First Flight of Jet Powered By Algae-Fuel

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. by Jonah+Bomber · 2009-01-09 05:07 · Score: 5, Informative

Bio-fuel from algae is going to be an interesting field. It's easy to grow, difficult to harvest, and takes a lot of it to make into fuel. But it doesn't take up valuable cropland like corn does and really can be grown anywhere you're willing to build tanks. Solix (http://www.solixbiofuels.com/) is one such company working on the issue who see the potential of building tanks by power plants and then using the CO2 emissions to feed the algae.

Great, but ... by KindMind · 2009-01-09 05:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think it's great that they're testing, but that isn't the issue, is it? Isn't the real problem in getting the production up to a practical level?

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Re:Great, but ... by MBGMorden · 2009-01-09 05:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Still good to know that this is renewable and useable though. Cars can go electric just fine. Airplanes capable of carrying any useful load (ie, people) have a much harder time. Weight is at a premium in an airplane and batteries are quite heavy compared to the energy they have stored.
If/when we run out of oil I have confidence that electric cars will be pretty well developed and ready. For flight though, I think some form of combustion will still be needed.
So production up to a practical level might not be as much of a problem if it means only supplying aviation fuel while everything else runs on electric. At would at a minimum keep small airplanes available for hobby use (where fuel burn is not really that bad - 4 to 10 gallons per hour is pretty common in smaller planes).

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Re:Great, but ... by eln · 2009-01-09 05:37 · Score: 3, Funny

I, for one, am dismayed that they were so quick to shoot down my idea of commercial aircraft being launched to their destinations with enormous slingshots. It requires no fuel, and would look wicked cool. Where's my grant, huh? Why do these jokers who want to fly planes using used grease from a McDonald's fryer get all the money, and I don't get squat?
All I need is a big tree and a really big elastic band at every airport, and I could solve this problem tomorrow!
Re:Great, but ... by sbeckstead · 2009-01-09 05:45 · Score: 5, Informative

They grow it in huge tanks that take up very little space compared to the mass they produce. It's actually one of the most viable sources of biomass that they have come up with yet, and the waste after extracting the oils can be used as fertilizer. So Algae is a win win bio fuel.

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Why bother
Re:Great, but ... by nfc_Death · 2009-01-09 06:03 · Score: 2

How can this be a standard response to alternative fuel talk, of course the real problem is getting it up to production level! We have over 150 years of oil based infrastructure that we rely on, I understand the desire not to change our existing structure, but we absolutely have to! Burning dead plants and dinosaurs is a losing battle, it always will be. Having a negative arguement of "Geez looks expensive to get in motion." is not an acceptable stance. Everything is expensive to get started and build up. At some point however we will have to bite the bullet and start.
Re:Great, but ... by gnick · 2009-01-09 06:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Agreed that your idea would look "wicked cool", however I see a couple of problems. In order to keep the acceleration low enough to avoid destroying the plane and killing the passengers during take-off, the band will have to be fairly soft and very long. Although if we can stretch it constantly over the entire length of a sharply inclined runway, that may be enough.
The second problem, however, is that the major technical hurdle will not be the launch. In order to stop the aircraft, you'll need a very large and very soft catcher's mitt at each airport to accommodate landings. I wish you the best of luck securing funding to pursue your new eco-friendly launch procedure, but I fear that you'll find an insurmountable hurdle at the other end.

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Re:Great, but ... by 0100010001010011 · 2009-01-09 06:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Which is why we need to start building light and fast rail NOW. Link all the cities above X million people, a hub in cities with more than X0 million people. Rail doesn't need to carry ANY energy. (Overhead power lines), rail can do regenerative braking and dump all that power back into the grid, power generation can be centralized and cleaned (rather than a million little diesel engines running around).
Re:Great, but ... by JustinOpinion · 2009-01-09 06:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Weight is at a premium in an airplane and batteries are quite heavy compared to the energy they have stored.
It's even worse than that. Even if a battery had the same energy density (by weight) as fuel, it would still be worse because the batteries do not get lighter over the course of the flight, so the aircraft must constantly expend energy to carry that mass. By burning fuel you lighten your load over the course of the flight which makes flying progressively cheaper.
Also, many aircraft can't (safely) land with a full tank of fuel. They are designed such that the landing weight will be lower (due to burning fuel) than the takeoff weight. This is why planes making emergency landings sometimes need to dump fuel.
Re:Great, but ... by Hal_Porter · 2009-01-09 06:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

