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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."
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.
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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.
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.
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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.