fuel. By analogy - if someone were to dump a litre of crud in a barrel of oil we certainly wouldn't call it "spent oil"! We'd figure out a way to remove the crud. However I can remember my father dumping "waste oil" on the ground - hopefully we now collect it and re-refine it.

So one faction of the anti-nuclear crowd realised that keeping large stockpiles of deemed "waste" around gave them something to point their fingers at. Another faction perhaps with some justification just didn't want anyone to develop the technology to recycle the fuel because this does involve building plants that can separate the Plutonium. Also - by shortening the exposure time of the fuel mix the ratios of Pu 239 to Pu 240 can be controlled with the Pu 240 fraction reduced to under 7%. This is weapons grade plutonium. Yet another faction didn't want competition from a viable nuclear industry so they supported anything that generally doesn't make much sense.

Now the thing is to look at the issue of depleated verses natural uranium. The enrichment process is expensive and still leaves about 1/2 of the original U235 in place.

As such - there is very little difference in radioactivity between natural and depleated uranium. To say one is "safe" and the other is "unsafe" is splitting hairs. They are about the same.

In fact - if we look at "spent fuel" and reprocess it to remove the highly radioactive fraction - then what is left over is very similar to both "natural" and "depleated" uranium... it just has a little plutonium. The 1/2 life of plutonium makes it more radioactive than uranium. However one must also realise that

Re:Oh give me a break!

[dbIII]

So why isn't reprocessing used? Well - in Europe it is.

Where? Didn't the Superphoenix project and Sellafeild both shut down reprocessing operations?

It seems reasonable

[Joseph_V]

Algea is often used to harvest various chemicals out of the water. They are used heavily in the aquarium industry (think huge aquariums that need to scrub animal wastes from the contained environments). These algea farms have to be harvested to keep their grown under control. This makes me think that a series of special-purpose, biologically engineered algea scrubbers could grow (given enough sun, grow quite rapidly) and then be harvested as various fuels. From the hip I would have guessed the raw algea could be used as bio-diesel, but I guess the biologers may know more than I do about this stuff.

uh, 13%

[alizard]

The numbers I've seen say that 3% is the point of diminishing returns. The source was "Renewable biological systems for alternative sustainable energy production (FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin - 128)" - google is your friend.

The point here is to intercept CO2 from the atmosphere by turning it into biodiesel, then use that biodiesel to replace the fossil fuel that would otherwise be burned. So we still wind up with a net loss of CO2 going into the atmosphere.

No argument about the need to get rid of coal, but one problem at a time, getting rid of oil imports is the one that's easiest to solve.

Re:uh, 13%

[PaintyThePirate]

Oh, oops. Thanks for the fact check. I got my figures confused. 13% is the CO2 level in coal power plant. From a DoE study:

There are quite a number of sources of waste CO2. Every operation that involves combustion of fuel for energy is a potential source. The program targeted coal and other fossil fuel-fired power plants as the main sources of CO2. Typical coal-fired power plants emit flue gas from their stacks containing up to 13% CO2. This high concentration of CO2 enhances transfer and uptake of CO2 in the ponds. The concept of coupling a coal-fired power plant with an algae farm provides an elegant approach to recycle of the CO2 from coal combustion into a useable liquid fuel.

I agree, coal and algae is a far better solution than coal and oil.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[swb]

Sure you may not get your money back in actual utility bills (although the utility rates always go up) - you will get it back with increased resale value, and possibly tax incentives to boot!

Decreased resale value.

Weird shit added onto houses almost never adds value and frequently erodes value as the people interested in the house generally don't need/want/understand the previous owner's "innovation" and only think of the extra money it will cost fix/upgrade/replace/remove it. It's a liability. And in many cases even people who are interested in it are also knowledgable and opinionated and don't want your specific stuff.

Even swimming pools are seen as liabilities in most places where they cannot be used 365 days a year. Home theaters can be, even.

A neighbor sold his house recently; nice house, but he was trying to sell his home theater setup which he had custom-built enclosures made for. I thought it was nice, but to some people the gear was too complex/expensive and the theater room too inflexible and passed on the house not wanting to buy into his setup.

If you want ROI on a house, remodel the kitchen and bathrooms, replace the carpet and paint the walls. Everything else is a money loser in terms of resale value.

Better than returning to earth

[MarcQuadra]

I'd rather have some robotic squeegees scraping off the excrement and dropping it into the ocean. The balloons could stay afloat using solar power and stay put by tethers to the ocean floor.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[njh]

And yet they are wrong!

http://www.toolbase.org/tertiaryT.asp?DocumentID=3 216&CategoryID=949
"Paybacks vary widely, but you can expect a simple payback of 4 to 8 years on a well-designed and properly installed solar water heater."

http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/energy_payback.html
"Paybacks for multicrystalline modules are 4 years for systems using recent technology"

There's a lot of BS flying on both sides of the debate, but the reality is that PV is a good solution for many problems.

Kyocera powers their entire solar panel plant on PV.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[njh]

Indeed. I'm actually writing a simulation for this exact problem (actually, I'm working on solar greenhouse design) Email me if you're interested in code.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[njh]

Actually I recently read that even these renovations typically never return their cost in a selling house. Your are spot on about the subjective nature of people, and they will never like the colour scheme, the fixtures or the rangehood. Having recently bought a house I am begining to understand the german idea of taking everything including the kitchen sink with you. (That's why Ikea sells lots of kitchen stuff - even in rental places you take your kitchen with you, apparently!)

