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Commercial Fuel From Algae Still Years Away
chrnb sends along this quote from a report at Reuters:
"Filling your vehicle's tank with fuel made from algae is still as much as a decade away, as the emerging industry faces a series of hurdles to find an economical way to make the biofuel commercially. Estimates on a timeline for a commercial product, and profits, vary from two to 10 years or more. Executives and industry players who gathered at the Algae Biomass Summit this week in San Diego said they need to push for breakthroughs along the entire chain — from identifying the best organisms to developing efficient harvesting methods. ... So far on the list: finding the right strain of algae among thousands of species that will produce high yields; designing systems where the desired algae can multiply and other species don't invade and disrupt the process; and extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well."
Give them a Nobel prize, it will encourage them.
so this is like fusion but only 10 years away instead of 20 !
I'm working on getting fusion power working by slamming algae together using power from cheap solar cells.
I'm still in the planning stages, so I estimate it will be another ten years before commercial applications, such as flying cars, are ready
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Pentagon way-out research arm Darpa and Predator drone maker General Atomics are teaming up to try to turn algae into jet fuel. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/12/darpa-general-a/ well they were still at it towards the end of 2008.
This will arrive when it makes a profit, or a loss subsidized by Uncle S. Do you have enough chips to buy a place at the table, Big Algae?
Which brings up a question in my mind... How do nonfat algae chips taste? ... Off to Whole Foods (TM)
Several years away...
We've been hearing that for everything, cold fusion, energy storage for electric cars, holographic memory, duke nukem forever... Wake me when we can tell the middle east we won't be needing their product anymore.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
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Bioethanol Feed @ Feed Distiller
You mean one of these pie-in-the-sky alternative energy ideas was actually over-hyped and too good to be true!!???? Unbelievable! Next you'll be telling us that there weren't as many "green jobs" as we were promised and that they don't help the economy.
What about the power of HOPE? Can I use that to fuel my car?
Exactly. Plants make their bodies from cellulose, a chemical that is extremely stable. Giving a time of 7 to 10 years, as the story did, is entirely fiction.
First, I am not a biochemist, so don't flog me too harshly if I grossly overlook important elements of this biofuel process...
That said, need the process be commercialized? From what I can gather, having followed this a bit, is that they are looking for ways to mass-produce fuel from algae. Is 'microbrewing' not possible, or is it just not profitable for energy companies?
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Whatever they are doing with algae to get biofuel from it, its gotta be better than cutting down rainforrests to make environmentally friendly biofuel. Bring it on.
The more there are pie-in-the-sky technologies out there that have been researched over many years, the more promising and immediately useful (if currently marginally feasible) technologies there will be on hand to frantically improve at the last minute when ever-growing demand for energy peaks and readily available oil has become unaffordable for less important applications. Algae is particularly promising because it relies on a billion years of evolution focussed on minimal-energy solutions to extracting power from sunlight, and because it has relatively little background pollution associated with it (as compared to the array of toxic chemicals used to manufacture solar cells, for example). Plus, understanding of genetic engineering can only improve greatly.
I still strongly prefer nuclear energy (safe fission designs for now, fusion later if that ever gets off the ground), but the political controversy surrounding nuclear power plants appears set to make nuclear energy a minor part of future energy provisions. Algae looks to be uncontroversial and usable everywhere there is decent sunlight, with almost no toxic chemicals or proliferation concerns.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
The last few bits at the end of the article seem to be the most important...
"It's going to take the right engineering solution with the right species to make it commercially viable,"
In other words, it it's not "perfect" (for varying degrees of perfection), we're just not going to do it.
I find it interesting that they want to find the perfect organism first, rather than get close first, and then refine the process.
And seriously, "extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well"?
What is their core operation? Getting the oil, or merchandising the left-overs?
Do the first, well, first; THEN work out the second.
"It's never going to get off the ground without a helping hand,"
translation: we're shell companies set up by multi-billion corps. Give us tax money.
Yeesh... It's no wonder people home-brew this stuff.
It's no wonder people home-brew this stuff.
Ahhhh. Wait till they talk local governments to pass laws banning home brewing because of "public safety". Think it won't happen?
It's hasn't been reported in the media, but a couple of years ago - maybe even now - the local (California) cooking oil/grease collectors were trying to stop the bio-diesel folks from collecting the old frying oil. Why? The bio-diesel guys would haul it away for free; whereas, these companies charged to take away the old oil. The bio-diesel guys offered a win/win for the restaurants: they took it away for free and as a result got free base material.