I don't know how they are creating this algae, but I think we'd run into a similar problem as ethanol, where you'd need to devote so much land to growing that actually using the algae as a replacement for petroleum isn't feasible
Not sure about your other questions but it doesn't take up much space
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
Algae fuel, also called algal fuel, oilgae, algaeoleum or third-generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae.
The record oil price increases since 2003, competing demands between foods and other biofuel sources and the world food crisis have ignited interest in algaculture (farming algae) for making vegetable oil, biodiesel, bioethanol, biogasoline, biomethanol, biobutanol and other biofuels. Among algal fuels' attractive characteristics: they do not affect fresh water resources, can be produced using ocean and wastewater, and are biodegradable and relatively harmless to the environment if spilled. Algae cost more per pound yet yield 30 times more energy per acre than other, second-generation biofuel crops. One biofuels company has claimed that algae can produce more oil in an area the size of a two-car garage than an football field of soybeans, because almost the entire algal organism can use sunlight to produce lipids, or oil. The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (40,000 square kilometers), which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland, or 1.3 Belgiums. This is less than 1/7th the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000.
As of 2008, such fuels remain too expensive to replace other commercially available fuels, with the cost of various algae species typically between US$5â"10 per kg dry weight.[citation needed] But several companies and government agencies are funding efforts to reduce capital and operating costs and make algae oil production commercially viable.[8][11]
I can actually see it replacing oil if the production can be value engineered. Someone worked out you could build the Algae tanks in the Sonoran desert.
http://www.oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm
Large-Scale Algae Production
Michael Briggs, a physicist in the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Biodiesel group, calculated the annual equivalent amount of biodiesel needed to meet all US ground transportation needs. (6) He assumes that all gasoline-powered vehicles could be replaced over timeâ"the average life of a car in the US is 20 yearsâ"by biodiesel vehicles. He assumes no change in the current average fleet mileage, but does factor in that diesel engines are more efficient. With these assumptionsâ"and a correction for the 2% lower mileage for biodieselâ"he arrives at 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel a year to meet US ground transportation needs. He does note that if people began to buy diesel hybrids (Mercedes showed its diesel hybrid concept car in June and it gets 70 mpg), the total fuel required might be reduced by a factor of three or more. (7)
Briggs used the numbers from NREL's Aquatic Species Programâ"that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced on 200,000 ha (roughly 500,000 acres) or about 780 square milesâ"to compute that 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel would requre 19 quads (140.8 / 7.5).This would require about 15,000 square miles (19 x 780), or about 9.5 million acresâ"which he notes is only about 12.5% of the area of the Sonoran desert of the Southwest. So using algae as a source of oil for biodiesel with the NREL productivity assumption, the acreage required is less than 3% of the 450 million acres now used to grow crops.
Based on a UNH research project, (8) Briggs then estimates the total cost of producing 140.8 billion gallons of oil (u

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Re:Great, but ... by 0123456 · 2009-01-09 06:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Rail sucks for numerous reasons. Fast rail competitive with airlines really, really sucks; rail that can safely carry people at 500mph would be insanely, absurdly expensive, because you can't afford a single failure if you're going to kill hundreds of people in a derailment. Worse than that, rail is much harder to protect against even low-grade attackers because it only takes one whacko deliberately damaging the rails in the middle of nowhere to cause such a disaster.
Finding an alternate affordable fuel source for airliners is going to be much easier than making fast trains that are competitive with airliners. Trains are an attempt to use a 19th century solution for 21st century problems.
Re:Great, but ... by TheRaven64 · 2009-01-09 06:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

And, because it grows in tanks, it doesn't need good soil. You can grow algae in sunny locations where the soil is inadequate for farming.

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Re:Great, but ... by afidel · 2009-01-09 07:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

Thanks to the inconvenience of air travel a train doesn't have to go 500mph to compete with the airlines. A trip via Accella is often faster than the equivalent trip by plane because it goes from city center to city center and doesn't have the security theater surrounding it.

