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Company Claims Potential Magnification In Bio Fuel Production
duanes1967 writes "A company called Joule Biotech claims to have a breakthrough in biofuel production. Their process can create 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year at a cost of about $50 per barrel. 'Algae-based biofuels come closest to Joule's technology, with potential yields of 2,000 to 6,000 gallons per acre; yet even so, the new process would represent an order of magnitude improvement. What's more, for the best current algae fuels technologies to be competitive with fossil fuels, crude oil would have to cost over $800 a barrel says Philip Pienkos, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Joule claims that its process will be competitive with crude oil at $50 a barrel. In recent weeks, oil has sold for $60 to $70 a barrel.'"
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.
Just brand this as "$50/barrel oil derived from harvesting common, readily available snakes and processing them in a revolutionary (and certainly patent-pending) way".
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.
You may want to inform Exxon Mobil that their recent six hundred million dollar investment is snake oil.
Big oil's investing in this, I wouldn't write it off as snake oil:
My work here is dung.
I don't know, it looks promising to me. From TFA:
Emphasis mine. Fifty bucks per barrel would have been WAY low compared to oil prices last summer.
Free Martian Whores!
Scan to drive their stock up. Nothing more.
Just so long as I don't have to change my lifestyle, these companies can and should do whatever they can!
Re:"If the new process, which has been demonstrated in the laboratory, works as well on a large scale as Joule Biotechnologies expects, it would be a marked change for the biofuel industry." I've been attending some of the algae biomass workshops in the SD area. There's a lot of excitement out there. But the problems of engineering and economics dwarf the problems in the lab. ï Don't give this crowd your hard earned scratch until they've gone beyond pilot plant stage. For a thorough review of the problems involved how about this position paper from a 40 year veteran of the field. http://www.spirulinasource.com/bios/johnbenemann.html ---537
The energy contained in 40,000 gallons of B85 biodiesel = 40,000 gallons x 133,000 BTU/gallon x .000293 kwh/BTU = 1.55 MM kwh
The energy falling on one acre of land ~= 5kwh/m2/day x 365 days/year x 4046 m2/acre = 7.4 MM kwh/year/acre
So they're capturing 21% of ALL solar energy falling on each acre of land in their fuel. The efficiency limit for photosynthesis is around 15%, which isn't calculated on a per-acre basis, but on a molecular exposure basis. Even if you could cover each acre with pure chlorophyll, the conversion efficiency would not exceed 15%.
This is therefore a green scam, undoubtedly designed to temporarily pump the company's stock. The last big one I heard of to do this was Valcent Technology's subsidiary Global Green Solutions. Don't believe the hype, especially when it's physically impossible.
A-Bomb
But that doesn't mean this type of biofuel production should be dismissed completely. Of course the best types of biofuel are those that turn an otherwise worthless waste product (like fish oil) into something usable. Even with the conversion of only waste-product to biofuels there should be more than enough fuel to run the world's chainsaws so future generations of kids can play Doom II the same way we did. Maybe a fair few diesel generators, farm equipment and a few lawnmowers (get off my lawn!) can also run off the stuff.
What's also needed is the production of single cylinder ethanol-only engines, these are much more efficient than the E85 ones you see around. With the low over-all volume of fuel these things consume it doesn't even matter if ethanol is a bit more expensive than ordinary gaz. Once we got good ultracapacitors and lithium titanate batteries electric cars will become feasible for most people but electric tractors and HGV's are a long way off, so better off trying to save the biofuels for those kind of machines.
Btw electric chainsaws and lawnmowers suck immeasurably compared to their gaz-powered counterparts but that has a lot to do with the effective 3kW limit placed on household electric motors. I'm sure there is quite a negative environmental impact associated with bringing three-phase to everyone's house especially in the countryside where it would be needed most.
As best as I can tell, their process is likely using genetically engineered algae that perform better than the best existing "natural" algae for biofuels production. There aren't really any other candidates for genetically engineered organisms for this particular goal.
