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Newest Energy Source — Pond Scum
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that several start up companies include one from MIT are looking at using (both natural and engineered) algae as source of bio-fuel. Since algae grows quickly and absorbs green house gases. From the article "Soybeans can give you 50 to 60 gallons of oil an acre compared to 75 to 125 gallons for canola, but algae is almost limitless because it grows so fast, so potentially you could get 10,000 gallons per acre."
my wife is still going to insist i clean up the pond out back
A Look Back at the
U.S. Department of Energy's
Aquatic Species Program:
Biodiesel from Algae
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf
Well, it looks like global warming is solved.
Why don't they look at how to make liquified coal cheaper and better? We have the world largest reserve of coal, warranty to last for a few hundred years. We have enough reserve to make Opec oil reserve look like a bucket.
I suppose that's why the crew of the Battlestar Galactica are always chasing algae laden planets... ... oh wait, they want it to eat, not to fuel vipers? Hmm... anybody want a algae burger?
Next they'll be finding a use for lawyers!
:D)
(Oh yeah, I'm burning for that one!
I just scraped off all of the algae from the walls of my neglected fish tank. I should have saved it. :)
How excellent is this!!!
Now I can move my fish tank next to my PC, I never have to clean the damned thing, and I have un interupted power source for my computer!
This is the best discovery EVER!
Oh wait, they are worse than pond scum.
Nevermind.
They should look into making retaining ponds and doing this in the ocean. Not only is freshwater in short supply most of the earths surface is salt water.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Generate electricity for these:
http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/
or these:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
And everything else. Then you don't have to bugger about expending energy processing it the stuff into biofuels.
Deleted
It's over 9000!
Very interesting, thanks!
From a quick scan - "Even with aggressive assumptions about biological productivity, we project costs for biodiesel which are two times higher than current petroleum diesel fuel costs".
If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
There was something a bit like this on Dirty Jobs as I remember. It was a research project that took the output of a power plant (a portion of it) and ran it though tubes of algae that would filter it and remove CO2 and grow, then they could burn the algae afterwards. That way they could get the "free" energy (from the sun that the algae was storing) plus is was carbon neutral if implemented on a large scale.
We just have to be careful that while we enslave the algae, they don't know it's happening so they don't start an uprising. I don't want a very thin layer of mad green goo covering everything.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
We are having a failure to think fourth dimensionally here. Time, folks, time! 10K gal. how often?. Yes it might be in the TFA, but that's no reason to omit it from the summary.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now I just need to convince my town to stop dredging the lake near my house and turn it into renewable fuel.
Wow.
This algae idea could grow on me.
The opposite of progress is congress
If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
The problem is, taking into account inflation, in constant dollars, oil costs less today than it did 30 years ago. Yes, even at $4/gallon. So the project is still not worth doing.
As for the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, I don't think this country cares much about pollution, unless it affects people's way of life, which is doesn't (so far). A noble pursuit to be sure, but one Americans don't give a fuck about.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The article talks pretty high of this algae. Acres upon acres of biodiesel creating algae for all!
It seems pretty biased to me. No mention of the energy required to run the biodiesel plants. No mention of exactly how long each yield cycle takes. I mean, great, 10k gallons of biodiesel (even up to 20k) per acre.. per how long? It's a measure of time I thought? So why are you giving me these one-dimensional 'rates'. Sounds pretty skim on the details.
And let's talk about acres. I'd rather cover an acre of desert with solar panels than an acre of land in more moderate climates. And now I get led into the question of solar vs. algae. The algae gets its energy from photosynthesis. Great. But can an acre of algae really compete with an acre of the highest efficiency solar cells -- again, over time? Which one wins in the end?
Look, I'm not saying I disagree, I think it's great people are pursuing alternate forms of fuel. But if you're going to write an article and call it news the least you could do is play devil's advocate along side fanboy. Give me some compare and contrast, some pros and cons. That's all I want!
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
So, what's it like posting from 2028?
An alternative approach: Hydrogen from algae. (PDF warning, scroll to page 4)
Ah, dammit, the Wikipedia page is easier.
A company 'Changing World Technologies' got a lot of attention a few years ago by announcing that they could convert garbage to oil. They set up their processing plant next to a plant that processes turkeys so they could use the waste turkey guts. For the last few years they have been going to reach plant capacity "real soon".
o logies
Converting biological material to fuel hasn't become an economically sustainable technology yet in spite of the number of people working on the problem. I'll believe that algae can solve our energy woes when it actually comes about. For the time being, I'm skeptical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Techn
I found this conclusion interesting: "...we project costs for biodiesel which are two times higher than current petroleum diesel fuel costs." (Emphasis mine)
So the price of gasoline in 1998, the year the paper was written, was around $1.25 per gallon. I'll pay $2.50 a gallon for algae fuel anyday.
Dude, look at the title of the OP, you'll read "78" - that's the date the study the OP refers to was written - 78+30 == 2008...
There is a great need to increase world-wide carrying capacity without impacting high biodiversity ecosystems such as the Brazilian rainforests or continental shelf fisheries, and that reduces greenhouse phenomena. There may be an economic option that uses sea water pumped to desert areas powered by the fact that ground level temperatures are much higher than temperatures at high altitudes. Indeed, it would dump greenhouse heat to space for its power while producing biodiesel, electricity, fish, fresh water, salt and real estate -- all in quantities demanded by developed-world populations -- without adding to, and possibly even sequestering, greenhouse gases.
Proposals for solar updraft towers have typically assumed that they would be single use structures: solar to electricity via heat differentials between high altitude air and ground level greenhouse-enclosed air. The resulting system has marginal economic value.
Something which would further enhance the value of the solar updraft tower power structure is to use the greenhouse area for algae ponds to add biodiesel, water, fish and salt production to the production of electricity normally envisioned.
Doing so brings the proposal from marginally viable to viable, with a net present value, primarily from live fish production, of $3.5 billion per system, thereby allowing for far higher capitalization and/or return on investment.
Let's start with just the value of algae biodiesel:
The greenhouse area required per solar updraft tower of is huge:
(pi * (5km/2)^2) ? hectares
= 1963.49 hectares
producing peak at peak 200MW via a 1km tall tower.
We now add to this the production of algae biodiesel:
The UNH estimate for algae biodiesel production is 1 quad per 200,000 hectares. Let's assume only half of the area of the solar updraft tower greenhouse would be available for production at any time (the other half would be used for ponds that buffered heat for the inner ponds, produce fish, provide additional evaporative surface for desalination and provide recreation for residential areas at the outer rim).
That gives us:
(1963.49/2)hectares/tower;200000hectares/quad ? towers/quad
= 203.719 towers/quad
Or about 200 towers per quad of biodiesel.
We can now calculate the biodiesel per tower:
7.2gallon/1e6btu;200tower/quad ? gallon/tower
= 3.5998E+07 gallon/tower
or about 35M gallons of biodiesel per year per tower.
At $2/gallon for wholesale diesel, this yields $70M biodiesel revenue per year.
Now for electrical revenue:
At an average rate of sold production only 1/2 (100MW) of peak capacity (200MW), electrical production per tower per year, is:
100MW;year ? GWh
= 876 GWh
At $30/MWh wholesale:
100MW;year;30$/MWh ? $
= 2.628E+07 $
or about $25M electrical revenue per year.
Interestingly, the biodiesel revenue is nearly 3 times the electrical revenue of a solar updraft tower!
200*200MW or 40GW electrical peak capacity is produced per quad of biodiesel.
Further that same UNH document estimates 19 quads to replace all transportation fuel in the US or 3800 towers, which would also produce 3800*200MW or 760GW or .76TW of electricity.
Current winter capacity in the US i
Seastead this.
Been there, done that. Next you'll be telling us the the first controlled flight took place in America.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
From a quick scan - "Even with aggressive assumptions about biological productivity, we project costs for biodiesel which are two times higher than current petroleum diesel fuel costs".
If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Indeed so! The 2006 inflation adjusted price in 1998 was $18 a barrel, last I checked it was three and half times this right now. In fact the average inflation adjusted price over the last 33 years is about double the 1998 price.
If the DOE algae biodiesel cost estimate is correct then it has already been on average a break-even technology for a third of a century.
Both the total world production of oil and the production of oil available for export are peaking about right now. This has been predicted for years: http://www.energybulletin.net/147.html and current studies verify this.
Thus the cost of oil is not likely to experience any significant downward trend from now on, ever.
The original article's production estimates are a bit suspect though. The 20,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre they give as the upper range of production is 47 g/square meter a day. The DOE gives a maximum annual production of 50 g/square meter of algae (not biodiesel) a day.
Still, the technology looks really good.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Except that the report was published in 96-98, using the data at that time, instead of the 78 beginning of the study.
Something that should be kept in mind is that new technologies have emerged since then that could enable us to grow and process biofuels more efficiently. (Slashdot featured an article some time ago that featured a credit card sized biodeisel reactor that could be assembled with other such units into a stack to process large volumes of fuel efficiently.) Given all the past and present research into biofuels and the apparent growing demand for it, it might not be such a bad idea to find a way to make this cost effective, especially considering that algae is thus far the most potentially productive biofuel feedstock we know of.
