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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.
If it is, they likely already know, and consider it worth it to look "green" or to take advantage of some sort of incentive program.
Investment by big oil doesn't mean anything either way.
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
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
We simply need to tax fuel enough to establish a price floor that will encourage alternative investments. The Europeans are already there so now the US just needs to start increasing the tax rate at say 25c per gallon per quarter and we will be there in a few years. You'd need to increase the standard deduction to balance out the regressive nature of such a use based tax but it would encourage alternative fuel generation AND curb demand at the same time, a win-win situation.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
As best as I can tell, they've only done this in the lab, probably in closed reactors. So long as they stick with closed reactors, they should do fine. The problem then becomes getting CO2 into the mix; algae normally just gets it from air. But, until you filter it down to one micron, maybe less, air might contaminate your water.
The USDOE already determined that the best you could do with open ponds is to just let the local algaes drift in on the wind... but that doesn't tell us anything about closed reactor systems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I still say solar is better then anything else.
If we can build a platform into space or beam the energy down from space based collectors, The worlds energy needs will be met. That is a huge, very huge if though.
Also I do see many wars being waged if this does get close to happening. There is too much money tied up in oil for a war over switching away from oil to not happen.
Size of Arizona = 72 million acres.
There is an article in Scientific American that estimates cellulose feedstocks could provide up to half of the liquid fuels used in the United States:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=grassoline-biofuels-beyond-corn
And that is without building millions of acres of bioreactors.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
Acres in the U.S. = 2 000 000 000
Part of U.S. acres needed to meed demand = 0.7%
Just throwing around big numbers does not an argument make
Or to put it another way, the effort to create the fuel is the effort removed from its pursuit of survival, and therefore is at a competitive disadvantage to other naturally occurring organisms.
Not when man is a significant predator.
Any organism that doesn't make enough fuel would be selected against a lot more heavily.
The problem is that if you allow the price of energy to fluctuate below the cost of production of alternatives the alternatives will never take off because your ROI potentially goes negative. Since we know that oil will run out in the future it makes more sense to start allowing alternatives to flourish now while we have known reserves then to wait until the natural price floor encourages them (ie it might be too late with a horrible economic collapse and resulting war if we wait too long). Not to mention the likely environmental effects of continuing to burn fossil fuels until they are near exhausted.
Btw I said nothing of pouring tax dollars down a social rat-hole, I actually advocated increased taxes in one area with an offsetting credit in another which is tax neutral to some level of consumption and tax positive above that level (ie discouraging the unwanted behavior while not disproportionately affecting the economically disadvantaged.)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I think the inability of the bacterium to compete in nature might be a PLUS. I'd rather have it in pools that required constant human supervision, than spreading into the ecosystem.
Ideally, while they are engineering it, they will build in a tolerance/requirement for, say, growth in a high-ph environment. Then, it will have a hard time contaminating us, and we'll have hard time contaminating it.
They don't have to pick winners, just raise the floor price of dino-gas and let everyone else compete. That is what they should have done instead of the stupidity that was the farm belt subsidy disguised as energy alternative that we got. It would have encouraged alternative energy sources at a lower cost to the taxpayers and without encouraging an 'alternative' that consumed oil at near 1:1 levels.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
What problems don't biofuels solve? Sure, they don't solve smog. But the do solve the carbon problem. Now we just take it out of the atmosphere (with plants being the "conversion system", essentially a solar carbon converter), and then burn it and put it back in the atmosphere. Et voila! The carbon cycle!
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
What part of "Price" do you not understand?
These people created this and the price point at which it becomes economic may be higher or lower than the current price of oil.
So be it.
Price fluctuations are not evil. They are the market adjudication of supply and demand.
Price fluctuation are your friend. Static or legislated prices totally screw up economies. Do we really need to replay the downfall of the soviet union again just to drive home this point.
The amount of fossil fuels left in the ground exceed by several orders of magnitude that which we have used to date. Its just not economic to get to them. But at some point shale oil and oil sands will be economic, as will bio generation which is the subject of this story.