The problem is that to be so efficient at biofuels production, such algae are at a severe competitive disadvantage to other less suitable species. Based on what I've seen so far, one of the biggest problems with algae biofuels production has been contamination of bioreactors with species that grow more easily but are not suitable for biodiesel production. If someone engineers algae to be even better at biofuels production, it'll likely make the contamination problem even harder to solve.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
we should name a unit of energy after the company
I've been hearing that these ethanol energy plans would use more water than we have available. While that's certainly true in California (there's a drought here), I wonder if it's true in the rest of the US. If water becomes scarce, it's gonna get expensive, and it will no longer be feasible to use it to produce ethanol.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
I did the same rough pencil and paper calculations, and the efficiency claim they are making is 10%+, which really would be amazingly outstanding if possible, but is so high I'd find it highly doubtful.
I'd be happy with 2-5% efficiency with such a scheme.
Test your net with Netalyzr
If only we could actually run our cars on Snake Oil we'd be all set.
/I have no reason to believe Joule Biotech is "snake oil" fwiw.
I like music
I have an idea that is 10x their idea!!!!.... Mine promises infinite energy for all (free in fact), and the best part is that it will be ready next week if you just give me $100 million dollars immediately... In fact, after the wire transfer goes thru, everything (at least for me) will be wonderful...
In short... Anytime you see a company talk about the next great thing, but they have not done it yet is just marketing for dollars... If their idea was so good, then why are they having to tell everyone about it... Also, If they have not built anything yet, then why have they already burned thru "substantially less than $50 million dollars"....
The real question is, how many snakes can we raise per acre, and what's the average oil yield, per snake? Can snake oil become competitive with crude oil? *grin* If the snakes are green, does that make it truly green energy?
The "secret recipe" has, as one of it's ingredients, just over 20,000 gallons of gasoline.
BTW, have you seen how E85 cuts engine performance? The EPA milage numbers for a late model E85 burning Suburban show 16 MPG on regular gas, and 12 MPG on E85, or put another way, it would take 1 1/3 gallons of E85 to travel as far as one gallon of fuel, more than eliminating the "savings" of using E85 in the first place.
1.333 of 0.85 gasoline equals about 1.13 gallons of gasoline to travel as far as one gallon of gasoline (and this "back of envelope calculation" ignores all the fuel consumed in creating the E85 fuel).
For thsoe of you slow with math it takes 1.333 gallons of E85, which is diluted so-called E0 (no Ethanol) gasoline to travel as far as 1 gallon of E0 fuel WITHOUT the Ethanol. And there is the subsidies, and the research money,and the taxc incentives, etc. What exactly was the point of E85 again?
Ken
> yet even so, the new process would represent an order of magnitude improvement.
Nope.
6,000 to 20,000 is somewhere around a factor of 3. An order of magnitude is a factor of 10. Or as wikipedia puts it:
"An order of magnitude difference between two values is a factor of 10. For example, the mass of the planet Saturn is 95 times that of Earth, so Saturn is two orders of magnitude more massive than Earth. Order of magnitude differences are called decades when measured on a logarithmic scale."
Still impressive.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Hay guys. I made cold fusion work in my bathtub. Want to invest?
20000gal x 76000 btu/gal ethanol * .000293 kwh/btu => 0.445 MM kWh .445/7.4=> 0.0601 =>~~6% efficient
It isn't even snake-oil - it's dimensional sleight of hand. Basically, they are taking a reactor vessel and flattening it out so that they can use solar energy for input. And someone said "Hmmm, if we make this big enough, we can use really big words to describe it." So when they say "per acre", they mean "per X thousand reactors, which happen to fit on an acre of land".
