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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
Next they'll be finding a use for lawyers!
:D)
(Oh yeah, I'm burning for that one!
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!
Why don't they look at how to make liquified coal cheaper and better?
Firstly, "they" are of course looking at that. The fact that some scientists work on biodiesel does not mean that nobody is looking at liquified coal.
Secondly, liquified coal doesn't do anything towards solving the CO2 problem, so biodiesel should always be preferable.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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
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."
Wow.
This algae idea could grow on me.
The opposite of progress is congress
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes. The fastest-growing and oiliest algae are diatoms, which are saltwater microscopic organisms.
One of the major advantages of biofuel from algae, is that it grows quickly in saltwater ponds in hot areas like New Mexico. As a result, no fresh water or farmland is wasted. Also the land wasn't being used for anything else. Also, algal fuel is carbon-neutral (it sucks up as much CO2 as is released by burning it) so it doesn't contribute to global warming.
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
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
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'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.
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.
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
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.
You might want to actually read the article you posted in your own link. Free markets do not just fail whenever externalities exist. If that were true, capitalism itself would have failed by now. Negative externalities do tend to create "less socially optimal" situations, but that doesn't mean that market forces can't correct for them, either. I agree, however, that it seems unlikely that corporate enterprise is likely to spontaneously create a solution for global warming.
Breakfast served all day!
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
So the free market is incapable of solving Global Warming without Government.
What is this "the" free market of which you speak?
All markets are made by laws, and laws are made by governments. There is no "the" free market, any more than there is "the" internal combustion engine. Markets are machines, made by human beings to solve human problems. Laws made by governments are the mechanism by which we define markets. There are no markets in nature; without governments, there are no markets at all.
So to set "the free market" up as being in any way opposed to "Government" is to fundamentally fail to understand the nature of the relationship between the two. All markets are created by governments or quasi-government (i.e. violent) forces. They are shaped by various forms of regulation, including incorporation requirements, insurance requirements, and other things. "Free" markets are more-or-less free of overt governmental price-fixing and other direct political interference of the type Haliburton depends on. But there are many free markets of various types. And all of them depend on laws and therefore government for their existence and operation.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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