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Re:Great, but ... by NeutronCowboy · 2009-01-09 07:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Look up Solix for a company that is investigating this. Algae are really the only long-term viable source of bio-diesel.

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Re:Great, but ... by Hatta · 2009-01-09 09:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

everyone wants a train stop, which means by the time a high speed train gets up to speed it has to decelerate for the next stop.
Take a local train to a hub, then get on the high speed non-stop train to your destination.
The problem with infrastructure is that we don't have slave labor to put it in place. It costs millions of dollars per mile to build a highway, and (if I remember correctly) tens of millions (to 100+M) per mile for high speed rail.
Too bad we don't have millions of people out of work right now. And too bad we don't have an incoming administration looking to stimulate the economy by pumping billions of dollars into infrastructure...

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I wonder if... by xpuppykickerx · 2009-01-09 05:10 · Score: 5, Funny

the plane could fly solely using two African swallows with a string around the plane, such as they would if they were carrying coconuts.

Re:I wonder if... by Yetihehe · 2009-01-09 05:24 · Score: 2, Funny

Yes, if they were siberian swallows (much more durable and powerfull than european or african swallows) eating algae.

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We've been over this before by Ralph+Spoilsport · 2009-01-09 05:11 · Score: 3, Informative

And I posted to it then. It must have been a few years back. I did a calculation on how much energy one gets out of algae per acre, and to JUST FEED the traffic from EWR/JFK you would need to convert most of northern NJ into one giant goo pile. Not that Northern NJ isn't already one giant goo pile, but right now it's a giant goo pile full of houses and people and malls and highways and Dunkin Donut shops, all of it located on some of the nations most expensive real estate.

Due to the low Energy Return on Energy Invested inherent to biofuels, you can't really make the stuff too far from its point of use, as the transport of the material would exceed its energy value. Jet aircraft are insanely inefficient and guzzle fuel at prodigious rates, and require fuel that has a high energy density. As a consequence I do not see biofuel for jets as anything but a stop gap measure.

I suggest you move to where you like to live, so you can plan out your future, because in a few short decades, you're not going anywhere cheaply or quickly.

RS

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Re:We've been over this before by lee1026 · 2009-01-09 05:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

If I recall correctly, moving liquids in a pipe does not cost much energy. In theory, there should be no reason why you can't produce somewhere dirt cheap, and then transport it over with pipelines. Alternatively, we can use electric trains to transport the stuff, and then generate the electricity with nuclear power.
Re:We've been over this before by MorderVonAllem · 2009-01-09 05:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

This linkshows a method of growing it vertically so allow optimal light exposure which apparently allows for greater growth (not sure how practical it is but at least it doesn't have to take much surface area)
Re:We've been over this before by MozeeToby · 2009-01-09 05:38 · Score: 5, Informative

I assume you're basing those calculations on a couple inches of algea covering a huge area. Algea farming for biofuels doesn't work that way. You put the algea in large tubes (10 ft tall, 2 ft around) and continuously churn the water until the density of algea reaches your target harvest point. Then drain the water and process the agea.
As for biofuels for jets being a stop gap measure, how do you expect to power jets 50 years from now if (when?) oil begins to run out. I don't see charging up some Li-Ion batteries to fly several hundred people from New York to London.
Call me a techno-optimist, but I have faith we can solve these kinds of problems with research and engineering. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
Re:We've been over this before by colin_young · 2009-01-09 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative

To quote from Ask The Pilot:

"As for fuel consumption, let's look first at a short trip, from New York to Boston and back again. This flight is slightly under an hour in each direction. A typical aircraft on such a route, an Airbus A320, will consume somewhere around 10,000 pounds or 1,500 gallons of jet fuel over the course of the round trip. Assuming 140 passengers, that's 71 pounds of fuel, or just over 10 gallons per person. A lone occupant making the same trip by car would consume twice those amounts."
I'm assuming that Mr. Smith as a professional airline pilot has got his numbers right. So where's your backup for your "insanely inefficient" claim?
Re:We've been over this before by Gizzmonic · 2009-01-09 06:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

JUST FEED the traffic from EWR/JFK you would need to convert most of northern NJ into one giant goo pile
So...no changes would be necessary, then?