Doesn't every friggin plant on earth absorb 'greenhouse gases', i.e., co2, and emits o2 ???
The misguided attempt to reduce co2 is actually a secret war on our little green friends. They hate plants!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If the 100,000 barrels per acre is even close to accurate there's more than enough hog waste to produce what biodiesel we need. I single factory farm could provide enough for hundreds of acres of algae ponds. Nitrogen is miracle grow for algae so farm waste could be the new middle east. I'd read about this process years ago but the numbers seem much better than I could have imagined.
You're neglecting improvements in technology for both processes. I suspect it's easier to go from algae to biodiesel, than it is from oil to gasoline. Plus it's harder to get oil from it's source than it is getting algae from it's source.* I've seen plans over a decade ago about putting transparent tubes coiled across the desert, and pumping algae through that, then filering at the plant.
*Note that includes the efforts to find the oil. Plus biodiesel could be made close to the source, while oil refineries are a good distance away.
TFA seems remarkably unconcerned about the fact that dense concentrations of algae require a continuous supply of water, which is not required for soybeans, canola, etc. Add to this the proposal that these algae farms are going to be in the desert -- an environment not noted for concentrations of water -- and one wonders how all of this is going to work on a large scale. Perhaps we could scumify [technical term...] a few of the more notorious human-engineered desert lakes -- Mead, Powell, Nasser, Chad, and there are probably others -- but one isn't going to immediately make Death Valley or the Gobi into the Saudi Arabia of scum-fed biofuels.
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think that it is worth noting that the 10,000 gallons per acre estimate assumes that the algae will have a gas feed from a coal power plant. It would be more apt to compare the tield of this process to direct generation of liquid fuel from coal since it's essentially generating it indirectly. Other questions unanswered by TFA: Are there enough coal plants in the country to support a total replacement of gasoline by this method? Does it affect the efficiency of the power plant? How long will our coal resources last if this were implemented on a large scale? What are the maintainence costs (hard to estimate from a test setup, but important to consider)?
I have been reading about biodiesel from algae for at least 5 years now. Sounds great: Closed carbon cycle. Free energy from sunlight. Happy friendly energy.
My question is: where are the big oil companies? Why aren't they buying up huge tracts of land in southern Texas and Mexico and digging huge ponds? Why aren't the hiring algae biologists by the thousands? Building proof test algae refineries? Seems to me that if this were such a great idea ExxonMobil etc would be all over it like flies on algae (so to speak).
Perhaps they are and it is all being kept secret. But as far as I can tell every article/web post/discussion of this process traces back to a single paper by a single biology professor with some basic input/output calculations and not much else. Which makes me a bit suspicious.
sPh
> If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs,
Only if you can burn the product in current systems, otherwise you have to factor in the conversion costs. And you have to assume oil prices will still be insane when your production makes it online. I'd bet on oil remaining high for a while personally, not sure how many billions I'd bet though.
> especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
How moronic do they make Greens these days? Yea that pond scum will absorb a lot of CO2... and release it right back when you burn it for fuel. So it is carbon neutral unless you plan to compact the algae into bricks and bury it. Of course neutral still beats burning dead dinosaurs who fixed their carbon millions of years ago.
Stories like this are why I don't worry about running out of oil or about global warming. Anytime the system begins to get unbalanced it forces a correction through the free market, and it works even faster and better when the government stays the hell out of things and allows nature to take its course. As oil becomes more expensive, potential replacements that used to be discarded as uncompetitive start looking viable. Once one gets established the intense competition that drove the cost of oil production down will make the new thing cheap and plentiful.
Democrat delenda est
The problem with algae as a biodiesel source is that algae have a very low oil content. The oil from soybeans and cannola is extracted almost directly, while any substantial percentage of the fuel value of algae in the form of oil would have to be synthesized at high cost. To simply extract oil from algae we would have to re-engineer algae to produce more oils, and even then, the gross biomass to oil ratio would likely be quite high.
The article mentions that the ideal place to house this type of energy plant would the desert, like the pilot in the American Southwest.
I am assuming that this is not a total closed system and thus will consume water. Since it mentions doubling the biomass in "a couple of hours" I assume it would consume a lot of water... (but IANAMarineBiologist)
As a resident of the southwest I can say that one of biggest ecoplogical hurdle we face is our need for water. We keep "doubling our biomass" with a constant influx of people excaping the big cities on the coasts with no new sources of water. We constantly are threatening to run the Rio Grande dry in spots and put many species and ecologies in threat. Not to mention all the farmers and communities competing for the same resource.
It sounds like a great idea but not in my backyard. Lets do it, but near a big water supply, not the desert southwest...
(Hmmm... I assume the algae can handle salt water, how about nearer to the ocean? But then the real estate costs more!)
Considering TFA confuses 10,000 gallons an acre w/ limitless, we should just expect bad math and misleading statement from anything related to this...
I don't think people realize that how important this is. I converted my van to run on
raw vegetable oil and have been quite happy with it. I can easily see this replacing
mineral oils in a relatively short time. It is becoming more and more popular as
diesel prices keep increasing.
Biodiesel is basically chemically altered vegetable oil that reduces viscosity
(transesterfication) but is not necessary if you modify your diesel to reduce the viscosity
by heating the oil to around 200F.
While electric cars are super neato and probably our long term solutions, I can see
imagine that it's gonna be pretty hard to make an electric powered jet airplane, but
I think an algae oil powered jet airplane might be pretty reasonable. After all
kerosene (used for jet fuel) is very similiar to diesel #1.
Burning fossil fuels creates a similar cycle in which CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by plants which then over an extordinarily long period of time turn into oil/coal. However, this process of plants turning into the black stuff takes millions of years, much much slower than the rate at which it is currently being burned. On the other hand, harvesting plants to convert to biodiesel takes only a handful of months (with crops/algae). The speed at which the plant matter is generated and the speed at which it is burned is much closer to each other, canceling each other out.
It doesn't need fresh water, you can grow algae in sea water -- something our world still has no shortage of. So. . . Do we know any countries with warm and sunny deserts adjacent to the coast? I can think of a few. Hmm. . . Saudi Arabia just might end up becoming the Saudi Arabia of biofuels!
It might also be possible to put your facilities onto floating platforms offshore. There's lots of possibilities.
I put up a linked article about this just last saturday, you might be interested in it, they are producing biofuel with algae from a commercial power plant by using the CO2.
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/12/23/12545
... REBEL scum.
I'm getting tired of all the "*gasp* New Source of BioFuel!" articles I keep seeing. Look, all sorts of life creates all sorts of things that burn. Some significant portions of our body chemistry are designed to oxidize. This isn't rocket sci -- er, brain surgery here.
The real problems aren't a matter of finding something else we can burn, it's a matter of creating a supply chain and infrastructure to rival that of petroleum in terms of quantity, price, availability and reliability, and then of maintaining that long enough for our dumb-ass auto companies to produce decent vehicles which make use of the new fuel, in the styles and manner that will persuade consumers to buy and drive them. In other words, the real problem isn't scientific, it's a matter of economics, logistics, and public policy.
Wake me when someone solves *that* one.
The price of gasoline and the price of oil it comes from are related, but not directly. A huge percentage of what you pay at the pump goes to taxes.
A better comparison would be to crude prices (as some posters above have done), and it's still competative.
Pardon my bluntness, but reasearching higher yields per hectare is stupid.
Land suitable for algae production is cheap.
What we should be looking into are cheaper ways to harvest, grow, and water it.
Practical algae growth involving cheap materials but lower yields per hectare - think "sea water pumped over plastic tarps".
Algae grown in the outdoors, without CO2 charged water and heating may "only" have 10-20 times higher yields than Canola, instead of 80-130, but so what?
Even at approximately 100 barrels (4200 gallons) per hectare per year, the Great Sandy could grow all the worlds current oil needs twice over.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Hmmm, I've always thought the Wright brothers were bicycle repairmen and did all the engineering work themselves. If they had had adequate funding, they could have bought a more powerful motor and have unaided take-offs. Many Brazilians and French people consider the first "true" powered flight to have been performed by Alberto Santos Dumont in Paris in 1906, because he used an Antoinette 50HP V16 engine, vs. the Wright brothers 12HP four-cylinder engine, so he could take off unaided while the Wright brothers needed a catapult.
I think a lot of the original research was done here - http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Algae, like any other bio-mass, is mostly water. I expect that drying the algae would be a huge problem. You can't feed soggy green slime directly into a power station - not if you want to keep the fire burning anyway...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Since when do we measure energy in gallons? Useless measurements are... useless.
CAPTCHA: Babyish
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Newsflash:The Government imposes the carbon market on companies. Otherwise pollution is what economists call an Externality. Free markets fail whenever externalities exist. So the free market is incapable of solving Global Warming without Government.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
The remaining biomass should be considered a feature rather than a bug. Most dried bio-mass has an energy content of about 4,000 BTU/lb, about the same as wood and roughly 1/2 that of coal.
