Slashdot Mirror
Boeing Helping to Develop Algae-Powered Jet
jon_cooper writes "Air New Zealand, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation and Boeing are working together to develop and test a bio-fuel derived from algae. Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation began operating in May last year after it met a request from the local council to deal with excess algae on sewage ponds. Boeing's Dave Daggett was reported this year as saying algae ponds totaling 34,000 square kilometers could produce enough fuel to reduce the net CO2 footprint for all of aviation to zero."
And in response, General Dynamics developed a cloud-powered submarine.
The irony wars have just been joined!
Technologically there is nothing to stop us from using renewables to make liquid hydrogen and fuel jet planes with that ( yes, a jet engine will run fine on liquid hydrogen, it has been done ). The problem is that such a scheme is very costly ( about 4 times the cost of fossil fuels ). Given that you will hav eto extract the stuff out of these algae, refine it, and of course the trouble of growing themin the first place, I must wonder if it can ever become eonomically practical. I guess eventually something must replace Oil, but these things are quite a bit away still.
Well, do you know how much space regular fuel production takes? I don't but I'm guessing it'll be a lot too.
Coincidently, the Netherlands has an area of 34,000 kilometres squared... Now I'm not suggesting we turn one of the most densely populated places in the world into a big pond, but think of the airline potentials! Of course we'd lose all that great stuff that the Netherlands provides, like...
Well, someone must be able to think of something.
In other news, the gathering of algae lead to an increased production of CO2, as the machines and techniques used in this progress were powered by normal gasoline.
BTW - not surprising that the article keeps running into the "proprietary data" wall. This is typical of dealing with Boeing (and other avition firms for that matter).
e wsId=8257
However, check this out:
http://www.faa.gov/news/speeches/news_story.cfm?n
The FAA has been showing interest recently in reducing the environmental impact of the aviation industry.
Personally, I'd love to see bio-fuels take off (no pun intended). Turn Death Valley into a big algae farm (although watch that impact global weather patterns somehow).
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The fish deaths are not due to oxygen deprivation from the algae; rather, some algae blooms produce toxins that kill off fish. In smaller waters (like ponds and slow-moving rivers) algae exerts downward pressure on fish populations by outcompeting other organisms in the fish's food web.
While low oxygen concentrations are sometimes observed in waters with a high algae content, this is typically due to low aeration and warm water.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Looked at another way, that's .009% of the surface area of Earth's oceans.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As you apparently are unaware, algae live in the sea. So 34000km2 of land mass is of little help when it comes to growing algae. On the other hand, more than half of the Netherlands are below sea level, so in a couple of years the Netherlands could take care of about half of all aviation CO2 emissions.
In the ocean?
34,000/361,000,000~=0.01%
So that is about 100, 9x15 mile sized ponds. Not quite Indiana (and who says they need to be on land)?
Maybe put them out in Nevada where the sun shines all the time. And pump waste water from LA to give the algae water and nutrients. Someone else needs to do the energy (pumping, mixers, etc.) and cost-of-water calculations. But carbon offsets for all of aviation should be pretty valuable.
--
Looking for a C/C++ job in Silicon Valley?
Qxe4
Killing birds with rocks doesn't sound very environmentally friendly to me...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Good news! It's good to see a good idea take hold. I was convinced that bio fuels are not just a good idea in practice, but actually tenable in practice by some reading I did sometime last year. When I talked about it with my father, he asked me "If it's such a good idea, why is nobody doing it?" Since then, magazines have written about bio fuels, more and more people have started using them, and now even Boeing is behind them. And they're getting it right: no mucking around with corn, soy, or even rapeseed, but actually using high-yield algae for feedstock. Thanks, Boeing!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Well, also note they said the CARBON footprint. Algae uses photosynthesis (ie: CO2 + H20 = C6H12O6 + O2 + H2O), so the process itself, for 32,000 km^2, might be factored into their calculations. On the whole, it seems pretty damn green. Algae grows like nobody's business using only sunlight, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. If you could streamline that process and generate energy from it at low cost with a decent volume-to-output ratio, it seems pretty plausible that it would have a pretty big impact on the environment.