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Re:We've been over this before by init100 · 2009-01-09 06:08 · Score: 3, Informative

Jet aircraft are insanely inefficient and guzzle fuel at prodigious rates
Actually not. If we e.g. take a common Boeing 737-400, with a fuel capacity of 23170 liters, a maximum range (fully loaded) of 4005 km and a seating capacity of 159 seats, it yields a fuel consumption of 0.036 liters of fuel per km per passenger, which translates to 65 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel.
That's not so bad, is it? Sure, it assumes that the aircraft uses its maximum range (take-off comprises a significant share of the total fuel consumption, so a short flight is much more wasteful than a long flight) and contain a full load of passengers, but still, it's a pretty good number.
Re:We've been over this before by WebCowboy · 2009-01-09 06:10 · Score: 4, Informative

and to JUST FEED the traffic from EWR/JFK you would need to convert most of northern NJ into one giant goo pile.
Not really a PILE--probably a nice thick coat of algae, but not a PILE. Besides, why would you bother covering New Jersey in it when you could grow it in the ocean or in lakes? Comparatively speaking the area of NJ is microscopic when you consider how much surface of the earth is covered in water. Not only that, you can grow it in "3D", so you can grow thousands of percent more Algae per acre of SURFACE than you could, say, CORN--that "darling" of the biofuel industry.

Due to the low Energy Return on Energy Invested inherent to biofuels, you can't really make the stuff too far from its point of use, as the transport of the material would exceed its energy value.
I've heard, in fact, that Algae biofuel is MORE THAN 3000 PERCENT MORE ENERGY DENSE THAN CORN ETHANOL. Even myths about corn ethanol taking more energy to produce than it provides has been dispelled (though corn ethanol IS only a fraction as efficient as petroleum fuel and thus not a good alternative). As a matter of fact, if you set aside an area of ocean near the shore about the size of NJ, not only would it produce enough jet fuel to feed EWR/JFK traffic--it would be enough to fuel ALL FLIGHTS AND AUTOMOTIVE TRAFFIC IN THE UNITED STATES.
The problem with algae fuel isn't growing the stuff (supply far exceed demand--it is often the byproduct of water pollution), or how much energy it provides (quite a lot in fact). The problem is that until now almost nothing has been invested in refining the stuff--virtually all the fuel refineries in the world are designed to refine "dead dinosaur residue". he refining infrastructure investment requirement to process that much algae is MASSIVE, which is the single biggest reason we don't all run our cars on algae today.

I suggest you move to where you like to live, so you can plan out your future, because in a few short decades, you're not going anywhere cheaply or quickly.
Thanks for the advice, Chicken Little, I'll take it under advisement.
Of course, our society is extremely wasteful and energy inefficient right now when compared to potential, so ignoring efforts in reducing energy use overall perhaps the sky will indeed fall. However, nothing of the sort will happen as we learn to do everything more efficiently.
Re:We've been over this before by SlayerofGods · 2009-01-09 06:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

According to the washington post it would take only 15,000 square miles to replace all the oil used in the United States which includes the oil costs to move oil around.
Which sound huge right? Luckly this country is pretty damn big, with lots of pretty useless areas....
The Mojave Desert for instance is over 22,000 square miles.
While you obvious can't covert the whole thing and dump it all in one place you can probably still find lots of place to stick huge tanks of this stuff, and the tech is only going to get better.
But you are correct in that this wont solve the problem it's still very promising.

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Re:We've been over this before by Archangel+Michael · 2009-01-09 06:28 · Score: 2, Funny

"I don't see charging up some Li-Ion batteries to fly several hundred people from New York to London."
You're close ... we need .... Dilithium Crystals!