Maybe, but it might be relevant to worry about where the oil comes from and considering that, how sustainable our oil consumption is with our current sources. I think the issue is a little more than just being carbon neutral. As far as climate change is concerned, I'm not convinced that the markets will do anything fast enough to buffer the expense of many large cities dealing with rising water levels. Maybe it's fortunated that the largest stock exchanges exist in areas predicted to be affected by increasing water levels. Not saying that I have the answers, just expressing my doubt that the free market is offing real solutions here.
Depends upon the algae. Diatoms are 40% oil.
This is basic economics. Oil companies make more money with less work by keeping supplies low. Demand is always there, that isn't a problem at all, so they juke the market by not producing more oil. It's dogsquat simple in concept and makes them uberbillions every quarter. They don't want to work harder for less money per work unit. no one wants to do that really. Do you? Would you go out of yur way to put yourself out of a job? That's what you are thinking the oil companies should do, and guaranteed, most of them hates that idea. And it is in their economic capitalist interest to work as hard as they can behind the scenes to sabotage any alternative energy project which threatens their cartel monopoly on transporation energy. They are OK with "studies" as long as the studies last 30 years and result in more studies. Dig it?
BP is an example (one of the very, very few) of an energy company that used to be just an oil company, but they "seen the light" and now are "energy", hence their commitment to oil, solar and windpower and whatever else looks good and they have been working along those lines for several years now. Exxon is an oil company only and have testified (their last *disgusting* parasite bloated tick CEO who got the 400 million buck severance package) in front of the senate to this effect. They have no interest whatsoever in anything else, because that means they would have to go work harder and invest their profits in new infrastructure instead of enjoying the cash as they see fit with private jets, yachts booze and hookers and they think "FU, we don't have to do anything you want us to do, because we got what you need,an we run the government for the most part,so suck it up trapped consumer and turn over your wallet to us".
They work on the artificial scarcity & controlled government model of capitalism.
I posted the grandparent.
- World-Technologies-Palmer9apr05.htm Now it doesn't. I leave it to someone more clever than I to explain what happened.
When I posted, the wiki article had a link to the following story: http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2005/Changing
Anyway, wrt to the 400 barrels per day; that would be about 60 tons. Given an input of 300 tons, the efficiency is way less than what the company claimed it would be. They are producing and selling oil. On the other hand, if they were doing it economically, they would be building plants all over the place. They aren't.
Dave, From the research sited, they spent a good part of their time trying to find an algae species which was productive of oil. It seems that they failed, in that they cite diatoms but did not try to grow them. Given the energies needed in the biochemical pathways that produce long-chain glycerols, I think that oil productivity is likely to be much lower than 40%. With productivity lower and cost of extaction higher than the poster seems to expect, this might not be such an attractive area for investment afterall.
Thomas
If an algal plant was covered, as I assume it would be, evaporation would be eliminated. I read in a previous article that the current styles grow the algae in plastic tubes.
So, while a large ammount of water would be required to fill it, very little water would be required maintaining the water levels. The plant to convert the concentrated algae to biodeisel would probably consume more water.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Ok, so lets say we don't run out of oil. Not only do we not run out of oil but it remains the most economically viable source of energy for some time to come. At what point does the "free market" then solve global warming? Seems to me that an unregulated free market would just keep on polluting until it is too late (or at least really bad).
The only way to keep corporations from destroying the environment is to regulate them. Enforce environmental standards and fine the hell out of corporations when they violate. Sorry, but free markets don't work for everything.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The technology in this article about MIT research has been slashdotted at least one other time in the last 12-24 months. See, for example: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/1 1/1718256
In fact the average inflation adjusted price over the last 33 years is about double the 1998 price. How does that work? 1998 was only 8 years ago...
random thought... The phrase "Scum Bag" is currently an insult. Will we change that to be a bit of praise for a hard worker?
I know this is offtopic, but the post itself highlights the fact that one of those involved here is from MIT. What difference does it make? For a community of people like those that read slashdot---those that appreciate things that are outside of the mainstream and shun brand loyalty---it's strange that many worship MIT. While they do good work over there, their school brand is unbelievably overhyped.
(This post does not stem from bitterness; I got into MIT but turned them down to go elsewhere. Many other schools have research programs that are as strong or stronger, but without the overhyped brand.)
Biodiesel blends up to at least B30 burn just fine in almost all diesel vehicle engines made within the last decade, and most Volkswagen engines are warranted even for B100. (Sources) Just make sure you taper up the biodiesel concentration and have a few fuel filters on hand when making the switch, as biodiesel really cleans out your vehicle's fuel lines. Conversion costs will factor themselves in; as the price of petrol goes up, and petrol vehicles wear out, people will replace their petrol vehicles with diesel vehicles that burn biodiesel.
Stories like this are why I don't worry about running out of oil or about global warming.I agree, if it takes only the area of Ohio to provide the energy for all the world's motor vehicles.
I've talked to those guys, they've already gone as far as they can with small scale tests. They're ready to try a production test.
Just can't understand why it's taking so long to get behind this idea. At least the few million it would take to do production testing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Because oil prices aren't constant, and 1998 was a low point in oil prices? See this chart, for instance.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Newest Energy Source -- Pond Scum
Question: which politicians volunteered their bodies for this project?
Yeah, Whistle. Your a genius Ryry.
Unfortunately the free market doesn't correct for DEATH
The only (major) group that has something to gain from saving the environment is the next generation. The next generation doesn't have enough purchasing power to be a significant economic force, thus the free market cannot compensate for costs that are imposed on the next generation.
p.s. i like pie
They're the ones who made the inflated claims in the first place. Check the link.
Nope, it isn't - it was 10,000 gallons per acre.
Did you say "dried" biomas? I think it would not be easy (cheap) to dry vast quantities of algae, except, perhaps, maybe in the desert.
Thomas
Just commenting on your sig:
You've probably gotten banned from moderation. You can get this most commonly by having used your modpoints negatively on a slashdot editor's post.
Once you're banned, you'll never see mod points again.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Biodiesel blend (10% biodiesel) can be burned in current cars with no modification, and pure Biodiesel (100%) can be burned in current cars with slight modifications. Newer cars could be built to accept 100% biodiesel with very little additional cost (less than $30).
Furthermore, the current gas stations and infrastructure could still be used.
No. Algal biodiesel is carbon neutral if you burn it, because burning it emits the same amount of carbon as was removed from the atmosphere by growing the algae. Algol biodisel would be carbon negative if you buried it, because that would be taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
We definitely don't have to worry about running out of oil. There are many alternatives which exist and which are practically inexhaustible and which become economical once gasoline is pricier than $4/gallon. $4/gallon would hardly spell the end of civilization. All of this crap about impending doom from oil exhaustion is so silly as not to merit further comment.
However, the market would not correct global warming, because CO2 emission is an externality. In other words, the cost of destruction from carbon emission is not charged to the emitter and therefore is not included in corporate balance sheets. Thus, the market pays no attention to it. In this case, the most appropriate response is a minimal government intervention of replacing income taxes with carbon taxes. By doing so, the gov't would internalize the externality, thereby causing it to be included in corporate balance sheets. At that point, the market would resolve the problem without further intervention.
The investors in algal biodiesel are probably assuming that the government will impose carbon taxes sometime soon. If the government did so, then biodiesel would be much cheaper (it could help coal plants reduce their taxes) and gasoline would be more expensive, thus biodiesel would suddenly become price-competitive.
....Maybe it's fortunated that the largest stock exchanges exist in areas predicted to be affected by increasing water levels.........
Most stock trading is done electronically these days. So maybe, if this global warming indeed causes some real ocean rises, the physical trading places can easily be moved.
All theory is gray
Interesting, that would explain why it has been almost a year without modpoints for me. Kinda makes you appreciate other places like digg where things are more out in the open and less prone to this kind of corruption of power.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Batteries still suck.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
From what he said at the start I gather the idea is to put this on otherwise unusable desert land (literally dirt cheap) and thus raise the value of a great deal of surrounding land, for a net gain on the real estate side. While I'm not convinced that the ecological impact of doing this to a desert is as unimportant as he seems to be assuming, he's probably correct about the monetary picture.
--MarkusQ
An poster in an earlier thread mentions Changing World Technologies' Carthage, MO TDP (Thermal Depolymerization) plant as an example of profitably converting organic matter into useable fuels, and they are right in that combining these two technologies seems to have the potential to solve several of the nagging problems faced by champions of biofuels.
First is the infrastructure problem. Traditionally, biodiesel has gotten all of the attention as a replacement for fuel gasoline. The problem, of course, is that around the world, the vast preponderance of existing automobiles are gasoline powered, not diesel-powered. Now don't get me wrong, biodiesel is a great tech, but there is simply too high an initial investment to get everyone to convert to diesel without fuel prices going FAR higher than they are now. TDP produces a substance akin to oil that can be easily refined into gasoline using existing equipment, obviating any drastic shifts in consumer technology.