However, low-cost is KEY. The biggest bottleneck in travel prices right now is the fluctuating price of oil- if you can offer a low-cost alternative that happens to also be green, you may get a bloody nobel prize. Otherwise, you simply won't sell and we'll all still be S.O.L.
Of course, the government could like, subsidize this initiative instead of giving more money to the sheepfucking corn farmers. D:<
+5, Truth
Hey, I like fish, I hate birds. Whaddaya want, ideological consistency?
This is actually very practical. Popular Science just ran an article on algae fuel in their print edition last month, although I can't find it on their website.
Regardless, many companies are experimenting with this and it is much more efficient then corn or any other sort of biofuel production. As for the 34,000 square kilometers, you don't need ponds to do it. Many companies are using clear plastic bags to do it. Think zip-lock bags. The algae only needs water, sunlight, and CO2 to reproduce, and fast. This process can take place anywhere, even in non-desirable desert lands that get plenty of sunlight. The land is cheap, not in competition with cities and other industries because quite frankly, it is a desert. I imagine that once this becomes viable (still in the research and refinement stages) Arizona and New Mexico will have a major industry popping up.
Tulips, Cannabis, Absinthe, Prostitutes,
(on a more serious note): Oil, M. C. Escher, Vincent Van Gogh, Peace Treaties (a plurality, even), and Really Nice Airlines that could benefit from this technology.
+5, Truth
Hey, if it saves the planet, then I say screw the Netherlands.
Now, seriously, if this is the strain of algae I'm thinking about, it is very high in oil content. Not all algae are. It is also very sensitive, and other more aggresive forms of algae are prone to force it out. So, like wine making, it has to be done in the right conditions where the wrong airborne yeast getting into the mix will turn your wine into garbage, or worse, Gallo, letting the wrong algae get into the ponds will be bad.
But, why not go cubic with the ponds? Build huge production plants that are like greenhouses. Stack ponds ontop of each other, and give them a certain level of clean room control.
That, or we really flood the Netherlands.
Hell, flood them anyways.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Actually, it is possible to have algae blooms that use up all the oxygen and cause fish death. However, these blooms thrive more because of fertilizer runoff from commercial farming than global warming.
. stm
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6904249
To all of you asking "Where would you put a pond the size of X nation!?!"
The same place you'd put a refinery large enough to refine every last drop of oil we use today: NOT IN ONE PLACE, DUMBASSES.
Is it really that hard to imagine that these ponds will be spread out over multiple areas? There are many large cities producing tons of the waste this stuff is supposed to thrive on, so logically the processing plants would be near them. Aside from that, it only makes sense to have your production facilities spread out so that one hurricane or whatever doesn't knock out the entire world's supply of jet fuel.
Along the same line of reasoning as the last reason, it also makes sense to have widely distributed production facilities so that you don't have to ship the final product halfway around the globe to serve, say, Indonesia.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
Area required to fuel worldwide air fleet? 34,000 km^2
Area of West Virginia? 62,361 km^2
Half of West Virginia covered in algae? Priceless!
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Can't the planes just burn politicians? Same thing, and FAR more of a problem...
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
Based on a research conducted by the National Renewable Energy Lab, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf, a 1000 square meter out door pond at Roswell, New Mexico was used to grow algae with controlled conditions (Ph value, CO2...). Algae could grow at a peak value of 50 gram/m^2/day and average value of 10 gram/m^2/day. Then some people on the good old internet translated (manipulated) this number as algae can grow at 10-50 gram/m^2/day. Then the number was redefined as biofuel can be produced from the pond at a speed of 10-50 gram/m^2/day. An acre is 4047 m^2. So that's 40470-202350 gram/acre/day and 14,771,550-73,857,750 gram/acre/year. Diesel density is 850g/liter, and one gallon is 3.7854 liter, so one gallon of diesel is 3218g. Then the pond production rate become 4,600- 23,000 gallon/acre/year, then some other people at the Wiki thing estimated 10,000-20,000 gallon/acre/year, and then comes the Boeing number.
