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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.
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.
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).
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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.
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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
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.
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 _ _ _ _ _.
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.
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
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?
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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
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.