This is to agriculture as cocaine is to chewing coca leaves - same raw materials, BIG difference in process, cost, and end product. It actually sounds like a good idea, but for the marketing deception.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Ok.... 2,000 (taking the low) to 20,000 is an order of magnitude. However.... when the range is 2,000 to 6,000 well
thats a pretty big range. There is a factor of 3 between the low and high water marks for the previous tech. Does it seem fair to judge the new tech based solely on the low water mark for the old tech?
So essentially its anywhere from a factor of 3 to an order of magnitude. Which is, at least in my mind, not really as good as saying its "an order of magnitude"
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
First snakeoil... now algaeoil! What's next?
My page.
Well, assuming there is a viable competitor to gasoline (never mind the somewhat dubious claims of photosynthetic efficiency, they are claiming over 10%, with photosynthesis being about 2%-4% in the real world) You will only manage to set the upper price for gas. Given that the gas is pretty much completely speculatively priced, the availability of a competition would be to put a practical price limit. This is good in that it ensures gas will be cheap. This is bad because it ensures gas will be cheap. It is counter to the environmental agenda which is to get us off of fossil fuels. Ensuring its cheapness is a step in the wrong direction. Furthermore, as pointed out by others, the algae needs a substantial amount of water and land to scale. This in and of itself is an environmental burden. I think the real answer lies with photo-electric solar cells. The only downside to those is the many greenhouse gasses used in their manufacture. I see that as temporary as we discover and invent to materials to make the cells out of.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If you've read the article, you will note that it states specifically that it doesn't use algae.
It does say that the closest thing out there to what they do are ones that use algae.
When the first cars were built, the closest thing to them was the carriage, but automobiles didn't use horses to power them.
As to the people questioning as to whether they are using genetically engineered organisms, the article clearly states that they are.
Yes, your fuel may soon come from a genetically engineered non-algal microbe.
Sure, fine and all that, but I still want man portable fusion cells... Or maybe pocket antimatter. >^_^
They are greedy. they are in a for-profit business. Once we realize that green investments by most of the big oil companies is not some show to appear green, and really a strategy for them to continue operating refineries it all starts to make sense. If the big oil companies have to buy unprocessed biofuels from New Mexico and Arizona instead of shipping it from the Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East, who cares. As long as the fuel is good and cheap they can build or convert refineries to process it. Ultimately the big oil companies are in the business of refining matter to make it usable in an internal combustion engine.
Given the assumption that big oil wants to survive (and thrive) and continue profiting. The myth that big oil wants to suppress innovation because they have some sort of warped ideology where they hate the Earth and the environment. (sorry, capitalists are nothing like the villains on the Captain Planet cartoon from the 1990s)
While I have no proof, I think an argument could be made where big oil does suppress, or at least has motive to suppress, innovation that makes it easy for any individual or small start up to transport people and materials without the the use of products from big oil's refineries. This sort of conspiracy at least fits big oil serving their own self interests. The other conspiracies where big oil spends a billion dollars on "green" investments as a PR stunt seems far less likely, because it uses money so inefficiently.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Am I the only one who doesn't even bother to read these "revolutionary energy breakthrough" stories? Seriously, I read them for a year or two back in the day, but stopped after that, and for the last 5 years I don't feel like I missed anything.
The only thing that makes me pay attention is when it's revealed these new startups are headed by the brother-in-law of some eleceted official who then attempts to get them a sweetheart deal on real estate, tax breaks, regulations, permits, etc.
with entirely transparent (i.e. entirely plastic or glass) bioreactors?
Remember that in the unlikely circumstance that this project goes to actual production, the most important ongoing cost of this project is going to be financing the capital investment which is proportional to the amount of capital going into this. So it isn't just the cost of the plastic or glass bioreactor megastructures, it's that cost times x. The numbers might pencil out at $50 minus costs of financing (though without seeing their spreadsheets, I have trouble believing that), but including financing?
IMO, story's bullshit until proven otherwise.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Why not convert the numbers in the summary to how many barrels per acre/year, or how much money per gallon. When did adding the important units of measurement (and converting them all to the same base) become so difficult?