TDP has, however been plagued by several economic and technological problems. First, feedstocks have proven to be very expensive, as the previous poster noted. Secondly, practical applications of the technology show that high-lipid content feedstocks are by far the best for use in TDP. Unfortunately, plants, Municipal Solid Waste, and other potential feedstocks lose a large proportion of their carbon content through the dissolution of carbohydrates and proteins when the aqueous fraction is removed. Diatamaceous algae, on the other hand, are much "oilier", yielding a much greater percentage of fuel per unit mass.
The other problem faced by industrial-scale TDP is that the process loses a great deal of efficiency if it is not constantly running. By locating a TDP plant adjacent to a large algae farm, one could (assuming the yields mentioned in the linked article are correct) ensure a steady and constant input of extremely cheap feedstock to the TDP plant.
I don't have any hard figures with which to calculate the overall efficiency of such a setup - would any of the engineers working on these techs out there care to comment?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/1 2/0215234/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/1 1/1718256/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/ 29/2241247/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/2 5/1838201/
and
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/2 2/0810225/
San Francisco Photographers
for the stupid drug policies.
And the hemp they would use wouldn't even have any THC to speak of.
Lots of oil in some varieties combined with growing in poor soil conditions fast (4 crops a year).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
.... However, this process of plants turning into the black stuff takes millions of years, much much slower than the rate at which it is currently being burned.....
That is what many BELIEVE. However the conditions of heat and immense pressure of deep burial without the presence of oxygen have been duplicated in labs. Oil and coal has been made in hours and days. The wooden pilings of old railroad trestles have been transformed into the beginning stages of coal. Anyone can make a form of coal without the high pressures by simply heating wood in the absence of oxygen. The stuff you get is called charCOAL. In WW2, some Germans ran their ordinary cars on wood by burning wood in low oxygen and running the vapors into the motor. The millions of years is a MYTH.
All theory is gray
A major bottleneck in plant growth is nitrogen, hence fertilizer. Ponds grow lots of algae when there is runoff from farms. A famous chemist once told me that half the nitrogen in our bodies comes from man-made nitrogen sources. Currently we use hydrogen made from natural gas to react with nitrogen from the air to form ammonia which is converted to various forms of fertilizer. Yes there are nitrogen fixing bacteria that do this for us but I don't believe they can do this rapidly enough for the production rates the authors propose. Just one more reason humanity is going to be SOL when oil and natural gas are in short supply.
Damn, I should have patented the idea!
3 &threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=1531882 1
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18556
It's not removing C02 from the atmosphere, you put back what it takes out when you burn it. It does however help stop the escelation of C02 levels.
...I got nothing.
Although I'm not sure about this "Algol biodisel" thing... Couldn't we at least use C biodisel, or even C biodiesel? Better yet, let's jump up even another couple of decades and use python biodiesel. Sorry, couldn't resist the bad joke.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
It's about time! I've been waiting years for someone to figure out what to do with all these damn politicians. They ought to win the Nobel Prize for this!
with this -> "I don't think this country cares much about pollution"..and etc.
We cared enough to establish an EPA a long time ago, mandate the strictest vehicle emissions standards, require new generating plants to establish smokestack scrubbers, mandated cleaner fuels, set limits on crap in the drinking water, and so on, a lot of things that the vast bulk of the planet still almost completely ignores. Granted, we could do more, but really....that was too broad of a brush there. Hybrids are the US hottest selling vehicles now and I predict that plugins will be even hotter once they arrive in numbers, and personal and corporate adoption of green energy is advancing at a fast rate. Green is in at all the latest car shows, the fed government and various states have a wide range of tax deductions, incentives and credits for alternative power, and several lenders now offer full 20-30 year financing on installs for homeowners and a lot of builders are offering alternative energy options on new homes. Buying organic at the store and biofuels production reflect the fastest growing segment of our agricultural output. And so on and so forth, I could go on. I think we've had a big turn around, especially in the last ten years or so.
And all of that came about because enough people do care,because it makes environmental and health and economic sense all at the same time.
>How moronic do they make Greens these days? Yea that pond scum will absorb a lot of CO2... and release it right back when you burn it for fuel. So it is carbon neutral unless you plan to compact the algae into bricks and bury it. Of course neutral still beats burning dead dinosaurs who fixed their carbon millions of years ago.
Haven't you ever heard of the carbon cycle? Lots of CO2 in the air doesn't cause global warming. Global Warming occurs when we are pumping so much CO2 into the air that we break the carbon cycle.
Basically, the primary carbon sink that occurs is algae. As algae (or animals that consume algae) dies and floats to the bottom of large regions of water, carbon is sequestered. The more CO2 that's in the air, the more algae a particular region can sustain. This creates a self-sustaining feedback loop that prevents any dramatic changes in the mean global temperature. It's only when this feedback loop can no longer keep up that global warming (or global cooling, in the opposite case) occurs.
Other natural and human events can alter the carbon cycle. Fertilizer run-off can cause a major algae bloom, which chokes out the O2 in a particular region of water, and results in dead space. This reduces the amount of future algae growth, and decreases the cooling ability of the cycle. Then there are issues with smog, volcanic erruption, and things of that nature.
So anything that is carbon neutral is a huge step forward from where we're at now. The sooner we stop pumping new CO2 into the atmosphere, the more likely it is that the carbon cycle will be able to control the mean global temperature.
The kind of manufactured goods required to build such a thing also cost less than they did 4 years ago.
The assumptions have also changed since the 1990s, for instance, open ponds are obsolete due to problems with species control and going to enclosures means one can better control bioreactor conditions. Researchers are claiming 10-20x increases in yield due in part to this. Bottom line: higher capital cost vs MUCH higher yield per acre.
It's also the only game in town, it's scalable to installations with yield sufficient to grow 400M gallons per day. We don't have enough farmland to grow our way out with bio-ethanol, even using switchgrass and marginal farmlands.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Two times higher (greater) would mean three times the value:
2x + x = 3x
The artificial generation of oil/coal you talk about is called biomass energy, i.e. energy from current-living plant matter. This IS renewable/sustainable energy.
I am talking about the coal that is currently powering America's electrical plants: coal mined from deep within mountains. NATURAL processes of making coal/oil in sufficient quantities to power America takes many eons. The carbon being released from the coal plants of this nation haven't seen the light of day for many thousands/millions of years.
With artificial generation of fuels from crops though, there is no issue, as the carbon is recycled from the air back into the plant in a fairly short amount of time. As you stated artificially generating biodiesel/crude oil/coal takes a relatively short amount of time, and that is why converting crops into fuel is environmentally friendly.
The issue though is finding a way to generate fuels from these plants that is efficient enough to yield the most bang for your buck, so to speak. Biodiesel is in the same arena as artificial coal ("bio-coal" if you wish), artificial gasoline, etc, all require some energy to generate. The amount of energy put in vs the amount of energy gained is what dictates which fuels will be most effective.
Natural processes simply cannot generate oil/coal fast enough to catch up with human demand, and thus creates an imbalance in the carbon cycle. However, artificially making bio diesel/oil/coal etc. from plants closes that imbalance and essentially works itself out.
Cause there is global warming on Mars and Jupiter, too, and ol Sol is acting up big-time. Sediment records show the periodicity, too.
Anthropogenic global warming is a myth.
Actually, I would like to see it placed in the west. There is a better than average chance that our resevoir and piping system would get much better quickly. Perhaps, oil lines from the west to the east would be built alongside water lines going east to west.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Done and Done.
Ethanol can INSTANTLY replace 30% of gasoline, and Biodiesel can INSTANTLY replace 20% of petroleum diesel.
Same infrastructure (dump it in the petroleum fuels, pipelines, trucks, pumps, etc.).
Exactly the same vehicles, since 30% ethanol to 70% gasoline has been required for new cars for over a decade now, and 20% biodiesel is practically the same as pure petroleum diesel.
Why you got modded up for your utter ignorance, I can't imagine.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Like "Species Of Blue-Green Algae Announces IPO".
SLM
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Oil from Algae has great potential. Contrary to what one poster said, there are strains of algae that produce a very large amount of oil. Up to 70% of the dry weight, but more likely around 40%. My favorite algae is Botryococcus braunii because it creates Alkanes, which can be used directly as fuel or transformed into the chemical equivalent of the petroleum fuels we know and love - i.e. Octane, Kerosene, etc. This happens without the inefficiency inherent in the production of biodiesel.
It is true that the carbon so sequestered is again released into the atmosphere. This is unfortunate, but not as much of a problem as it seems at first glance. While the 'low hanging fruit' in terms of surplus CO2 is such industrial processes as fermenting of wine and coal-fired power plants, the secondary source of CO2 can be from everyday air - or air that's not as good as everyday, such as that in polluted cities. There is also the potential of creating an algae bioreactor inside an automobile's exhaust system. That's pretty far off in the future with what we've got right now, but possible.