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Re:We've been over this before by Atanamis · 2009-01-09 07:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

To quote from Ask The Pilot:
"As for fuel consumption, let's look first at a short trip, from New York to Boston and back again. This flight is slightly under an hour in each direction. A typical aircraft on such a route, an Airbus A320, will consume somewhere around 10,000 pounds or 1,500 gallons of jet fuel over the course of the round trip. Assuming 140 passengers, that's 71 pounds of fuel, or just over 10 gallons per person. A lone occupant making the same trip by car would consume twice those amounts."
I'm assuming that Mr. Smith as a professional airline pilot has got his numbers right. So where's your backup for your "insanely inefficient" claim?
You are comparing a form of mass transit to a single occupant car. Nobody would claim that a single occupant car was fuel efficient. Replace your single occupant car with two to four people, and the fuel usage drops to equal or half as much as an airplane. Put the people in a plane on an appropriately sized bus, and the fuel per person would drop even more. Use a train which has a dedicated path and moves at a constant speed (again, appropriately sized), and fuel usage would drop further.
In today's transportation, energy efficiency is basically a non-issue. People value convenience and speed far, far more than energy usage. When energy costs rise as oil depletion nears, this will change. More money will be pumped into creating new energy sources and people will travel both less and more efficiently. Most office workers don't REALLY need to travel as often as they do. Most drivers don't REALLY need a large heavy vehicle for most of their transportation. Even public transportation in the US is vastly energy inefficient due to low usage patterns. The only crisis will come if oil prices impair the ability to produce and distribute food before alternatives are found. Everything else will scale back if and when it becomes necessary.

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Atanamis

Not that exciting? by henrygb · 2009-01-09 05:12 · Score: 4, Informative

It is well known that biofuels can (at a cost) be refined to meet most specifications. Providing there is some mineral fuel in the blend to prevent microbial contamination and growth, using this should cause no problems apart from cost. But since jet kerosene is generally untaxed, it is harder to subsidise biofuel replacements than it is for road fuels.

Additionality... or just a renewable resource? by MadCow42 · 2009-01-09 05:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Is this really an Environmentally-friendly change, or just ensuring that it's a fuel that can be supplied long-term (not limited like fossil fuels)?

Consider these points before agreeing that it truly benefits the environment:

- what energy and chemicals goes into the growing, harvesting, and processing of the plants to make it into fuel? What CO2/pollution does that create?

- the land used to grow the crops... are we displacing food crops? Would that land otherwise have sequestered CO2 long term (benefitting us), whereas now we're taking that carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere?

It's all about "additionality"... comparing the results of using the new fuel type to the alternatives as a whole. It's hard to come up with solutions that truly make an impact today - until technology makes producing these things in the lab easy (algae seems the most promising).

MadCow.

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Re:Additionality... or just a renewable resource? by MadCow42 · 2009-01-09 05:47 · Score: 2, Informative

>> Land (and forest) do not sequester carbon to any significant extent - the decomposition process of dead plant matter releases the carbon back into the atmosphere.
Actually, they do - however to a finite capacity. It's true that as plants die, the carbon goes back into the environment, but new plants grow to replace them. Once you deforest an area, or cut it down to grow crops, you've permanently released that carbon to the atmosphere - You're taking an existing carbon sink and destroying it.
If you compare that to farmland, it's not the same effect. You start with bare land, grow crops, then burn the results - net neutral except for the energy put into growing the crops (unless you chopped down a forest to create the farm land in the first place).
I agree that more advanced crops that are easier to convert to fuel are the answer, especially if we're not displacing existing carbon sinks to grow these. The fact that most ethanol comes from low-yield sources like corn today, competing with food crops, is worrying.
MC

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Re:Additionality... or just a renewable resource? by jeffmeden · 2009-01-09 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

As long as the CO2 is coming from a truly "renewable" source (meaning that CO2 went into it during it's production) and it's production doesn't involve improperly disposing of some toxic chemical (the EPA does a relatively fair job of this,) how much more environmentally friendly can you ever expect capitalists to get?
We could argue all day about how a car trip through the countryside hurt the feelings of a pair of owls and now they aren't talking to each other and their population is in decline and all of a sudden we realize that NOTHING we do is truly sustainable because we are going to have an impact wherever we go no matter what... and then you just have to ask yourself "is the cost of what I'm doing worth it" and that's a question only YOU can answer. If you don't think so, then there are remote islands where you can farm beets and live in a mud hut for the rest of your life, and I won't think any worse of you for it.