The local businesses that collected the oil where trying to talk the local politicians that for "public safety" only they should be allowed to collect the grease and if the bio-diesel guys wanted it, they'd have to pay for the old oil.
Many times, government regulations help businesses by keeping competitors from starting up.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I attended a presentation hosted by an Exxon exec last week (for business school). He compared Exxon to BP. BP has been pursuing all sorts of energy alternatives (wind, solar, etc). Exxon's position, in short, is that they are an oil company so that's what they worry about. They don't pursue other energy sources because they are only viable now with subsidies, and they don't want to base their business on that (seems reasonable). BUT, the one alt fuel they are pursuing (ignoring natural gas) is algae. They seem to think it has a real future, and I believe they know what they're talking about.
(And an interesting aside... we often think of BP, Exxon, Shell etc as being these scary, large influential corporations. And maybe they are, but this exec described how truly small they are compared to the Saudi, Iranian and Qatari national oil companies. Exxon and BP combined produce less oil than the Nigerian national corporation)
Biodiesel from algae is most desirable when it is part of a system. For instance, algae can be produced in wastewater pond systems and processed for biodiesel, then it can be processed again for butanol, thus serving as part of the sewage treatment process, and providing fuelstocks for two direct-replacement fuels, one for diesel and one for gasoline. David Ramey of ButylFuel, LLC told me in an email conversation that they would like to use this type of processed algae cake feedstock, but that so far they have been unable to secure a reliable source of the stuff which is not salt-contaminated, which is a problem for their process. (You could also process the waste algae for alcohol, but it is unlikely to be as efficient as Butanol and it is not a 1:1 replacement for gasoline. Butanol can also be mixed into diesel fuel, but that's not its claim to fame.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The real question is for how many decades is it going to be ten years away?
This research is decades old, started by the Dept. of Energy in the mid-70's in the wake of the '74 Arab oil embargo. Then there's this group who told me they had most of the hard problems solved and already had successful pilot tests. That was two years ago. So how can scale commercial still be 10 years off?
I'm wondering if it isn't like the EV-1, GM's electric car. GM didn't want it, oil companies definitely didn't want it, parts manufacturers, mechanics, and state governments faced with losing fuel tax revenues didn't want it (at least right away). On the opposition side of algae oil would be the Saudis, who fund several prominent think tanks in D.C. that tend to be the home of retired politicians and a near endless supply of campaign cash. The oil companies making a lot of money off the status quo and just about anyone in the transportation pipeline.
It will be interesting to see how many players with an interest in the status quo will be inserting themselves into the development of algae oil.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That comparison is not valid. The problem with fuel from algae is to make it *commercially* viable. The problem with energy from fusion is to make it *viable*, period.
At this moment in time, there is not a single fusion reactor anywhere in the world that produces net energy. By contrast, there are many facilities that obtain fuel from algae. But the fuel that is being produced is not cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels at market prices.
Bootstrapping so you don't spend more in fossil fuels to run the process than you get out of the process. So many biotech people forget this one.
They got involved in corporate finance, this isn't any farther out of their historical scope. If anybody can master a new technology process and deliver ever-increasing gains, it's them. Besides, more biodiesel means more fuel for the generators that power their chips in the third world. Maybe they can consider it a CO2 offset.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So far on the list: finding the right strain of algae among thousands of species that will produce high yields; designing systems where the desired algae can multiply and other species don't invade and disrupt the process; and extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well.
Sounds like someone ought to be talking to Big Pharma. They've been doing this sort of thing for decades. Not with algae, necessarily, but with many species of bacteria that are used to synthesize drugs. I'd think that some of that technology could be transferable (probably have to pay license fees, though.) Hell, for that matter the average brewery is able to reliably grow the desired species of yeast to produce beer.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The main point is that this quote from the article referenced by Slashdot, "Commercial biofuel from algae still 7 to 10 years off", is a lie. It cannot be predicted when a scientific breakthrough will occur, if ever.
From the University of Texas: Algae as tools in studying the biosynthesis of cellulose, nature's most abundant macromolecule.
This seems to be incorrect: "... the process of turning cellulose into fuel is well understood now and several companies are starting to implement it on an industrial scale. See e.g. http://www.gevo.com./".