The current state of the industry in algal fuel oil production is one of confusion. There are snake-oil salesmen (no pun intended) making wild claims about their proprietary, secret systems which are incredible (in the bad meaning of the word). These do not stand up to scientific scrutiny but seem to make headlines and sucker in some angel capital (or at least try to). Not all startups are frauds, however. There is some good progress being made by companies like Greenfuels Technologies. But there is a spectre haunting the market: the ghost of the coal-sands projects of the 1970s which spent billions of dollars without producing tangible returns. These were canceled during the Reagan era when gasoline became cheap again. People seem to have short memories. What would happen a company which produces these expensive fuels if the bottom drops out of the petroleum market? They'd quickly go bust. This is because there is not yet enough government incentives making it possible to compete with temporarily cheap petroleum. What is needed is thoughtful, large scale action by major governments around the world to develop the best alternative energy systems, be they wind, biofuels, even nuclear. For instance, the first thing needed is a moratorium on transportation fuel taxes, guaranteed for a period of time - say ten years. This means not only the removal of federal taxes on these fuels, but the prohibition of state and local taxes on them. Next, there needs to be encouragement for distribution of alternative fuels, such as local licensing boards requiring a certain proportion of fuel pumps to be alternative. There needs to be pressure put on the operators of large fleets of vehicles to utilize the fuels and vehicles for them, and incentives to make their refueling depots available for use by the public.
I could go into some of the technical details regarding the ideas I have on how to make various fuels in an economically viable manner. However, Slashdot isn't the place to go on at (even further) length. If you're interested in this type of stuff, there are several forums, such as Bio-Diesel Now, which I post on and encourage others to get involved with as well. Even so, as much as I'd like my ideas to be adopted, I'd also like some money for my inventions, so I am holding some thoughts back until I meet the right people to work with.
It's a shame that GreenFuels Technologies is right in the middle of the type of things I'd like to do in the algal fuels industry, and their offices are in the same city as me, but they seem to have no use for a computer techie as myself who would like to try his hand at a new industry (my inquiries about jo
Don't forget the cost of ppls lives to go to the middle east and die
to 'stabalize' the region. The cost of the Iraq war
is in the 100's of billions of dollars, factor that into your pump price.
Areas of africa have mass genocide and we do nothing.
We do something in the middle east why ???? my first and last guess is oil.
Otherwise we'd be content to let them all kill themselves too.
Green Fuels should be tax free too, that would be a good motivator too,
though our glut and spend government couldnt exist without sin taxes
and fuel taxes.
Oh well, wishful thinking.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
No problem. Oil will probably be six or eight dollars a gallon -- in current dollars -- soon enough. (Soon as in a few decades, not soon as in next April]. Like Mark Twain is supposed to have said about land -- they've quit making it.
And don't be suprised if there is a short term jump in oil prices for us in the US in a few years. China and Japan are eventually going to get tired of supporting the US dollar which is probably going to fall by maybe 30%. At that point, my guess is that the oil producing countries are going to stop pricing oil in dollars and switch to a "market basket" of currencies. The result will be that the price of oil to US consumers will go up significantly.
Trust me on this one. Demand is increasing. Reserves are not keeping up with demand. (And they are probably largely fictional anyway) The same methods that correctly predicted the peak of US Oil production in the 1970s, say that world oil production is at or near its peak.
There are plenty of alternative energy sources and by and large I expect that the demise of cheap oil is not going to mean the end of humanity. But I'd enjoy your SUV and power boat now, cause you may not be able to afford to run them in 2030.
Oh yeah, and the price that you are comparing with today's price is a peak price caused by the 1979 Iranian revolution. Prices in 2006 exceeded that level for a while without any particular crisis. They will probably exceed it by a lot if our pathetic excuse for a leader in Washington continues to play chicken with Iran and to do every conceivable thing to inflame the anti-western islamic fanatics who are much closer than most people think to being able to severly impact Persian Gulf petroleum exports.
Might want to look into investing in a scummy pond somewhere. Might be a better bet than the latest Web 2.7 (or whatever we're up to) tech stock wonder.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
How many trillions of dollars has the USA "invested" in IRAQ, etc. in order to control the oil supply? Are those dollars factored into your price calculation?
Surely those trillions would have been better spent on building algae farms to start the move away from the oil-based economy.
No sig today...
On a darker note, I don't think government can solve it either. The world is the way it is because we are the way we are. People can't look beyond their own short-term profit, or even convenience, or even political alleigance to an ideology. All we can hope for is that the oil will run out soon. People will do the right thing, when the wrong thing is no longer convenient or profitable.
Here's the math: in North America the average insolation [sunlight] at ground level over an entire year (including nights and periods of cloudy weather) lies between 125 and 375 W/m (3 to 9 kWh/m/day)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power
1 international acre is equal to:
4046.8564224 square metres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
1 barrel of oil equivalent = 5.80 million Btu.
mean Btu 1 Btu = 1055.87 J
1 kWh = 3.6 x 10**6 J (exact).
1 barrel = 42 U.S. gallons
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/en
So the solar energy which hits an average US acre in an average day is about
= 250*4046*24 / 1000 KWh
= 24,276 KWh
And the energy in a barrel of oil is about
= 5.8 * 1,000,000 * 1055.87 / 3,600,000 KWh
= 1,701.12 KWh
This means the solar energy which hits an average US acre in an average day is about
= 24,276 / 1,701.12 * 42 gallons
= 599 gallons
Reduce, reuse, cycle
SCO management in giant hamster wheels.
"Little things hitting each other. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE!" - Time Bandits
At 100% efficiency the energy from sunlight in North America gives about 600 gallons of oil per acre per day. I forgot the "per day" bit.
If the "pond scum" process is 5% efficient at converting sunlight to oil then that could make about 10,000 gallons per year. Of course it's a "big if".
Apologies for this. I didn't spot the error because my result was in line with the figures for the real-world crop yields - but clearly they are very inefficient at converting sunlight to oil.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I just get so pissed off with our dickhead government (in Australia) saying stupid stuff like "Oh we'll put 10% ethanol made from cane sugar into petrol." Jesus. They don't understand the problem, so it's hardly surprising they can't solve it.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Ok, so lets say we don't run out of oil. Not only do we not run out of oil but it remains the most economically viable source of energy for some time to come. At what point does the "free market" then solve global warming? Seems to me that an unregulated free market would just keep on polluting until it is too late (or at least really bad).
Let's ignore the ideologically pure "free market" stuff since I think we all agree that a free market doesn't automatically handle externalities correctly. But we already have carbon emission markets that can address the global warming externality. My take is that in a couple of decades, we'll have a good idea of the cost of adding an amount of CO2 into the atmosphere given a certain concentration and an efficient market for selling emission allotments. Then the problem reduces to making sure that the business or group doesn't produce more CO2 than it has in allotments. Ie, it becomes an accounting problem. And we can set the allotments at the source of carbon. Namely, fossil fuel producers, farmers, foresters, etc all add or remove CO2 emissions. Just pay a certain fee to extract a carbon equivalent ton out of the ground or harvested as lumber. And get a certain amount back if you're a net sink (ie, you can sell back a certain amount of allotment).
China and Japan will absolutely NOT let the value of the dollar drop 30% if they can help it. They don't want the value of all of that debt they've purchased from us to be completely worthless. Plus, if the dollar drops it will magically become more beneficial to manufacture goods within the U.S. which will hurt their respective economies.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
People were trying to produce fuel from algae way back in 1974 when we had a serious fuel shortage. It didn't work then and probably won't work now. The same notion received federal funding with fermentation of water lillies. The feds dumped money into that one as well. What might make it work is genetic alteration so that the algae carried sugar or more starch that would ferment into a stronger brew. One thing is certain. Algae and water lillies both reproduce better than anything I can imagine.
Without some kind of rules enforced by somebody there is no protection for a common good such as nature. Nature of a human being is such that this control and restrictions work the best (although arguably not really well) when applied by bodies such as governemnts. SImilarily free markets do not exist - there are always rules attached. No rules means chaos and violence.
150 or so years ago government stopped enforcing property rights properly; if property rights were upheld then pollution would not be as bad a problem. Although, I do concede it is more difficult dealing with CO2 than other pollutants
They stopped upholding property rights because they thought it was better for companies too pollute, rather than to spend money on cleaner coal, or ways to clean the smoke as it left the chimney. For example, I think I read somewhere an orchid grower sued a factory but the court decided it was better for everyone for the factory to belch out black smoke. There was no reason to develop cleaner technology so they did not spend resources on it.
CO2 is obviously a bit more difficult though. Maybe the biggest offenders could be made to cut down by class action lawsuits. This pie chart only shows 14% is generated from transportation so cars and stuff arent really much of offenders. (Glad I dont live in a city though, that's another problem).
My point was that the exchanges are based in areas that would see the changes first and therefore the effects would be apparent and actionable. I wasn't implying that the exchange itself would be physically flooded by water.
I'm not sure why I bother to correct someone who insults me, but let me point out that you're positing that these fuels magically spring into existence fully formed and exactly where they need to be. This is not so.
While ethanol has its own problems I'll leave it alone, as Brazil has largely solved them. (Here's a hint: if you don't see ethanol at your pumps, the problem hasn't been solved here yet)
Biodiesel, however (the subject of the article in question) needs significant infrastructure design and investment before it can be viable. I've already posted in a previous comment more on that point; suffice it to say that there are a number of questions which need to be answered. (otherwise the backers of this wouldn't be asking for millions of dollars just to try a few acres and see if it works!) It does not use the same infrastructure -- infrastructure for petroleum is everything from source to destination, and unless you're seriously contending that biodiesels will be grown and filtered on oil derricks, pumped through the same pipelines or tanker ships, and refined in petroleum-distilling equipment (which will magically have more capacity) I think that you need to revise your statement a bit.