Produces 20,000 gallons per acre, at $50/barrel.
I got a car with a 18Gallon tank that gets 3.5L/100km. Oh, wait.. that makes no sense..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Isn't this the stuff stranding folks at sea with bad (nautical) engines, caused by ethanol?
I sure hope I'm right; I'd like to think there was *anything* that could touch the effeciency of fossil fuels, but do we have land available for growing both food and fuel?
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Hydrocarbon producing algae escaping into the environment....
.
Whole ecology destruction, anyone? Anyone? Any takers? You! With the gas guzzler? You don't give a flip about some ocean life do ya? Well, here's your algae oil/gasoline. Now go home and don't upset the government/financial speculators. We know what we're doing....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Gallons of oil in a barrel = 44
Barrels used per day in U.S. = 20,680,000 in 2007
Barrels user per year = 7,548,200,000
Gallons used each Year = 332,120,800,000
Gallons per Acre per year for this process 20,000
Acres required to meet U.S demand for a year = 16,606,040
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
algae-based fuels MUST work, and MUST achieve greater efficiency
or we must learn to master fusion
but fission won't last forever, and fossil fuels won't last forever, and currently all renewable sources (including algae) are tiny boutique niche sources that won't satisfy our huge energy demands
civilization will go into decline unless we master alternative energy sources. civilization already funds the enemies of civilization in order to dig on their land (wahhabi islam is an obscenity... to hell with your moral relativism, reactionary fundamentalism of any religion is pure evil, but wahhabi islam is example #1 of this kind of evil)
so don't criticize, and don't joke. this is very serious. we must get this right. if these joule guys are snake oil salesman, then fine, to hell with them
but this entire subject matter is very serious. in the next 200 years, we will either master an alternative enery source, or in 800 years, after the next middle ages to come, there will be archeologists writing doctoral theses about why this age of man failed
and this story is about why we would fail: the inability to master cheap alternatives
to hell with killer asteroids, nanotech gone amok, atomic bombs in iran, or other speculative modern bogeymen. lack of cheap energy won't possibly do us in... on our current track, lack of cheap energy WILL do us in
this is the biggest issue of our time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"...at a cost of about $50 per barrel..." Yeah, if you replace legal workers with illegal ones.
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Assumptions:
- They can actually generate 20,000 gallons per acre per year
- 1 gallon of biofuel will get you the same mileage as 1 gallon of gasoline
US gasoline usage = 378,000,000 gallons/day = 137,970,000,000 gallons/year
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html
Area needed: 137,970,000,000 gallons/year / 20,000 gallons/acre/year = 6,898,500 acres = 10,779 sq.mi.
Comparative area: Massachusetts is 10,555 sq.mi.
So, we'd need an area slightly larger than MA to generate the needed biofuel. This may seem like alot, but...
Farmland in US: 922,095,840 acres = 1,440,774 sq. mi.
Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm
Percent farmland to convert to biofuel: 10,555 sq. mi. / 1,440,774 sq. mi. = 0.73%
This isn't much, if you ask me.
Now, for the financial incentive to do so:
Value of 20,000 gallons of biofuel at $50/barrel: 20,000 gallons = 476 barrels * $50/barrel = $23,000
Corn yield of one acre: 162 bushels/acres (Iowa)
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a1-14.pdf
Value of 162 bushels of corn: 162 bushels * $4.77/bushel (Estimated 2008 Calendar Year Average) = $772.74
Source: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/pdf/a2-11.pdf
So, converting one acre of corn farmland to one acre of biofuel farmland will increase the revenue from $773 to $23,000, a nearly 30-fold increase.
So, this looks like it might be worth it depending on the cost of conversion and cost versus revenue. It'll certainly be interesting to watch.
I void warranties.
When reading their press releases, look not for the number of gallons of oil per acre, but for the gallons of oil per dollar invested in the photobioreactor (or pond). If they give you the former and not the latter, they're probably scamming.