Quote from the Gevo web site, 2009-10-11, 11:37 PDT: "Our team of biofuel experts is developing the next generation of biofuels. Gevo's GIFT® process will provide a sustainable path to the replacement of petrochemicals like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel." [My emphasis]
Gevo is apparently looking for money, not producing fuel. Those who run Gevo will apparently make money, even if the investors lose money.
Combustion of air and oil, whether it's a fossil fuel or algae-based, through incomplete combustion produces nitrogen oxides, which are greenhouse gases. Also produced are carbon monoxide and soot.
How completely do gasoline and biofuels burn? How much nitrous oxide (the nitrogen oxide that is most a greenhouse gas) is acceptable? If we used carbon-neutral fuels but didn't reduce emission of nitrous oxide, what is the believed effect on the climate over the next few hundred years? Is it okay to overlook the possible effects of carbon monoxide and soot, also produced by incomplete combustion?
The US EPA indicates agricultural soil management emits 4-5 times more nitrous oxides than mobile and stationary combustion sources combined for a given year. This ratio appears to be growing over time, so perhaps all this hand-wringing over the woes of combustion's nitrous oxide is unmerited as agricultural sources increasingly dominate nitrous oxide emission over time. That said, it might be lower-cost to not have to change from algae-based fuels to something else in the foreseeable future.
What of the role of soot, which may account for 18% of global warming, and what of glacial melting when it settles near the poles? Are soot and global dimming useful or not in keeping Earth a livable place? The trend in global dimming has apparently reversed recently. Do we want more or less of this? Is a more "dim" and cooler Earth for "counteracting" "global warming" desirable? Breathing soot is probably unhealthy.
It's great to consider a new algae-based fuel, but perhaps it would be less costly for us to transition to a new fuel that mitigates as much risk as possible (climate change, health hazards), rather than doing a few transitions, e.g. fossil fuels to green fossil fuel substitutes to a fuel that gives us the most chance to return to pre-Industrial era conditions, assuming that maintaining said pre-Industrial era conditions are "safe". Granted, such a return is probably infeasible, so how close should our approximation be?
The underlying problem could be that we keep adding "stuff" to the atmosphere without taking it back out. Combustion adds water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, soot, and other materials to the atmosphere. Algae-based fuels give us carbon-neutrality, but to what effect? Can we cost-effectively transition to a fuel that doesn't use combustion, then being nitrogen-, soot-, and carbon-neutral? We might use "metal slurries" to contain hydrogen, such as aluminum or magnesium hydrides, and work the hydrogen economy angle.
Ignoring how cost-effective a hydrogen economy might be, if we start using hydrogen fuels, how much more water vapor will we release into the atmosphere? Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Will it rain more? Will this amount to climate change, and on what scale? Do we use solar, wind, and nuclear, then use batteries instead of these metal slurries and hydrogen? What of the associated waste in nuclear fission, manufacturing semiconductors, and manufacturing batteries?
Is there some lite
The problem is that these researchers all want to come up with some invention that they can patent and make a fortune. But the process is really to simple for such an approach. Gradual refinement is what is needed. Here's how to do it: Botryococcus braunii (Bb) is a microalgae which produces a gooey oil outside the cell, comprising up to 83% of its total weight. Because it is outside the cell, the organism does not have to be killed in order for the product to be extracted. This makes up for its growth rate being slower than that of other microalgae, something which is lost on some of these alt-fuel schemesters. The oil it produces can be directly refined into alkanes such as octane (gasoline) and various jet fuels.
Here's how to do it: take as rich of a carbon dioxide source as you can get (but at some point it can be too rich), such as a coal burning power plant, a brewery, or Chicago politician. Hook this up to a tubular photobioreactor of some significant length, so that process can be continuous. When the algal cells have reached some level of oil generation, strip the oil off with a solvent, preferably hexane. Use of the appropriate solvent will not kill the majority of the algae (sheep to be shorn). Cycle the naked algae back to the input of the carbon dioxide source.
A photobioreactor can be made on the cheap. Use tubular plastic sections of good transparency, such as the protectors made for long flourescent tubes, and hook them together with elbows of common plastic plumbing. Suspend these a few inches above a reflective surface. I think it may be possible to take surplus aluminum siding and polish the underside of it. I think you could even use wire coathangers as supports if you didn't have anything better.