And do keep a civil tongue in your mouth. Being wrong can be forgiven. Being wrong and rude can't.
Fischer-Tropsch of Coal is inevitable if Oil prices can be predicted with confidence to remain at or above $50/barrel in the future. That is when Fischer-Tropsch of Coal becomes economic. Because energy drives the economy and all of politics is 'the economy stupid', concerns about Global Warming won't affect it's widespread adoption at all.
For those who don't know, Fischer-Tropsch is a process that has been used in countries where Oil is hard to come by but Coal is abundant, notably Nazi Germany and South Africa under Apartheid. The process can be used to convert any carbonaceous material into either diesel or ethanol. The quality of the artificial diesel produced this way is actually superior to diesel from pumped oil because it is free from impurities like sulfur.
In the past people have put their heads in their ovens with the gas on but no flame to commit suicide. Natural gas will kill you at high enough concentrations - eventually, but not quickly enough to make this a painless death. But in the past, ovens were not fueled by Natural Gas. They were fueled by Town Gas. Town Gas is a 50/50 mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. Carbon monoxide will put you down like a lightswitch being turned off. It is considered as lethal as the Hydrogen Cyanide they use in the gas chamber.
Both Carbon Monoxide ( CO ) and Hydrogen ( H2 ) are clean burning cooking fuels. The mixure was produced by having a large metal can full of coal with an inlet pipe and an outlet pipe. Underneath, burining coal heated the can-full-of-coal to a red heat. Steam was fed into the can of non-burning red-hot coal. In the can the following chemical reaction takes place: H2O + C -> H2 + CO Town Gas has been replaced by the ( safer - both toxicity and explosion wise ) Natural Gas for cooking. But this mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide is called by the refining industry by the name 'Synthesis gas'. Basically, using Fischer Tropsch, this can be converted into any hydrocarbons / ethanol / whatever-you-may-want
This reaction can turn not only Coal, but ANY carbonaceous material into liquid fuel. It works on 'Stranded Natural Gas' ( NG which is too far away from civilization to economically transport as gas ) or even biomass. When used on biomass, say to convert switchgrass ( a non-agrigultural crop that grows on non-arable land ) to ethanol, it is carbon-neutral. In fact this method of producing diesel/ethanol would work with algae too. It holds the potential to make ethanol from biodiesel actually economic without government subsidies someday as opposed to distilling ethanol from corn which would be better used as feed/food/fertilizer.
Fischer-Tropsch on Stranded Natural gas produces a fuel that when burned amounts to somewhat more CO2 being released than from pumped oil. The liquid fuel itself is no worse than pumped fuel, but more carbon was released to produce the fuel than is released to produce pumped-outta-ground fuel.
However converting Coal into Oil via Fischer-Tropsch releases about twice as much CO2 into the air as burning Oil pumped out of the ground. This is because Oil is a HYDROCarbon meaning it has hydrogen and carbon. Extracting energy from Oil by burning it produces H2O + CO2 + approx 2 energy. Coal is pure carbon with no hydrogen. Extracting 2 energy from Coal means 2O2 + 2C -%gt; 2CO2 + 2 energy . Plus there are the inherent energy losses that you get when converting anything into anything.
Oil has recently been over 75 dollars a barrel. If investors could be sure Oil would stay that high, they might invest in Fischer-Tropsch. But it is likely that oil will not consistently
...
...because "corporations" aren't the CAUSE of global warming (don't get me wrong; I don't try to pretend the globe isn't warming, I just don't believe that it's humans that are causing it.)
The conversion costs for going from diesel to biodiesel are extremely minimal. You may need to replace some seals. Any diesel vehicle made in the nineties or later will run on it without conversion because they are all made with synthetic seals. Biodiesel causes natural (and neoprene!) seals to swell.
Pretty much ANY diesel can run 10% biodiesel, which could at least bring the cost and environmental impact down.
Not all of it. Some of it will be converted to soot which is released into the atmosphere but eventually falls out or is filtered out.
But more seriously, it's a carbon-neutral fuel. The big deal is not that it takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, although it WILL produce a net reduction in atmospheric carbon it is a very small one. The big deal is that the carbon we take out of fossil fuels and put into the atmosphere has been underground for longer than humans have existed and it's not good for us if we put it into the air.
Well, that's great. Perhaps Soylent Green can take care of our overpopulation problems, next. Biodiesel would have been cost effective for the past twenty years, maybe longer, but we haven't been doing it because there is too much money to be made on dino juice and it's easier to simply continue on as they are going. The problem with the market is that while it does eventually solve problems, it's unnecessarily messy and slow.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Take a look at Brazil in twenty years and see where their agricultural system has gone... they went from making their sugarcane excess into fuel alcohol to planting more sugar cane in order to make more alcohol. They're going to destroy their country doing this. Topsoil-based fuels are NOT the answer, this is why the algae is so attractive. It's not based on topsoil. Algae is also the #1 oxygen producer in the world. The rainforests are important not as oxygen producers, since they consume almost as much oxygen as they produce simply by decomposing, but as filters and coolers of the globe... Oceanic algae is dying at a disturbing rate and we will need to think about where our oxygen is going to come from if we would like to continue breathing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh, so you'd like to live your life free from the baleful mailed fist of government? Move to Somalia.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Do you mean running cars on E30 or something? Because anything over about 10% ethanol poses a risk for natural or even neoprene (but not silicone) seals.
The same is true of diesels; your oldest diesels can only run on about 10% biodiesel before they run the risk of having fuel problems.
With that said, both types of vehicle can be converted with only minimal parts (seals, mostly; some very old vehicles need new fuel lines as well.)
You know most of the cars on the road are over ten years old, right?
Not quite, but close.
Actually there's another option which is probably better. Butanol is a direct gasoline replacement that is made by bacteria using any organic materials as a feed stock. It goes into gasoline engines with no modifications. There are more gasoline engines than diesel engines and it can be run in a 100% concentration instead of the half-assed (less than half in fact!) 30% ethanol.
You can also run E95, 95% ethanol and 5% gasoline, in diesel engines. You need increase compression a bit (one trial used, I believe, 23:1 compression before forced induction; by comparison most diesels run 17:1 up to maybe 21:1; Mercedes inline diesels run 22:1 so they might run on it without compression mods) and you need to alter the amount of fuel you deliver. I'm opposed to this for two reasons: One, most ethanol is topsoil-based and that is a recipe for ecological disaster. Two, biodiesel has higher energy density, which means less refueling, which is more efficient for everyone. Three, E95 still has 5% gasoline, and I want 0% fossil fuels. We need that oil for plastics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fischer-Tropsch? A few reasons. It's inefficient, in that a considerable portion of the energy from the coal is used up in the process. It still pulls up carbon from the depths of the earth and throws it into the atmosphere. We unfortunately will start using it as gas prices continue to increase, but it's far from an ideal solution, which is why the DoE and others have been looking into other ways of getting fuel.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
While I completely agree, as I had been without mod points for about 5 years, I just started getting them about a month ago.
I had not communicated with the editors prior to getting mod points back, either.
Is a million gallons a lot? Hm. Daily per capita water use in the US is 1400 gallons, though I don't know how much of that is, for instance, water running through a coolant loop and tossed back out into a river. Petroleum usage is 840 million gallons per day, which is about 2.8 daily gallons per capita. Of course, I may be comparing apples to oranges here (fuel is single-use; water isn't), so let's skip that. (Evaporation losses can be cut or eliminated by growing the algae in an enclosed system, as another poster has pointed out.)
Isn't seawater usable for this sort of thing? It's not free to pump a million gallons of seawater over to the farm, but it's certainly not a dealbreaker, is it? Ah, but where do all the salts go? Would they accumulate in the bodies of the algae? If so, it would likely be quite possible to pull out accumulated minerals at the refining stage, wouldn't it?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Pond would be good for you.
I'm all for this kind of thinking, but fresh water won't touch the sides.
;)
If you donate lake superior (approx 20,000 acres at a guess) to the project (would never happen - ironically enough due to conservationist lobbying) even at the less plausible end of this techniques potential, this is 'only' 200 million liters per year. Which is 4 days of fuel. Barely more than 1% of the annual fuel consumption of the US.
Damn it you lot have got me thinking in a UScentric mindset now! I hate you all!!! (not realy
Because you can - or because you should?
This is actually an accepted part of pure capitalism: the government's place is to solve market failures, and stay out the way the rest of the time. This is not generally an idea stated by the current Republic party (which has been mostly taken over by the religious right, with very few real fiscal conservatives anymore).
The argument goes that the free market should work everything out on its own. But there are demonstratable cases where this hasn't happened, which is what "market failure" means. When market failure happens, it's silly to sit by and say "that's just how the market works". Government intervention is perfectly justified in such a case.