Re:Gross by ivan256 · 2009-01-09 05:13 · Score: 2, Funny

It can only be an improvement. I'd prefer "malfunctioning waste treatment plant" over "jet exhaust".

I'm hoping it smells like "fish tank".

Sounds like a PR-coup, really. by MoellerPlesset2 · 2009-01-09 05:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm all for biofuels and algae is certainly promising, but AFAIK, it's nowhere near industrial production yet. (cellulosic ethanol is getting there though)

Note that it says:

The biofuel used in the demonstration flight was a blend of two different types of alternative oils - algae and jatropha.

They don't say how much algae-derived biofuel was in that mix. I'm guessing this is rather a way for the company involved to get attention and hence, more funding. I suppose the ends justify the means, though. It takes a lot of funding to start test plants for industrial production.

Re:Flight Tests by MozeeToby · 2009-01-09 05:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

You can bet that the tests were performed for hundreds of hours in controlled environements, you don't just put a couple hundred million dollar airplane into the air and hope that everything works out ok. Of course, there are a ton of variables still to be tested with real world flights: lower air pressure, oxygen density, and temerature for a start.

The thing people don't realize is that modern jet engines can burn practically anything, gas turbines are remarkably flexible. The real questions are how the new fuel affects range and maintanence issues, if the algea fuel gums up the fuel pumps after a half dozen flights, it's not going to see a whole lot of use until all the issues are resolved.

Which airline? by damn_registrars · 2009-01-09 05:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

The description

A US airline carrier

Is rather vague. Would it kill the editors to read the first line of the article itself to see

The 90-minute flight by a Continental Boeing 737-800 went better than expected, a spokesperson said.

Considering how poorly many of the carriers are doing in terms of finances and customer satisfaction (not to mention customer service) it could be useful to know which one is trying the biofuel, even if it was a short test.

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Gross is good by WebCowboy · 2009-01-09 05:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Eew. Algae. What's next, a flight powered by athlete's foot?

You don't EAT the damn stuff dude, you burn it! Who the hell CARES what it's made of? Sure seems like a lot less trouble and easier on the earth than digging deep into the earth and dredging up old dead dinosaurs to burn.

I'm also hoping it shuts up the idiots who jump up and down yelling "but how will we feed the children?!?!" whenever someone advocates biofuels. BIO in biofuels does NOT equal FOOD. If I recall, algal blooms are in OVERabundance due to human activity (our detergents ending up in water and supplying phosphates to grow the stuff in excess--tainting our water and killing fish, etc). Seems like an elegant solution to me.

Athletes foot wouldn't be next, but I can thing of another abundant biofuel source that we have a hard time eliminating and that nobody would eat: fecal waste. Everything from poultry litter and cow manure to even human sewerage. How is THAT for gross?

Also, with biofuels, the PROCESSED end product is chemically similar or even identical to conventional hydrocarbon fuels. If you run straight corn oil in your car of COURSE it'll smell like the fryer at the local burger joint, but you don't run straight algae in a jet engine!

Incidentally, have you ever smelled NORMAL jet fuel, or better yet, the EXHAUST from an engine running on it? Jets typically run on a naptha/kerosene blend, which besides being a carcinogen will give you a real bad headache afer a few minutes (unless you're into doing things like snorting tremclad or shoving jiffy markers up your nose or other "fun with fumes" I guess). The exhaust smells similarly unpleasant--almost, but not quite as nice, as deeply inhaling the cloud of black sooty smoke that comes out of the tailpipe of an old diesel truck with fouled injectors.

SO, I'm guessing that it'll perhaps make the airports smell BETTER if algae-derived biofuels become more commonplace. It's also much better than using exotic and/or edible sources, such as coconuts.