I really hope we can fly cleaner, but, man, there is a dead fish smell.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Well, do we have to have the 13,000 miles/2 all in one place? Or could we have smaller ponds strategically placed around the world with refineries nearby to produce the biofuel from the algae? This would be FAR more practical as it would reduce shipping/transporting of the fuel and only add to the overall goal of carbon neutrality. Unfortunately, this might require governments to actually cooperate with one another and we all know how easy that is.
All points of time and space are connected.
The technology for biodiesel from algae has been around for a long time. If you can put up with Alan Alda, here's a bioreactor at MIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c Raceway ponds (google search spirulina) may be more promising for industrial scale algae farming.
The problem is a lack of existing stakeholders able to make it happen. We already have corn, nuclear, wind, and solar lobbies getting their piece of the government handouts (and public interest), but there aren't many people sitting on massive algae resources and a large bank account. Biodiesel from palms has become big business, especially in Malaysia, but algae will provide a huge improvement in yields.
Yield of Various Plant Oils (Lipids)
Crop / Oil in Liters per hectare
Castor 1413
Sunflower 952
Safflower 779
Palm 5950
Soy 446
Coconut 2689
Algae 100000 (order of magnitude due to large variance in yield by species)
http://www.oilgae.com/algae/oil/yield/yield.html
The nice part about using algae is that marginal land (desert or poor soils) can be used, and high nutrient waste streams are excellent feedstocks, e.g. the American southwest and the Salton Sea.
Hey, the Netherlands is already doing more than its share of growing the green stuff that powers human trips into the heavens!
Plus, according to Wikipedia, Guinea-Bissau is the smallest, sufficiently-sized country.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
The algae strings together the more desirable longer hydrocarbon chains, as well as concentrating them within the algae cells. Longer molecule chains usually mean a higher energy density. While you could just anaerobically digest the waste and produce methane (the shortest hydrocarbon chain), methane has a much lower energy density compared to biodiesel, not to mention that you would be handling a gas instead of a liquid. You also lose that bonus of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere with anaerobic digestion.
In crudest form, think of the algae as a solar power covnerter that utilizes nutrients in the waste to accelerate its production while removing CO2 from the surrounding air (after it is dissolved in the water).
Algae consume CO2 during photosynthesis. Presumably, the amount of CO2 produced by combustion in the aircraft is offset by the amount of CO2 the algae consume during their growth cycle.
You know... the netherlands kinda resemble a pyramid...
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
If a sea bass eats the planet, we can rape Al Gore!
Wait, what were we talking about?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Look at some of UNH's studies on algae-derived biodiesel.
Because algae grows well in waste water from human sources (in fact LOVES sewage) and because it needs no soil, it can be grown in areas where it is utterly impractical to grow crops. UNH typically uses the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. Southwest as an example - Something like 1/4 of that area (which is mostly unpopulated) could supply the transportation fuel needs of the entire country (if all vehicles were converted from gasoline to biodiesel, of course.) They did assume special "high oil content" algae breeds that are difficult to grow/maintain without less "efficient" strains taking over though, it looks like this company is focusing on less efficient (but easier to grow/keep alive) algae strains with lower oil content.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The 3rd largest (by area) country in the world, the US is 9,629,091Km^2 (not including marine territorial waters, of which the US has vast amounts). 34,000Km^2 is only 0.35% of the US territory.
So "only 34,000 square kilometers of algae needed to do this" is an entirely unironic, nonsarcastic statement.
A worthwhile sarcastic statement would be something like "gee, only a century of internal combustion engines, and mere years from the brink of irreparable environmental collapse, before we thought to do this".