One type of market failure is externalities--the person or group that causes the damage isn't the one that pays for cleaning it up. An example is dumping toxic waste into a river. The company that did it would normally just forget about it, while downstream animals start dieing off and people are without fresh drinking water. As part of its role in resolving market failures, the government can make them clean it up.
Some of the most interesting ideas for resolving environmental-related externalities, like carbon credits, actually use market dynamics as a central idea.
Not a typewriter
Algae photosynthesis tends to be about 13% efficient at converting sunlight to chemical energy, although the process to oil and the energy used to support the other processes involved in growing the plant, as well as the support systems and post-processing would add a lot more inefficiencies. However, the 10,000 gallon figure is almost certainly using figures from desert-based solar energy availability, which is significantly higher than the average for all of North America.
Look, biodiesal doesn't remove CO2 from the atmosphere, it relocates CO2 from where the biodiesal is made to where the biodiesal is burned. Add to this that even the best, most modern diesal engines still produce significantly higher levels of particulate pollution (particulates are what make for smog related health problems in cities) than other mobile energy sources and biodiesal doesn't even look good as a transitional energy source.
:-/
There is no more CO2 mitigation in using biodiesal than there is from carbon trading. It's all deck chairs on the Titanic. Only giving up combustion energy altogether will save the planet (except maybe hydrogen, but that's got its own problems), but you "septic tanks" aren't about to give up your SUVs, are you?
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
actually, it's better than that. even burning biodiesel effectively reduces the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere because it *replaces* the burning of fossil fuel. that's a net win.
btw, burning it doesn't emit the same amount of carbon as was removed by growing it. there's waste product (containing carbon) left over after processing, not all of it is converted to oil and burnt. so it's more accurate to say "burning it emits most of the same amount of carbon...."
I'm sorry, but you're wrong. In the US, VW only warrants up to B5, not B100.
(That said, I run B20 in my 1986 Golf diesel...)
It's also worth noting that while 40 cents may be 15% of the price *now*, it would have been much more of the price in 1998. 35%? Some states were probably around 50% in 1998.
Gas tax rates: http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp
Where are you getting these numbers?
Most current cars allow for 5% maximum of biodiesel. While they CAN run PROPERLY PROCESSED fuel up to B100, it's certainly not recommended. And, where are you getting that it's $30 to retrofit B100-capable injection systems? While it is a $0 option in Germany... the emissions ramifications of the larger injectors mean that the car with a "B100 option" won't meet US emissions.
Anyway, please go to http://tdiclub.com/, and educate yourself.
For the record, VW only warrants up to 5% biodiesel.
However, CAN they run 10% (or even properly processed 100% assuming it's not too cold?) Yes.
BTW, Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel is much more of a danger to injection pump seals than biodiesel, due to the fact that the Low Sulfur Diesel, which has a low aniline number (the main reduction is caused by aromatics in the fuel), has swelled the seals, causing them to crush. The ULSD has a high aniline number, so it shrinks the seals... which are now crushed, causing them to leak.
A similar problem happened back between 1992 and 1994, when the changeover from High Sulfur Diesel to LSD happened, although it was a much more drastic change. Most cars before 1994 have had their fuel injection pump seals replaced with Viton seals (due to leaking), which are less vulnerable (but not invulnerable) to swelling.
(Note that some people on TDIClub have reported leaking FIPs on cars that came with Viton seals, though.)
Biodiesel has a low aniline number, despite having zero aromatic content.
Anyway, http://tdiclub.com/ is a good site to read for this stuff.
While I agree that the market may not work for everything, I think a lot of that is because of the incentives we have set up in the law really distort things.
Note, however, that corrective forces are at work. There are a bunch of insurance companies that are forcing heavy payments onto companies in at-risk areas. The problem is, the government heavily subsidizes citizens in places like Florida or New Orleans. If they didn't, then we would see (a) fewer [non-wealthy] people living on the beach (b) more pressure to reduce things that cause environmental problems.
The problem currently is one of information: how do we include *all* the costs of burning petroleum into its price, including environmental effects? I think the EU (European Union) has made a brave start with their carbon market (and California, now, too): now we need to figure out at what level to set carbon emissions targets (which is in progress now planning targets for the next few years, I believe). So far that's been gamed, though: the allowed level of emissions was *higher* than the combined emissions of industry for 2005 and 2006 (sayeth the Economist).
So, the market can do it (at least more ably), but only if you are able to fully include the information as to cost. It's still a problem, of course: how do you keep the current generation from deferring the cost to those who have no voice? But there are better ways to do it then heavy-handed regulation by bureaucrats who have never had a real job.
Until recently, diesel in the United States had much more sulfur than European diesel. But starting with model year 2007, the US is switching to ultra-low-sulfur diesel, which often uses biodiesel as a lubricant to replace the lubricants lost when removing sulfur from petrodiesel.
Yes, E30 would be 30% ethanol.
In California, 20% ethanol is fairly common already. It's explicitly stated on the pumps (on a small sticker) at the gas station I regularly fuel-up at. Hint: Cars in California aren't falling apart.
I doubt you could find any refining process that will give you 0% waste. You'll end up with some gasoline as a waste product, if nothing else.
Besides, Ethanol is a short to medium-term fix, anyhow. Even in the medium term, we'll probably be switching to all-electric vehicles, and leaving liquid fuels entirely.
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Ethanol is at EVERY pump already.
I don't believe there's any place in this country that doesn't have a few percent of their gasoline made-up of Ethanol.
This is utter nonsense. Nobody would WANT biodiesel at the derricks. You introduce it after the oil has been refined to fuel. From there, it uses exactly the same infrastructure as regular petroleum fuels.
I'll take a rude genius over a polite idiot any day.
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My understanding is that battery energy density's theoretical maximum falls far short of any of our common liquid fuels, and making and recycling batteries is a highly toxic and energy intensive process. Fuel cells could solve this problem, except for the fact that A) most of them are only at all efficient in one direction, so they can't do regenerative braking, and B) fuel cells themselves are made with toxic processes. I question whether electric cars will ever have the range and output that internal combustion vehicles do.
I don't think liquid fuels and internal combustion are necessarily dead technologies. I do see them continuing to evolve. Actually, I think what's more likely than all-electric is turbine-electric using biofuels or even hydrogen - of all the things you can do with hydrogen, burning it in a turbine probably makes the most sense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In theory, if your car's engine was 100% effecient, that might be true. Since it's actually on the order of 25% effecient or less (while batteries are around 80% effecient) the situation is quite the opposite.
And in any discussion of chemical energy density, you have to talk about the powertrain as well... The engine, transmission, axel, drive shaft, alternator, radiator, et al., add significant weight to the vehicle (and are not needed at all with all-electric vehicles) eliminating even more of the energy density advantages of chemical fuels.
Only a few specific types of batteries are toxic... Nickel Cadmium was never used in electric vehicles to my knowledge. Nickel Metal Hydride batteries (used in hybrids like the Prius) have been out-paced by the capacity of Li-Ion, as well as significantly reduced weight.
And even with all that... Batteries themselves will probably be replaced in the not-too-distant future. Everything from supercapactiors to flywheels hold the promise of giving better effeciency, faster charging, and significantly higher capacity than chemical battery technology.
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I know nothing about that lake so I looked it up and it's an awful lot more than 20k acres, here it says that it's 82,100 square kilometers - http://www.great-lakes.net/lakes/ref/supfact.html which is 20 million acres, you were you off by 3 orders of magnitude, so we need 10% of the lake to provide all the fuel used in the US by your calculation.
Wow!
/.
Cool. That'll show me for guestimating on
Cheers for bothering to look it up.
Because you can - or because you should?
All batteries contain heavy metals and as such are potentially toxic if not properly disposed of; Lithium-ion batteries contain something like 10% cobalt and the refining of cobalt is not exactly a nice process. The fact is that there are ample reasons not to use batteries. In fact IMO it makes more sense to use biofuels (or hydrogen) in a turbine with a generator to drive your "electric" car. It still eliminates the vast majority of the moving parts, while allowing you to use liquid fuel.
Flywheels will never work because of the gyroscopic effect and the simple need for them to be massive. You can make a flywheel that will shred itself into something like cotton candy if the bearings fail - it's been done already, in fact - but they are still heavy, and they still produce a gyroscopic effect. Besides that you really need to couple them as a generator because the high RPMs involved (if you plan to store any useful amount of energy) makes using a clutch inefficient - so you still end up dealing with an electric power system so they are silly. Supercapacitors are a good idea, but when will they be affordable? They were supposed to get there long before now, and they still haven't.
Faster charging, by the way, is a major problem. "Filling" stations will need to have gigantic energy storage capacity to fill a capacitor-based power system, and even battery-based systems are problematic assuming you want to fill them at their maximum rates. Their maximum rates aren't very good, either; a 30-second fill-up turns into a 15-minute fill-up just by the nature of batteries. Swapping batteries is a possible solution, but who wants to swap their shiny new batteries for some shitty old ones? And have their power storage capacity vary based on what the packs they picked up are like? Not an answer.