Seastead this.
needed to make this work will be hard enough to keep alive even within the protection of the systems built to grow them and in the wild, have the same kind of survival prospects Bambi would have in a country full of Godzillas.
If the description is accurate, the project is intended to harvest money from investors, not biofuel from solar energy.
No need for hysterical panic unless you're one of the small investors whose money is actually involved.
Tech Public Policy stuff
6 Big Oil firms heavily invested in this? Far from seeing it as a sign that this is not snake oil, I suspect 6 Big Oil firms standing behind the guise of a start-up asking for public money. Perhaps they don't even need the money but they mind not letting this money going into the development of viable alternatives. And if there is an alternative for oil, Big Oil would be the last I would trust into its development.
And you don't think part of investing in your own future is buying and destroying any competing technology? Plus, you're ignoring the reality that every business on earth can only operate because sustainability is not a requirement for existence. Essentially, the cost for bringing the earth a little closer to disaster is zero, since the unborn generations to come have no vote in a market system tuned entirely for short term vision.
I do not believe in secret meetings where evil businessmen plot to destroy the earth. But I do know that they have been convicted of abusing newcomers to any business through price fixing, buying up patents and burying them, and other "business practices" that are the antithesis of true market economics.
In order for technology to evolve and improve, the dinosaurs must die. But while the dinosaurs are the most profitable businesses in the world, and have several countries entirely dependent on them for their existence, they will die a slow death without some sensible economic reforms. And while they are dying, everyone is suffering for it.
> 5kwh per m^2 per day
That's 208 watts/m^2. Say so.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> Yes, your fuel may soon come from a genetically engineered non-algal microbe.
They'll be banned in Europe. Ain't natural.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Recycling is wonderful. This is a rejected submission from 2 years ago:
According to Flight Global: "The US Air Force intends to certificate its entire aircraft fleet to run on synthetic jet-fuel blend by 2011, and began on 8 August when the Boeing B-52H became the first to be approved. The eight-engined bomber finished testing earlier this year with fuel produced from natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process. "Each time the price of fuel goes up $10 a barrel, it costs the USAF $600 million", says air force secretary Michael Wynne. "It causes angst to know that we're faced with a commodity that some might use against us," he says, pointing to the potential of F-T to convert domestic coal and natural gas to jet fuel." The snag in a complete switch-over could be building a plant with the capacity needed for the USAF's needs. It would cost US$1 billion. However, Syntroleum and Tyson Foods have teamed up and claim they could build the plant for only US$100 million, using a simpler, cheaper and cleaner process than the F-T, starting with a major product of Tyson's: chicken fat. If this comes about, there may even be a chicken-burning car in your future."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
http://www.joulebio.com/why-solar-fuel/how-it-works/
Huh? Please 'splain to us dumb 'Muricans
greg, REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
Your rule of thumb is broken. Convert the same square mile of farmland to some other use, such as building automobile manufacturing plants in the 70s or 80s, and you get a rate of return that dwarfs what you dismiss as "too good to be true".
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
These sort of biofuels are basically solar energy.
So I'm curious to how these compare to "Solar Thermal Energy" in terms of cost per kWh.
Assuming about 34 megajoules per litre of biofuel, and thus about 289 MJ per gallon, Google[1] gives me:
((289 megajoules * 20000) per acre) per year = 45.2600835 watts per (square meter).
So it's pumping out on average about 90 watts per square meter on average during the day (ignoring night time).
Assuming the average insolation to produce the 90 watts was 300 watts per square meter, that means about 30% efficiency in conversion. Not bad if the assumptions and calculations are correct.
Just wonder how much that biofuel's infrastructure costs to build, and costs to maintain. And how efficient they are in use of land area once you add in the necessary support infrastructure.
Solar thermal reflectors cost $$$ too (build, repair, cleaning etc). But I believe the systems involved are not so complicated, have fewer dependencies, so they should be cheaper.