Re:Gross is good by Stachybotris · 2009-01-09 06:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

You don't EAT the damn stuff dude, you burn it! Who the hell CARES what it's made of? Sure seems like a lot less trouble and easier on the earth than digging deep into the earth and dredging up old dead dinosaurs to burn.
Actually, most oil comes from dead algae, not dead dinosaurs. Check the section entitled 'Formation' in the aforementioned Wiki link. So in this regard, we're just changing the current status of the input material.
Re:Gross is good by c6gunner · 2009-01-09 06:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Incidentally, have you ever smelled NORMAL jet fuel, or better yet, the EXHAUST from an engine running on it? Jets typically run on a naptha/kerosene blend...
Actually, they tend to avoid blending it with naphtha these days - it's a bit dangerous. The fuel itself doesn't smell particularly bad, although the exhaust usually does. That's primarily because aircraft fuel - contrary to popular belief - is much "dirtier" than the fuel you'd put in your car. Jet-turbine engines can burn just about anything, so they can tolerate a much higher level of impurity than your typical piston engine.
Re:Gross is good by Deadstick · 2009-01-09 06:52 · Score: 2, Informative

even human sewerage
Sewage. Sewerage is what sewage flows through.
Jets typically run on a naptha/kerosene blend
Only in very cold climates where the naptha keeps it from getting gooey. That stuff, called Jet-B, is widely banned elsewhere because it will ignite too easily in a crash landing. The rest of the civil aviation world uses Jet-A (in the USA) and Jet-A1 (elsewhere). Apart from having the solid crap filtered out of it, and some microorganism and corrosion inhibitors added, it's plain old kerosene -- your grandfather's coal oil.
rj
Re:Gross is good by DaveGod · 2009-01-09 07:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

The substantive impact on food supplies from biofuels comes from food production resources (most obviously land) switching to fuel production. This is irrespective of whether foodstuffs are what is being converted.
It's unlikely the problematic existing algae blooms will be used for fuel. More algae will be created for this use - it will be farmed. The objective is to produce biofuel cheaply, tax-free and without being imported... er, I mean in a way that minimises impact to food production, i.e. intensively and using land poorly suited to food production (likely in tall tanks to boot). TFA appears to assert that algae production is well suited to this, though it's unclear if there is any basis.
Incidentally perhaps, the phosphates causing algae blooms are more usually associated with farming fertilizer than domestic chemicals. Along with artificially produced chemicals, faecal matter is used as fertilizer. Including human slurry.
There seems to be an assumption that we can produce something from nothing. Generally available resources are pretty well utilised, the best you can do is be more efficient. Technological improvements have the potential to improve efficiency through, in this case, production of algae as an alternative to oil if it is more efficient than alternative uses for the resources consumed.
Secondly, efficiency can be achieved through better use of the resources - living closer to work with good public transport and smaller cars when necessary. Why many people seem determined to take a side is beyond me, one camp seems motivated to massage their conscience while continuing an absurdly unsustainable lifestyle, while the other seem oblivious to the needs of the real world. The answer is an efficient, practical balance of technology and better utilisation of resources.
However I don't think we'll see a good balance. Markets are the real decider - oil got expensive and the response was remarkable and vast compared to decades of environmental concern. Currently the only mechanism for factoring in societal costs is if the government introduces a clumsy tax. Research grants and subsidies seem helpful but this artificially picks winners and government is notoriously bad at it. It seems likely the best we can hope for is for oil to get expensive again and stay that way.
*(economics calls all natural resources "land", even the sea)
Re:Gross is good by rgviza · 2009-01-09 08:28 · Score: 2, Informative

The most productive source of bio oil is hemp, which has many non THC strains, but is illegal anyway.
Too bad the US gov is morons... Of course flying a hemp powered plane might not inspire confidence.
-Viz

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Re:Gross is good by c6gunner · 2009-01-09 10:36 · Score: 4, Informative

Yes, I know, I work on them for a living :) I wouldn't exactly call them "simpler", though. The basic concept is simple enough, but large jet-turbine engines are anything but simple.
And yes, the fuel is considerably cheaper. There's no point spending extra money in processing the fuel when your engines can handle a high level of impurity. Basic economics.

Re:It will be interesting to see how this plays ou by tuxgeek · 2009-01-09 05:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's easy to grow, difficult to harvest, and takes a lot of it to make into fuel.

The kinks in harvesting algae will be worked out with development. Give the industry time.
And of course it will take large quantities to produce large volumes of fuel, the up side is that algae is easy to grow anywhere and grows fast.

Solix (http://www.solixbiofuels.com/):

Since the whole organism converts sunlight into oil, algae can produce more oil in an area the size of a two-car garage than an entire football field of soybeans.