The point is, that it's not important to be particularly efficient if you can do it on a large scale, cheaply. Over time, more productive strains of algae can be bred or engineered.
For more information, see the Botryococcus braunii entry on wikipedia.
Bio-Diesel from waste oil works only as long as the holders of the waste oil are stupid. You go to your neighborhood McDonalds and make a deal with them for their waste oil and it might work, for a while. Yes, they were paying to dispose of a dangerous, contaiminated waste product that is illegal to dispose of in any other way.
The problem is, the second person comes to the same McDonalds wanting their waste oil. Anyone with a brain (which admittedly does leave out most McDonalds managers) begins to realize that their waste oil is no longer a dangerous contaiminated waste product to be disposed of as cheaply as possible but is now a valuable commodity which can be sold to the highest bidder.
The time between these two points of view can be days or years depending on the interest level in waste oil, but there is absolutely no way out of the conversion from one to the other. Today, bio-diesel from waste oil is completely impractical if you have to buy the waste oil for anything close to what it would be worth.
So what you have left is waste oil collectors are preying on the stupidity and ignorance of restaurant managers. Feels good, doesn't it?
JET did, right at the end, which is why they are building ITER to actually get positive _useful_ energy out.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/algae-energy-orgy
The algae fuel industry has to develop itself from nothing, to a point where it can compete with perhaps the biggest, richest and most developed industry in the world. And it has to do that with no income beyond research grants and investors. I say, "They need only ten years?"
So what you have left is waste oil collectors are preying on the stupidity and ignorance of restaurant managers. Feels good, doesn't it?
They resell that tallow (once filtered) to be made into cosmetics &c. So yes, it's pretty foul. It's also kind of shocking that nobody has at least switched to doing it for free on a commercial basis. There are numerous obstacles placed in the way of biodiesel startups though, which is why most of the stuff not produced by a major manufacturer is made by co-ops.
These days you can get a power and hot water generator which runs on your waste oil, so you have to be extra stupid to give it away, let alone to pay for it to be removed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If they come up with an algae fuel that makes the black oily stuff in the ground not so attractive or valuable, it will do more than all the diplomats in the past have done to make some of the more "contentious" areas of the planet...less so. I think it *would* deserve the peace prize on that basis.
I mean, let's get real here, do people REALLY think the mid east and central african wars, etc have *nothing* to do with vast oil reserves in those same areas, that it is just a "coincidence"? What, maybe two drools and one moron on the whole planet still believe that government horse hockey, tops?
Algae fuel that can be grown just about anywhere, in any quantities you feel like having, would just do wonders to help end high stakes geopolitical "resource envy".
And now you know why this isn't pushed faster, with emergency funding that would dwarf those casino bankers bailouts..it's too much of a planetary wealth shifter and game changer. Oil is valuable because it is scarce, and does a job nothing else can, and a lot of really big fat roly poly cats make billions on it and make political careers out of it, both civvie and military, making sure that oil keeps flowing in the "correct" way and at the "correct" prices.
Algae fuel would make most of that obsolete, it is what they call "disruptive technology", at least equal to like the transistor in importance, maybe even more.
And we *need* it. We are something like one or two decades away from rising population meets declining crop yields and what crops there being hugely more expensive to produce. Food today, once you boil it all down to basics, is made from still cheap-enough diesel fuel, and water supplies primarily and that's it, take away either one of those things (and throw in cheap phosphates and natural gas derived fertilizer in the "must haves") and planetary mass starvation happens real quick like, which means quite a bit of "social unrest".
Just needs some catchy name: "something green" , "Solving green", ..
As a botanist, I worry about some of the new genetically engineered or the kind of super plant getting out of control. In the same manner, I guess I should worry about an enhanced high yield algae escaping some sort of super algae farm. Would it have the same effect on the environment as other specialized "plants"? Would it be some kind of fairly fragile monoculture type algae that would not do well in the wild? Algae is already a major problem in the Mediterranean and along the west coast of the US recently. I wonder if anyone has examined of this critter might be a problem? A high yield algae would certainly find it's way back into the oceans and lakes.
so this is like fusion but only 10 years away instead of 20 !