On the other hand, having just bought a house my first priority has been to replace the cladding with a much higher R-value, regas the split-cycle, double glaze and install solar hot water. Those things will be earning me money long before I sell the place. I can survive 3 years with an old bathroom.

thank you nimby

[circletimessquare]

i suppose you and all the other nimby's would rather be sending your fathers, sons and grandsons to die in the middle east than build some completely safe nuclear plants in rural areas, huh? enjoy your next hurricane as well, mr. i love greenhouse gas

Re:thank you nimby

[/dev/trash]

i aleady live in a rural area with a reactor.

no problem...

[alizard]

and thanks for sourcing your number, it might come in handy one of these days.

separating carbon dioxide

[j1m 5n0w]

I suppose the hard part of what you propose is separating the CO2 from the exhaust. I don't know if this is the best method, but one way is to compress the air until the CO2 liquifies. Unfortunately, this would require a lot of energy, probably more than the power plant produces by burning coal in the first place. By comparison, using algae to absorb the carbon dioxide sounds pretty good.

Re:separating carbon dioxide

[budgenator]

The technologies are here, but they are un-economical unless you sell the CO2 for industrual uses. CO2 is actually pretty useful as a solvent or a ssheild gas inn welding.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Yes, the dept. chair is on sabbatical, and I want to check in with him to see what his sources and reasoning were, but after googling around it sure seems there is plenty of data that suggests to me I should recant my post.

It is interesting to note, in you second link, that

Today's PV industry generally recrystallizes any of several types of "off-grade" silicon from the microelectronics industry, and estimates for the energy used to purify and crystallize silicon vary widely. Because of these factors, energy payback calculations are not straight-forward.

and

To calculate payback, Dutch researcher Alsema reviewed previous energy analyses and did not include the energy that originally went into crystallizing microelectronics scrap.

It was easy to find results to quote, it was not so easy to find results where terms where clearly defined, and actual calculations were shown.

What is this? Some sort of Algae? Ahh!...

[tyrione]

...a sex lubricant!

Question: From what piece of B-movie brilliance do these words utter forth?

"Good people of Earth. Heed my warning.."

This is actually a very sketchy article

[juushin]

Why don't they give an estimate for the conversion of algae to biodiesel? The reason is, that if you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on how much 'biofuel' you get out of a single cell based on its lipid membrane (you can even factor in an order of magnitude higher lipid if you are feeling quite generous), and you scale that up to the number of cells you typically get in a liquid culture growing at log phase, you end up with a number that is miniscule. In other words, a lake full of algae produces, harvested once, produces on the order of a micromole (!!!!) of 'biodiesel' that then has to be reformed (reduced) to produce hydrocarbons for combustion. I did this calculation once on a train two or three years ago and was amazed at how low the number was. With a micromole of alkane you could keep a cigarette lighter lit for maybe a few seconds. I wanted to read more about the process, since I am very skeptical, so I fingered Berzin at MIT -- not very surprising that nobody exists at MIT by that name (*everyone* at MIT is listed on their directory). As far as fixing CO2 goes -- plants do it just fine. You don't have to go to the trouble of growing up massive amounts of algae just to fix CO2. And actually, plants are much more efficient b/c of the lower solubility of CO2 in water versus in air (and mass transport, diffusion, etc..), so we would all be better off planting more trees than growing gigantic vats of algae. This article has about as much creditability as the prior article on producing current using trees. You can get a volt out of a lemon, but the *current* is extremely low, so the overall power produced is essentially zero. -Doug

Re:This is actually a very sketchy article

[Anonymous Coward]

As an estimate, begin with 50% of the algae (B. Braunii) in weight as oil. you can grow about 30g/m^2/day on the wild, more under controlled conditions.

Francisco Colaço, who works with this same algae.

loop faster DAMMIT!

[DennisInDallas]

With all that extra green house gas heating the place up we're gonna need more fuel to run our air conditioners more.

We need to increase federal funding for oil exploration and drilling now so that the new piplines & refineries can be on line when people start cranking down their thermostats.

The thing I didn't get from the UNH postings was why the alge had to be grown on land, he's all on about using salt water to save the expense of desalination, then right there outta the same mouth he's pumping it to the freaking desert. Man, I been to the desert and it's a long way, long way to haul the water and a long way to haul the oil to get it to the power plant. Why don't they do like the whalers and just squish the oil out right there on the boat, then it's already aboard the exxon valdez and ready to spill. Couldn't they float a big honking sheet of plastic out behind the boat and then haul it in to harvest? It would be a lot less pipe if you only had to pump the water from under the plastic to over the plastic, 15 or 20 mils tops. And then you could move the whole thing so that it was in the sun all the time, which if I remember correctly the amount of sunshine was the reason NewHampshire boy wanted to utilize the desert in the first place.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[swb]

Some of that may be a regional variation, as I have heard from realtors and others where I live in the Midwestern U.S. that bathrooms and kitchens generally are beneficial for house value (perhaps not *profitable* -- ie, adding more value than they cost), but at least they have some real increase the house's gross value.

Ultimately some updates become necessary because people generally like to move into a house with "updated" stuff like kitchens and baths, and some even pay attention to furnaces, windows. A 1940s house with a 1940s kitchen is a problem.

I replaced my furnace and air conditioning a year after I moved in because I knew they would die within 5 years and I wanted to gain the savings over the 25 year old models installed.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[njh]

Yeah, as I said there is a lot of BS floating around.

One form of solar that can pay back in months is solar space heating. There are simple designs for 'solar closets' that provide say 10 kW hours/day of heating for $100 investment. You can't even buy a good gas heater for that price, ignoring the price of the fuel entirely.