--
make install -not war
It isn't the algae that deplete the oxygen, it's the bacteria that feed on the dead algae. Note also that some of the toxins from algal blooms come from these bacteria as well. The problem with fertilizer runoff is that the algae reproduces unsustainably, so that when it begins dying off, the system cannot cope with the plunge in O2 concentrations. This is exacerbated by high water temps and low flow rate.
In a system where the algae is harvested for biodiesel, this is not a concern, since dead algae doesn't accumulate.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I've read that approximately 5% of the U.S. is developed -- even much of that is wasted.
Travel all over the West, sometime, through the mountains, or through the forests. Get away from cities or the coasts, for that matter. You'll see what I mean.
Not to mention that, but there's a lot of wasted space on building rooftops.
Solar, small-scale wind, or algae would all be viable on a large percentage of building rooftops, if people start thinking small-scale and cheap.
There is *no* magic silver bullet. However, if large numbers of people chip away small pieces at a time (local production and reduction in consumption), we could end any energy crisis and at least produce a large percentage of what we consume.
The reason I am game is an end to terrorist funding and a start to energy independence.
They refuel at these airports.
Airports are usually vast areas of grass interrupted by tarmac and a terminal.
Nobody wants to live under the clearways on either end of the runways anyway.
Most large airports are near urban centers that product loads of free nitrogen fertilizer (otherwise known as effluent).
Why not produce the fuel at the source - eliminating a significant amount of transportation and infrastructure?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
This is discussing using waste treatment facilities to grow the algae needed to fuel aircraft. So build the airports and water treatment facilities next to each other. A few things Im looking at when I say that, 1) noone wants to live near ether 2) both are usualy in industrial areas anyway 3)shorter distance for the biofuel to travel to get to the aircraft.
I dont know how to figure this out, but if one takes a look at all the sewage treatment facilities around the world, what would the total area of them be?
Also something else to take into account, it is talking about NET CO2 being reduced to 0. From what I can tell that meens that if 100% of all aircraft were running on this algae made biofuel, the production of CO2 from aircraft would balance the CO2 intake of the algae used to make the biofuel. It isnt saying that they would no longer make CO2, just it would balance with natural intake by organic processes such as algae growth. Nice goal, probly wont happen for a while though. It would meen aircraft moving completely away from the finite nonrenewable resorces of oil.
It looks like something worthy of trying, does make me wonder if Big Oil is going to try something against this though. People have been fighting to get electric, hydrogen, biodiesel, and other nonoil vehicles on the road for years. Just sounds to me like this war has finaly gotten wings.
Just my opinions
Unfortunately, that will only exacerbate all of our other problems from energy use -- namely the carbon footprint of our industry.
We should be working on getting carbon back into the ground and not on pulling more out.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Well, see, it turns out that combustible fuels are really nice from an energy-density standpoint. Liquid combustible fuels are particularly nice from a portability and distribution standpoin. And if you're planning on flying, pushing air backwards is the most efficient way to do it, since then you don't have to carry your own reaction mass as well as fuel. I suppose it wouldn't have to be hot, but jet engines have proven to be more efficient than props.
Moreover, there certainly are people looking to improve electricity storage to be used for transportation. Of course, you take a huge end-to-end efficiency hit for that (combustion -> electricity -> electricity storage -> kinetic energy versus combustion -> kinetic energy) unless we move to a non-combustion powered electrical grid, but people are working on it.
If you have suggestions for flight that don't involve moving air - or suggestions for equivalently-useful non-flight travel (particularly across oceans) - or even suggestions for feasible alternatives to combustion, by all means pursue them. There's a lot of money to be made.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
"Are there even that many undeveloped, practical miles left in the US?"
t m
I don't know what you mean by "practical", but keep in mind that less than 10% of US land is developed while an additional 15% is used for farmland and an additional 35% for pasture land.
That means there are roughly 4 million square kilometers of unused land in the US. So 34,000 square kilomenters is less than 1% of the unused land. A meaningful chunk, no doubt, but there is still lots of empty land out there.