On a side note and off topic, what imbecile modded you down to -1? Your post is informative and includes a great link to the technology and should be modded up. I amazes me just how many morons are out there with mod points. Mr Malda, would you fix this please. Someone needs a time out.

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"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain

Re:Algae For Fuel Is Not Cool. by Meumeu · 2009-01-09 06:01 · Score: 5, Funny

Putting those millions, nay, billions of LIVING organisms in such terrible working conditions is a crime against algaenity.

Fixed that for you.

Re:It will be interesting to see how this plays ou by Idiomatick · 2009-01-09 06:09 · Score: 2, Offtopic

Nobody ever bothers meta-moderating.

Re:Gross by timelorde · 2009-01-09 06:10 · Score: 3, Funny

If they were smart, they'd make it smell like coconut suntan lotion.

Mmmmm...

Re:Gross by CompMD · 2009-01-09 06:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you can smell something outside the outside the cabin of a pressurized airplane, you have bigger problems than being offended by the smell.

Re:Hydrogen by init100 · 2009-01-09 06:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

So how do you store it while in the aircraft? AFAIK, hydrogen needs to be compressed to a very high pressure, which requires heavy steel gas flasks for storage, not fuel tanks made of thin aluminium sheets as those used on aircraft today.

Re:It will be interesting to see how this plays ou by NeutronCowboy · 2009-01-09 07:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Algae is the only really viable bio-diesel source. The closest thing to it is switchgrass, but even that can't be fully turned into bio-diesel. The only - and significant - issue with algae-derived bio-diesel is that it's difficult to efficiently turn algae into diesel.

What astounds me though is the number of times people try to turn slow-growing foodstuff into fuel. Coconut oil? I'm sure the same genius came up with the idea to use corn for ethanol fuel. Here's why those are dead ends:
- they require a lot of surface, water and nutrients.
- only a small fraction of the entire plant gets used.
- impacts food prices.

Compare that with algae, which:
- can grow in vats of arbitrary size.
- can be grown in sewage treatment plants.
- main growth restriction is light.
- the entire organism is used in the production of the fuel.

Every time I hear someone advocate fuel from coconuts or corn, I'm wondering how much he's getting paid by corn and coconut growers.

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Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.

Re:It will be interesting to see how this plays ou by Jonah+Bomber · 2009-01-09 07:40 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, I started out at -1. My karma was Terrible. This is apparently what happens if you have a couple of +5 Funny comments. Now, thanks to this Informative post, my karma went up to Bad.

So there are no morons who modded me down, only a /. karma system that has yet to make sense to me. I just have those moderators who actually read -1 comments to thank.

Re:Gross by ceiling9 · 2009-01-09 07:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

The pressurized air in the cabin of a plane typically enters just after the compressor stage (but obviously before combustion) in the engines, thereby not requiring a separate compressor, and then goes through a pressure regulator (and filters, I would guess) before entering the cabin. In flight, all the air entering the engine is clean, but at startup, it's probably possible for a some exhaust from the engine, or from other ground vehicles to enter the system.

Re:It will be interesting to see how this plays ou by Whorhay · 2009-01-09 08:37 · Score: 2, Informative

What you say isn't entirely true from what I have read.

The Algae is usually seperated from the water through filtration or skimming of some sort and then pressed to extract the oil. The waste product can then be dried out and broken up to be used as food stuff for the algae that you still have growing. So while the algae isn't generating as much waste as the other options it's not 100% production either.

The big difficulties I seem to remember were in getting useful amounts of oil out of the strains of algae they could easily grow. While there are millions of different strains of algae there are only maybe a couple hundred that can produce enough oil to be worthwhile. They need to find a hardy strain of algae that won't easily be displaced by an invading strain that doesn't produce enough fuel. And at the same time that won't wipe out all other algae strains in the area.

Re:commonly exaggerations about hemp by dubbreak · 2009-01-09 11:54 · Score: 2, Funny

Sadly the supposed "efficiency" of hemp oil as a magical bio-fuel is a constant myth propogated by the pro-MJ crowd.

Those damn Michael Jackson fans and the crazy propaganda they spew!

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