Liquid fuels have many many advantages and if they are used intelligently most of the drawbacks can be worked around fairly simply. I like the idea of electric, air, and other-powered cars for short trips, and I would even advocate that cities do away with full-sized vehicles and implement a policy of only allowing zero or negative-emission vehicles that have a significantly lower top speed than ordinary automobiles. But for rural areas, the many drawbacks of current EVs make them unworkable; and the drawbacks of the technology as a whole make them potentially undesirable. Naturally, it would be lovely to see everyone whose needs are served by EVs use them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes. However, the materials in question are in a pure enough form, and enough of it is in one place, that they are inherently valuable even when used-up. This means you'll rarely if ever see them dumped. If they are, anyone who may see it will take the opportunity to cash it in, therefore recycling it, themselves.
Chemical fuels, however, are generally more hazardous, and much harder to contain as they do not stay together, on top of the ground, when dumped. Not to mention the numerous other hazardous materials, including some heavy metals, used in engines.
It reduces complexity, but you're still stuck with terribly inefficient conversion from chemical to electricity. Without a 10MW power plant on your bumper, there's no way you're going to overcome that inherent limit.
Gyroscopic effects can be countered easily.
Flywheels are so promising because of the fact they do not need to be massive. Higher speeds have the potential for significantly more power storage than higher mass.
You can, but you don't need to. Numerous, smaller flywheels can be used, instead of a single massive one.
What made you think I was suggesting otherwise?
No, they are highly efficient batteries. What is silly about that?
I wasn't mentioning them as an immediate option.
True, but easily manageable. There's no reason fueling stations need to be a separate stop. Make the fueling station part of a shopping mall, with numerous fast food restaurants, and refueling becomes faster, since fueling-up no longer becomes another stop.
Besides, the vast majority of fill-ups are going to be in your garage, at home, in the middle of the night, where it's infinitely more convenient, and time hardly matters.
I'm not opposed to serial hybrids in the short-term, though... Throw a compact electrical generator into an otherwise fully electric vehicle, and RIGHT NOW you've got the worlds most fuel efficient car, with the range of a standard vehicle.
It's rather unworkable to force that kind of dichotomy onto individuals.
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The numbers don't support your assertions. Small turbines can be up to 50% efficient, which is worlds better than the ICE. A generator can be up to 90% efficient, so we have about 45% efficiency. That's not bad! According to wikipedia, "Fuel cell vehicles running on compressed hydrogen may have a power-plant-to-wheel efficiency of 22% if the hydrogen is stored as high-pressure gas, and 17% if it is stored as liquid hydrogen." The motors used to provide motive force for hybrids and EVs are about 90% efficient. We only need our turbine to be about 30% efficient to have the same energy efficiency as using a current hydrogen fuel cell.
Of course one of the great things about a turbine engine is that a lot of different fuels could be used; biodiesel, alcohol, hydrogen, butanol... damned near anything that will burn under compression can be burned in a turbine engine. Maybe not all in the same engine, although it should be possible to develop automotive multifuel turbines, likely at a substantial but still-acceptable performance penalty.
Higher speeds also mean more inefficiency due to loss. Even maglev bearings and near-vacuum containment still leaves some friction. It also means more danger due to more stored energy; obviously the same is true of adding more liquid fuels but I just want to point out that they're not a panacea.
If you don't have self-destructing flywheels then you need a much bulkier enclosure, adding still more weight. Weight is one of the things that sucks so much about hybrids. Sure they're efficient, but think about what it would be like if they didn't have to carry around all those fucking batteries. It would be just like the FWD version of my Subaru, which gets over 30mpg, while I get around 24. Of course, they need the batteries. But it's fun to mock.
Now you're talking about making people make a lifestyle change. I'm not interested in your scheme. I want to get in the car, go to where I'm going, and get out. I don't want to make an unscheduled mall shopping stop, although I'm sure every mall in america would like to get in on your idea.
That's nice, but it doesn't help you in those cases where it's not happening while you don't want to use the vehicle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You need extremely high compression ratios, and ridiculously high tempuratures entering the turbine.
Show me a 50% effecient turbine which can fit in a car without a ton of casing.
Since I've never even mentioned fuel cells, this is 100% straw man.
The same goes for a diesel engine... It's the conversion that makes it impractical. So what's the advantage now?
Higher speed is no less effecient than more weight. It's also no more dangerous. So I fail to see your point. Energy==Danger
Not significantly so. The flywheel is still the majority of the weight.
It doesn't sound like you've done much long-distance driving. The human bladder and stomache can't go nearly as far as a vehicle, or be refueled as quickly.
Make no mistake, you are going to be stopping, anyways. It's just a question of whether you refuel while you are stopped, or have to make a second stop at a seperate gas station (which necessarily has to be seperate for traffic and safety reasons). After 4 hours of non-stop driving, you'll barely notice a 15 minute break.
Once again... My comment was about battery/electric + a gas/electrical generator. No mention of hydrogen or fuel cells at all. Your discussion of it, as if it's pivitol (rather than completely irrelevant) makes no sense at all.
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Chrysler was reaching peak efficiency over 80% (but not average efficiency, just peak) in the sixties: http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbine.html. And another tasty tidbit from the same page: "The present performance and economy of the Turbine are comparable to a conventional car with a standard V-8 engine. The engine will operate satisfactorily on diesel fuel, kerosene, unleaded gasoline, JP-4 (jet fuel), and mixtures thereof. And, even more interesting, it is possible to change from one of these fuels to another without any changes or adjustments to the engine. The users of the cars also will appreciate the many other advantages of the turbine engine." A lot has changed in turbines in the last forty years... for the better.
Also a company called capstone has a CARB-certified (california air quality review board - those of us on the left coast have to care about such things) turbine: See bottom of http://www.microturbine.com/news/photos.asp?id=2. The engine puts out 30 kW and has excellent emissions. 30kW is only about 40 horsepower, but consider that when you are cruising on the freeway in a typical car, you're using 25 horsepower or less (depending on speed and aerodynamics.) A small battery pack is enough to provide regenerative braking and buffer turbine power, since they do have spin up/down time.
capstone's engine doesn't use a system like chrysler's motor did to recirculate heat into the intake, which can improve efficiency (as you suggest.) Turbines can today achieve 40+% electrical efficiency @ full output (http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/ 02/Hybrid/Hybrids2Treece.PDF (PDF)... capstone also has an engine with two primary modes, a 300kW mode for passing power (~400HP!) and a 100kW mode for cruising power... (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=12070 8&p=irol-newsArticle_Print&ID=931851&highlight=) clearly this engine is meant for buses and trucks as passenger cars don't need so much power, although it is fun.
We've discussed the reasons batteries aren't practical; I'm moving on.
The turbine has one moving part. Your proposal to use multiple flywheels means there are several moving parts - all of which must rotate at turbine speed or better. It also allows you to use liquid fuel, which has substantially higher energy density and in fact has a higher energy density than the theoretical limit on a chemical battery.
Flywheels have major repercussions for crash safety. Of course, so do liquid fuels - although if we took safety as seriously in average driving as we do in racing, we'd all be a lot safer because we'd have racing fuel cells (tanks) instead of the cheap bullshit stamped sheet metal crap we use now. And this continues to be an option and probably one that would be taken more seriously if you had a hot turbine engine in the car.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That PDF is just a slide show presentation. It says 40% indeed, but I have absolutely no way of knowing 40% of WHAT. There's no relevant data to support the claim, of course. That is likely just marketing bullshit numbers.
No we haven't. You've dismissed them out-of-hand without justification of any kind.
I fail to see any reasoning here. There's nothing about "multiple" moving parts that poses any kind of issue.
Much less so than an ultra-high compression, 2,000C degree turbine engine for certain... And I'm not talking about the danger of the fuels, just the kinetic energy of the spinning turbine itself...
There is no drag other than the berings themselves, and they suffer much more loss by higher weight than by speed.
Perhaps not, but close enough to it. The extra 5 minutes you may be waiting is certainly less time than it would take to leave, find a gas station, fill up, and continue on.
Flywheels are extremely light. They wouldn't be using them on the space station if that wasn't the case.
A very high capacity bank of flywheels will easily be lighter than even just a tank of gasoline, never mind the engine (or turbine+burner+generator+heat exchanger) et al.
Energy density would matter a lot if we were talking about airplanes, hot air balloons, or perhaps even bicycles. We're not.
You aren't going to see a 500 lbs car, no matter what. With a modern car, you can convert it to battery-electricity, end up with the same curb weight, and a 300 mile range. Add to that the vastly lower price for electricity vs gasoline per unit of work done (your liquid fuels are much more effecient at the power plant than they are in your car), and the advantages are obvious TODAY. Not in some theoretical future.
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Reducing the parts count reduces the number of points of failure and reduces the chance that some part will fail in a given time frame.
The flywheels have more mass and will need to turn faster than the turbine.
So you're going to have them encapsulated in a perfect vacuum? That increases both the cost and the mass.
The ISS is not a car, so that was a stupid comparison. "Light" in a vehicle of around one ton is just a wee bit different than a space station which will have a mass when complete of over 400,000 kilos.
It already means a lot. Incidentally, what current EV has a 300 mile range?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"