Another way to look at this is that approximately 125,000 square kilometers of formerly used farm and pastureland was removed from use between 1982 and 1997. In other words, you would only have to put back into production one-third of the land taken out of production between 1982 and 1997.
Notes: I use "less than 10%" for developed land, because the only estimate I could find was 4.3% in 1997 and I know there has been significant development in the last ten years, but I can't imagine developed land has more than doubled in that time period. Similarly, the numbers listed for 1997 for farmland and pastureland were 16% and 36%, respectively, but both have been in long-term decline for decades. Finally, the 125,000 square kilometers of land removed from agricultural production is net of development. That is, there was actually 225,000 sqkm taken out of production but 100,000 sqkm was developed for other uses, netting 125,000 sqkm net removed from use.
All numbers taken from this EPA report:
http://www.epa.gov/indicators/roe/html/roeLandU.h
Has anybody even bothered to ask the algae how they feel about being herded into crowded pools--some smaller than the state of Maryland--and force-fed CO2 so we can use their fat to fuel our planes?
If we're going to subjugate a species for our conveniences, we should choose a less sentient form of life with easily harvested fat. I suggest we start with NASCAR fans.
"The nation of Afghanistan is 652,090 square km. Whatever happened to that Lake Afghanistan idea that the air force was working on right after 9/11? Covering a lake that size with algae would provide a whole lotta jet fuel, not to mention getting rid of a whole lotta Islamic fundamentalists,... ;-)"
Lets weigh this idea for a bit...
Pro: Would probably unite Afghanistan under on gov't
Con: That gov't (surely to me 'western-esque'!!) would have the worlds' largest supply of jet fuel-- which can, if burned inside buildings, cause office towers to collapse.
Pro: No more Poppy farming.
Con: Newly-minted Jet fuel farmers would produce the worlds' largest supply of jet fuel -- which can, if burned inside buildings, cause office towers to collapse.
Pro: Air Afghanistan would have the least expensive fuel costs of any airline.
Con: They could actually fly into places loaded with jet fuel -- which can, if burned inside buildings, cause office towers to collapse.
Torontoman.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Except that Algae yields vegetable oil, not petroleum. Transesterification of vegetable oil yields something almost entirely not quite unlike diesel fuel. It's similar enough that a diesel engine won't care, but there are certainly differences--it's biodegradable, non-toxic if processed correctly (some methanol is used in its production, it's still possible to have dangerous levels of methanol in a 'bad batch' so you really don't want to drink the stuff). And one of the biggest reasons you'll usually find it blended with petro-diesel: it basically turns into Jell-O in cold weather.
I don't know how they intend to get "bio-jet fuel" but I doubt they're synthesizing kerosene. Much like biodiesel production, I'm guessing they've found a way to process vegetable oil into something similar enough to kerosene that a jet engine won't mind.
Thanks for the correction. I'd forgotten that diesel engines were originally run on plant oils and petro-diesel were then introduced as a cheaper alternative and now we're going back to bio-diesels again.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Uh huh. I'm curious as to why you felt the fact that Gore served a particular fish at his daughters wedding to be at all relevant to an article about airplane biofuel, if you were not specifically pushing an anti-environment agenda through an offtopic attack on a popular environmentalist? It's a classic propaganda technique.
But no no, I'm being hugely irrational because I don't associate an unrelated person's private life with the benefits of biofuels.
The thing that bothers me isn't the attack on Gore; I could care less. The thing that bothers me is the fact that this isn't about Gore, and but you're trying to make it about him because you hate his politics and you want to keep this a politically polarized issue. And I think that fucking sucks. If you can't come up with anything better to say about this issue than to whine about Gore's diet, you've got no fucking place here.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is only sort of related to *production* of fuel, but Denver International Airport produces 70% of the fuel used at DIA through oil wells on the airport property. I can't find a supporting cite, but this at least indicates DIA has 53 gas/oil wells. The refineries are a few miles away, but I believe they're connected by pipeline both ways, since the DIA fuel farm is near the refineries.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.