Now the other difference is the main end product of this is a liquid biofuel. Whereas the main end product of solar thermal energy is electricity.
If this energy is going to be used for cars, the efficiency drops even more for biofuels - higher losses due to fuel distribution, fuel cell conversion, or combustion engines. Electricity distribution loss is about 7% and both batteries and electric motors have quite low losses in comparison.
[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=((289+megajoules+*++20000+per+acre)+per+year+)+in+watts+per+square+metre&btnG=Search&meta=
Your rule of thumb is broken. Convert the same square mile of farmland to some other use, such as building automobile manufacturing plants in the 70s or 80s, and you get a rate of return that dwarfs what you dismiss as "too good to be true".
Ok, first, imagine an infinite amount of demand for American cars...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Oil is free because it came from the Sun? You can't own the mineral rights? Society in general disagrees with you. And has so for hundreds of years. If you want to start a hippie commune then go for it, more power to you. But you will have to live adjunct to this society, a society that includes both America and Saudi Arabia.
Adjunct meaning that you would be separate in terms of what you believe to be rights and what the greater society believes to be rights. But you could still coexist and interact and be some what part of that society. I'm not proposing your hippie commune become completely separate from the ready of the world, it would be arrogant to presume so, although you could go that route if you really wanted to do so.
If you hold a position where you so strongly disagree with society I don't see much choice other than to insulate yourself from the estranged society, or attempt to convert it to your way of thinking. But expect a lot of resistance if your purpose is to convert. Especially if your technique just involves asserting that some right exists that are not generally recognized. You don't have to give up your ideals, just don't be surprised when people who you find otherwise rational just roll your eyes when you hop up on your soapbox.
"Bio fuel" is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time. Utterly retarded. Crops should be grown for food not to power bloody cars.
We should be directing as much of our efforts as possible into tapping solar power. Imagine every roof in the world with an efficient solar panel on top. With some sort of shared storage capacity we'd have practically limitless, practically free, clean power for all for as long as good old Sol shines.
Oh but wait a minute, then there's nobody making a huge profit off everybody's energy use and, more importantly, they're not in control of your power requirements. Silly me. It'll never happen.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
They're saying your figures are stupid because they are an insignificant section of the area available.
Hence, no problem.
All new cars made here in Brazil already run in both gasoline and ethanol that is totally clean. All our gas stations sell ethanol. Biodiesel is just a way americans found to deny they are behind in green fuels and avoid using not invented there technology. Ethanol is widely used for decades here, the cars are mostly made by GM, Ford, Fiat and VW, not some strange brazilian company like you may be thinking. This biodiesel is a pointless bullshit, pushed just to protect a market that wouldn't be able to compete with our ethanol.
I always find it interesting when companies use broad sweeping comments like this one "Algae-based biofuels come closest to Joule's technology, with potential yields of 2,000 to 6,000 gallons per acre..." They conveniently ignore competing companies like http://www.petroalgae.com/ who can generate 14,000 gallons per acre which would be the nearest algae competitor. If you combine Petroalgae's low cost growing system with the drying tech from Algae Venture Systems (http://www.algaevs.com/) you could be running an energy return as high as 180% (EG: If it took 10Kwh to produce you could generate 18Kwh with the oil.) and since the operation generates a high protein mash for animal feed stock that would pay the operating costs it could compete with foreign oil at nearly any price much less the stated $800/barrel. Their external data would appear to be at least two years old as PetroAlgae hit the blogs in 2007/2008 and Algae Ventures was public last year.
The Joule Biotech process' two primary advantages over their system would appear to be that it produces ethanol without the need for additional refinement and that it can produce fresh water as well. However it also looks like it would have a massively higher start-up and maintenance cost as their bioreactors look complicated. I'll be interested to see the results of the pilot though. Combine the three processes and you have fuel, water and feed. Algae really is the future...