Arbitrarily jacking up the price by adding tax does nothing constructive, and yes, deny it as you will, the tax proceeds WILL be poured down a rat-hole of social programs as witnessed by your own words "disproportionately affecting the economically disadvantaged".
You automatically assume no environmental effects of these alternate energy efforts, while failing to recognize we consume way more oil today than we did in the days of smog filled skies.
You automatically assume the Europeans used their high taxes to further research, yet they are hopelessly behind in clean coal technology, oil sands, or coal-to-liquid technology. Hint: The money went into social programs. Tax removes money from the developmental cycle. It does not facilitate anything but bureaucracy and stifling regulations.
There is no justification for propping up the European model here.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Fifty bucks a barrel for something that has far less energy density than gasoline is too high in my opinion. Far less energy density per mass & volume + requiring all vehicles have their fuel lines made corrosion resistant to the max due to ethanol's corrosive properties makes it a lose unless it's cheap as fuck compared to gas.
We did learn from TMI and Chernobyl. What we haven't done is build any new reactors.
this statement is paradox. the fact that no new reactors have been build definitively proves that _nothing_ has been learned aside from the knee jerk reaction of fear, and that isn't really learned, its instinctual. Congratulations America, you've shown how base and intellectually retarded you have become. Consumer society breeds stupidity, stupidity breeds fear, fear breeds oppression and oppression breeds revolution. fortunately for you consumerism also breeds complacency, and in this rock paper scissors game complacency and fear will always triumph over rational responsible progress, even in the face of certain death. There will be no revolution. Essentially what this means for you and i, is that American society _cannot_ remain in its current state, it will change or collapse. If the US cannot embrace radical changes in consumer behavior, the production and consumption of goods and energy, and their unilateral exertion of their will on the rest of the planet the US will quickly cease to become relevant in the next 5-15 years. Can America (and americans) make the changes necessary? its not impossible, but changing habits is literally very similar to torture on the brain, so i'm not really holding my breath. This generation of Americans are weak, and soft, unaccustomed to challenge and adversity. There will be conflict until their hedonistic world collapses around them and can no longer keep them pacified- and then their struggle will be infantile and futile. Well America, its been real. i'm moving to the moon... any closer is too close to the stupid epic fail that is about to take place.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
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.
It all sounds great until you realize that we are at war and have standing armies in a whole bunch of other countries because of oil. If we can find a way to produce a fuel that means we don't need to import oil, then we can bring the troops home, close up a bunch of foreign bases and save a lot of taxpayer money. Those holes you speak of are nothing compared to the social^W corporate welfare rat-hole that is the military-industrial complex.
Water usage is one. Biofuels need an enormous amount of water to grow, process, and refine. There was a water expert at NIST who recently covered this, but the upshot of his presentation was: if you don't address the shortage of clean water before you start producing biofuels, you have a new and serious problem to address. Most of us in the Western world are not accustomed to water shortage, due to our excellent water distribution systems, so we tend not to think about it. If you compare biofuels and petroleum products on the basis of water usage alone, oil wins. Sorry, I don't have the slides, or I would link them.
Food shortage is another. You need to take into account-- at least in the US-- that biofuels compete with food production. This is partially due to entrenched political interests. Again, in the west, this probably didn't affect you (unless you were, say, in the cattle feed market or a small beer producer), but I've read that the grain shortages (and resulting high prices) in Asia last year were the direct result of a double-whammy of biofuel production and crop disease.
Now, I personally don't think that the two things above rule out biofuels as a viable alternative for the future. We just need to be aware that they are not without their consequences; they solve some problems, and introduce new ones.
Those numbers seem to ignore the cost of producing corn vs. oil. What the farmer's interested in is profit, not gross revenue. Still, assuming it costs $50/barrel to produce and sells for, say, $53/barrel, you're still at $1428 profit per acre.
Or if OPEC opens the floodgates and drops the price to $35/barrel, you're out $7140/acre. But I suppose that's what the futures market is for.