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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.
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?
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!
Let's abuse the analogy: Budweiser is cheaper and more consistent than most microbrews.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
I don't see how much would be cellulose. The fatty acids can be up to 40 percent which is very good. http://www.oilgae.com/algae/comp/comp.html
Also algae is not a plant and they've removed cyanobacteria from consideration as algae.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
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)
The biggest one is that you need a (large!) stinky pond. Or a huge enclosed system. Insolation is only about 1 kilowatt per square meter, so depending on the length of day and the efficiency of the algae, you will only capture a kilowatt hour or two of energy each day. A gallon of gasoline contains about 38 kilowatt hours of energy. So meeting a meaningful liquid fuel budget in a location with a relatively short summer is going to require an enormous pond.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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?
About 90% of questions from non-engineers on slashdot seem to revolve around scalability.
The problem with doing this small scale, is that everything "chemical plant-like" is less efficient when its small, or for stuff like catalysts there is a workaround to make big stuff more efficient. "Stuff" is going to get pumped, and big pumps are more efficient than small pumps. Real estate scales as "square" and process tanks scale as "cube" so you always get more "stuff per square foot" from a big tank. The growth tank probably will be a different temperature than the environment, again big tanks win.
Then there are the non-scalable costs. The light bulbs in the plant ceiling draw the same power no matter the working volume. A set of tests to measure the quality of the product might cost $20 per batch, no big deal if you brew a million gallons at a time, not so good if you only brew one gallon at a time.
The only way to win on the small scale is to ignore pollution and regulation. I can, and have, simply dumped yeast from wine brewing on my compost pile. That doesn't scale so well for a billion gallon process plant. Of course, if a plant is big enough, it could be worthwhile to purify and sell "brewers yeast" to farmers and supplement companies, the big guys win yet again... And a really profitable plant can simply purchase the government and government regulation that it wants.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.'"
You are correct in that plants do make their bodies from cellulose, but algae can be a bit different in that they often use other compounds or elements in their construction. A common case in point is the large number of species of diatoms, which construct their cell walls out of silica - which when the creatures die is deposited over time as clay.
:-)
Incidentally, you might be interested to know that it is quite difficult to remove silica as an impurity from water. Experiments in culture of diatoms in the absence of silica sometimes use germanium as an analogue...
Oops, sorry. Algal cell culture is cool, but I can't expect it to rock everybody's boat.
The real question is for how many decades is it going to be ten years away?
...and they've removed cyanobacteria from consideration as algae.
...though they are still colloquially (and erroneously) known as blue-green algae, they are not bacteria either, although they are prokaryotes.
Actually, I chose Bud because when I am choosing a fuel, I want a cheap product that delivers consistent quality (I'm not saying Budweiser delivers high quality, just that each can of Budweiser is pretty much the same as every other can of Budweiser, which is desirable in a fuel).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
There is a giant difference between doing that in a lab and doing it for commercial use.
True. I got in a bit of trouble in my 3rd year when my little bioreactor full of methanogenetic bacteria got a blocked valve and blew up, spewing stinky sulphurous muck all over the lab ceiling. Just imagine someone letting me loose on a full-grown industrial project.
Exprosions. Very nice. >:-D
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.
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.
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.
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.
JET did, right at the end, which is why they are building ITER to actually get positive _useful_ energy out.
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.