This article strives to exaggerate the 'time to completion' of the general concept. I say this because the 2-10 years estimate is only a matter of business, not of known working methods to deliver fuel at $50/barrel. Only a couple months ago JC Venter's SGI along with Exxon discussed their engineered algae that secretes the biofuels (thus making harvesting very simple and efficient), and that they would be rolling out their first plant in the bay area to start pumping fuel in 2010 with plans to expand by 2011.
The limits are really whether we will be realistic enough to make these things a SOON reality by making a large social effort to roll out the major infrastructure; or if we will keep subsidizing dino-oil and coal companies because our puppets don't know what a spine is.
Hell, we could have robots that sort and process all of what we call 'trash' given the state of technology today. We don't... apparently we need more bombs and we need to pay international banks interest to print our money...
It's easy to be cheap and simple and to breezily handwave when all you have to do is type on your keyboard. It's not easy out in the real world with real money.
Otherwise, why aren't you out there doing it? Why isn't anyone?
I've done part of it. I can grow money on trees, Why am I not doing it? I need a farm. I'll use my own real money too!
I can grow food on trees too. And this is not by composting them. I haven't tackled the algae issues. But one day I might take it on.
PetroSun Incorporated is years ahead of those pricks and Reuters need to talk about everyone but them makes it clear those pricks don't research before they report.
For a number of years, I've been putting together an extensive spreadsheet including everything ... and I mean everything... that goes into the bottom line profitability of converting the US's total CO2 effluent of fossil fuel power plants into marketable products from algae. It took me a few months back in 2005 to convince myself that it wasn't worth looking at algal biodiesel.
For starters, here is a direct quote from a researcher in algae metabolism made to me in a private communique:
This guy has devoted his life to maximizing the photosynthetic efficiency of algae. In reality your are doing amazingly well to get 5% conversion. And, no, it doesn't matter what you do to the algae or which algae you choose. You aren't going to get better numbers.
Do the net present value calculation on this and try to figure out how you are going to pay for the photobioreactor OR raceway pond's amortization as well as the operating costs. The number just aren't there.
I don't know who is investing all this money but they should fire their advisers.
The only way I've found to convert that much CO2 to algae profitably is to sell the algal protein at the price equivalent of alfalfa protein.
Only problem is, this produces such an abundance of protein, at the price equivalent of alfalfa, that there would be little point in doing agriculture anywhere. The US's fossil fuel CO2 alone would create so much broad-spectrum amino acid protein that if it were directly consumed by humans, everyone in the world could have a diet richer than the US in protein. Oh, sure, you can run it through a couple of trophic layers to get some high grade predator fish farmed out in the ocean desert or something, but then the "environmentalists" who seem to prefer turning the rainforests into soybeans and can't tell the difference between ocean desert mariculture and near-coast mariculture would have a fit, and we can't have _that_ can we?
Seastead this.
Unfortunately, being "commercially viable" means surviving the political assault that the oil industry is going to launch against any competition.
Please provide a link.
If you mean this SGI, Synthetic Genomics, Inc., I note that the July 14, 2009 press release to which I linked is not as positive as you: "Under the terms of the agreement, SGI will work in a systematic approach to find, optimize, and/or engineer superior strains of algae, and to define and develop the best systems for large-scale cultivation of algae and conversion of their products into useful biofuels."
I'm not the only one who thinks it may require years. Here is a quote from an article subtitled, 'Restraint' an Unspoken Watchword of Algae Biomass Sessions: '... much of the fundamental production technology is "immature," and that timelines of two to four years from inception to production are unrealistic. Barclay says flatly, "Commercially feasible biodiesel from photosynthetic algae is more than 10 years away.'
Wow... who would have thought that the foul slime in our dying oceans could be turned into such a wide range of miracle products... Pollution free bio energy... Cheap food in the form of nutritious wafers. A new hope for our planet and humanity... of course no one will ever question why mankind discovers the usefulness of algae so late in our history. I'm sure we will be told that these discoveries will in time solve among other things global warming and global overpopulation... Don't be so gullible... Don't you people get it? It's not Algae! It's p
At this moment in time, there is not a single fusion reactor anywhere in the world that produces net energy.
As others have set JET did get fusion to have a net gain in energy output.
That said, they could only get it to go for a few seconds (or fractions of a second I can't remember) at a time so wasn't exactly a solution to the world's energy needs.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Well if they're close... Why don't they use multiple different versions of algae that have high yields... Use local ones if possible so escape/contamination is a non-issue.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused