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Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel
Julie188 writes "Researchers from the University of Virginia have found that current algae biofuel production methods consume more energy, have higher greenhouse gas emissions and use more water than other biofuel sources, such as switchgrass, canola and corn. The researchers suggest these problems can be overcome by situating algae production ponds behind wastewater treatment facilities to capture phosphorous and nitrogen — essential algae nutrients that otherwise need to come from petroleum."
Timothy, please spell check your title.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Funny thing about trying to power our cars and computers... the energy has got to from something somewhere. Electrons must come from mass... so even if electricity seems clean, it's coming from a power plant somewhere, and nobody wants to be next to nuclear or coal plants.
Hydrogen or plug-in systems seem clean, but those aren't energy sources, they're energy transport mechanisms. If we're going to stop using gas and oil, we're going to have to get more power from somewhere... again, who wants the plants to do that in their town?
Melchett: Is this true Blackadder? Did Capt. Darling poo-poo you? ...Blackadder, you know, if there's one thing I've learned from being in the army, it's never ignore a poo-poo. I knew a major, got poo-pood made the mistake of ignoring the poo-poo. He poo-pood it: Fatal error. Becuase it turned out all along that the soldier who poo-pood him had been poo-pooing alot of other officers who poo-pood their poo-poos. In the end we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed.....................by poo-poo.
Blackadder: Well, perhaps a little.
Melchett: Well then damn it all what more evidence do you need? The poo-pooing alone is a court martial offense!
Blackadder: I can assure you, sir, that the poo-pooing was purely circumstantial.
Melchett: Well I hope so,
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Ok, but what about researchers?
At least they didn't poo-poo the algae.
And besides, they don't build nuclear plants in the city, they build them out in the middle of nowhere.
> ...phosphorous and nitrogen -- essential algae nutrients that otherwise need
> to come from petroleum.
Phosphorus and nitrogen from petroleum. Uh huh. Right.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... but arable farming uses an unholy amount of petrochemicals. If the entire population of the world went vegan, we'd survive for about a decade.
Christopher Robin was unavailable for comment.
So, in other words, the algae ponds should be located close to the waste water treatment plants, which are located next to large population centers. And how much more does land cost in urban/suburban areas than in rural or even desert areas?
I think there's a production flaw here somewhere; I just can't put my finger on it.
He's no longer the president. Time to move on.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Well, that's one way to add nutrients back into the system.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Diesel, wholesale, is a couple bucks a gallon. Which means it is far FAR less than a dollar a pound.
A good algae is worth far MORE than that per pound as animal feed, dietary suppliments, etc. So why turn something that you can sell for $2/lb into something you can only sell for less than $.5/lb?
Test your net with Netalyzr
Algae has great potential and should not be ignored; the process just needs to be refined. It has much greater yield than other biofuels crops, and can be more easily turned into fuel oil of various types than other sources. Ethanol should be avoided; because it is plain inefficient no matter how well you develop the process. Ethanol when burned produces 30% energy by weight than petroleum, and requires at least as much petroleum to produce as it displaces. Furthermore, it cannot be transported like petroleum-based fuels due to it propensity to mix with water. That means even more petroleum transporting this crap around in tanker trucks. Algae on waste water ponds and treatment systems not only produce fuel, but naturally help clean the water. Growth tanks can also be setup at industrial sites with CO2 emissions being piped into the tanks. There is a lot to do with these wondrous little plants; we just need to give them a chance. ..and John Hasler, look up the Haber Bosch Process. It’s called nitrogen fixing that requires lots of fossil fuels.
The company that I worked for commissioned a few studies on algae based biofuels. It turns out that the most efficient way of handling the material was to collect the algae in cakes and burn it in a reactor to make synthesis gas. Synthesis gas is a mixture of CO and Hydrogen. If you add steam, you could then perform a shift reaction to get methane or methanol. The main value of the process was not in producing fuel, or generating electricity. The main thing you could use it for was as a chemical feedstock. Methanol is a good starting point for many plastics.
(final comment, my spell checker wants to change biofuels to befouled)
I have a keen interest in algae biofuels and have been attending some of the communal events in San Diego. I just read this paper and it is pretty interesting...note leaders in algae biofuels since the 60's have the same reservations so this is not all "news". Nor are they deal breakers, there is no law of thermodynamics that says that some of these problems cannot be overcome. For example, one of the main energy "costs"(the paper says 40%) for algae is harvesting them. Grown in a pond, unless the algae flocculate they must be harvested by centrifugation -- very expensive. There may be ways to improve this part of the balance for example. Also note, intellectual honesty suggests that algae are not a cure all for CO2 emission, rather a possibly carbon neutral source of portable fuel, but with important long-term sustainability that our crops and fossil fuels do no offer. Finally some of what is propelling algae is the idea of energy independence for the good old USA. However to me this is very short sighted, as a long term part of the energy equation, many developing countries would be better sites for massive algae facilities. It would be good for the field if it would stop including the cost of land in CA and start considering the Baja.
someone inform Cheney of the news
Because it’s taking the space that is needed for OUR own food, the food for our animals, and the food for other animals.
It just takes away too much space for what it delivers.
We should primarily pursue direct sunlight/energy-storage conversions. Electrochemical (batteries), or chemical (fuel), or in another way. But based on the sun. Because that resource is, at least for a looong time, virtually endless. We could use more solar panels than there is space on earth. Simply by putting them on satellites or dead planets.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Flying chair jokes, though, are still fair game.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
now I can replace my bio-diesel processing plant in my garage with a bunch of algae eating researchers?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
He may not be, but we're still paying for his wars and his tax cuts and the damage done to our reputation by his advocacy of torture. He's still fair game.
Population size makes a big difference. It wasn't until around 1800 that the population of the Earth was close to 1 billion. We're now adding that many people in less than 20 years but we are NOT adding enough land to take care of that increase.
How about reusing the N and P from the harvested algae? We only want the C-H chains for fuel, so it might be possible to separate the P and N from the harvested algea, and reuse it for algae fertilizer.
Yeah, because Steve Ballmer is *still* CEO of MS.
Lucky it's not made from shit, or they'd have to pooh-pooh poo-poo based biofuel.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yeah, and chairs have been flying every day for the last 5 years.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Diesel fuel can be made from a huge variety of sources. Algae fed on shit, or the left over grease from your local restaurants, or even your lawn clippings. We could produce diesel from garbage turning all that piled up waste into something useful. Obviously some methods of production are more efficient than others, but the point is that it can be done. Diesel fuel isn't difficult to make and it's a renewable resource. It's cheapest for oil refineries to produce from crude oil right now, but unlike gasoline it can be produced from other sources efficiently enough to be economically useful.
Diesel engines inherently are more efficient than gasoline engines. Mile for mile a diesel car can deliver the same performance as a gasoline engine while getting significantly better mpg.
I get 45 to 50 miles per gallon without even trying.
Until this decade one of the major problems with diesel engines is the perception that they were "dirty" compared to a gasoline engine. You could see the exhaust easier, so despite the fact that diesels put out less greenhouse gases than gasoline engines they appeared to be "bad for the environment". Diesel is around 50% of the car market in the EU so they do a lot of R&D, the days of "dirty diesel" are long gone.
The environmental damage of a Prius or any other hyrbid or electric vehicle available compared to that of a modern diesel car is no contest. In every way, the diesel car wins by a land slide.
Why the fuck don't we have more diesel cars available in the US?!?
The article seems to be focusing on pond based algae biofuels as opposed to the bioreactor based ones that have been getting recent media attention.
They do mention the bioreactor based algae biofuels, but claim that the photo bioreactors are unlikely to scale efficiently and that unlined ponds are the most reasonable configuration. Of course, the paper they are using for this claim dates back to 1996. They really need to update their economic analysis reference.
The East Goes Nuclear While the West Heads for the Caves
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THE EAST GOES NUCLEAR WHILE THE WEST HEADS FOR THE CAVES
by Michael Billington
January 18, (LPAC)—In the midst of the greatest international financial crisis in modern history, all of Asia, including, emphatically, the Russian Federation, is engaged in a process of rapid expansion of nuclear power construction, a source of great pride to the nuclear producer-nations, and of great hope to their clients among the developing sector nations. These former colonies have been systematically deprived of their natural right to the use of nuclear power by the continuing legacy of British imperial power. What was promised by the Atoms for Peace process of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy—access to the virtually unlimited power potential of nuclear energy, to escape from the colonial legacy of backwardness and poverty—was abruptly sabotaged in the 1970s. This was done under the cover of the anti-nuclear hysteria fostered by Prince Philip's environmentalist movement, and the fraudulent argument that non-proliferation of nuclear weapons required a halt to peaceful uses of nuclear power. Now, the nations of Asia has definitively rejected British imperial dictates, asserting their long-term development to be centered, necessarily, upon expanded nuclear power capacities.
Unfortunately, the West is still mired in the British Empire's muck. While Asian nations are currently engaged in the construction of 43 nuclear plants, the entire rest of the world is constructing only 12. The United States, once the unquestioned leader in nuclear power development, is now constructing but one facility—and that is simply the completion of a mothballed TVA plant, suspended in the 1980s. All of Western Europe is constructing only two plants, while Germany and Sweden have determined to phase out all their nuclear power plants—although the global economic collapse is forcing a reconsideration of that lunacy.
In the United States, 224 nuclear scientists, engineers, and others have issued a public letter this week to President Obama's Science Advisor John Holdren, himself an anti-nuclear, anti-science zero-growther, warning that "the world is leaving us behind." The letter reads in part: "Our nation needs to proceed quickly—not twenty or fifty years from now—while the people who pioneered this science and engineering can still provide guidance to a new generation of scientists and engineers. There is no political, economic, or technical justification for delaying the benefits that nuclear power will bring to the United States, while the rest of the world forges ahead."
Contrast this to South Korea, where the Ministry of Knowledge Economy announced Jan. 13 that South Korea intends to export 80 nuclear plants, with a total value of $400 billion, by 2030. South Korea recently became only the sixth nuclear exporter, by winning a contract to build four nuclear units for the UAE.
Lyndon LaRouche described this situation starkly: "What you are seeing in the trans-Atlantic region is a dying civilization, a dying, self-doomed civilization. What you are seeing in the trans-Pacific region—especially on the Asian side, and the Indian Ocean side of that—you're seeing progress! When you look at the Pacific economy, the Pacific Ocean orientation, you find nuclear power increasing all over the place. But when you look at the trans-Atlantic area, you find nuclear power is almost banned, and backwardness goes back almost to the depths of the cavemen."
- Russia Leads the Way -
The Oct. 13, 2009 agreements signed between Russia and China during Prime Miniser Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing, which centered on cooperative development of nuclear power and high-speed rail transportation systems, characterize the transformation of all of Asia taking place today. Similar agreements were signed by India, with both Ru
It's not that the researchers didn't like the idea of algae biofuel, they were just preoccupied with their plan for a helium lifter system to help them get hunny for their rumbly tummies...
Bow-ties are cool.
"We need someone who doesn't immediately poo-poo everything he eats."
"Well no, it usually takes a couple of hours."
I notice a few people commenting on using fresh water. Well according to CSIRO (Australia) you can happily use salt water There is even a prototype plant that has been commissioned to look at making this more cost effective.
This sounds like the University of Virgina is just regurgitating information published by Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/2364 This isn't really a new idea nor a new recommendation. It is sad that it is at least 6 years old and it is being treated as new information though.
He's not the only one that failed chemistry. BP is now selling gasoline that is "fortified with the power of Nitrogen". Seriously. I hear it has what plants crave.
"essential algae nutrients.... come from petroleum."
FAIL
This should be tagged 'dontgetit'
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Financial pressure would inevitably produce a nice robust algae that produced biofuel that needed minimal or no refinement. In other words, you'd have an organic self-replicating oil producing machine.
Take this, accidentally let samples escape into ocean. See ocean die. Die. Die. Die.
All through the miracle of capitalism!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel
Well that should help with production!
I've always been more of an Eeyore man myself.
Bush -> Clinton
Clinton -> Bush Jr.
Bush Jr -> Obama
*sigh* The more things change the more they stay the same.
At the UW in Seattle we've had a number of patents (available via UW Tech) for biofuel from switchgrass, as well as biofilm approaches.
The algae methods have proven less promising, unless you're looking for specific oils that are otherwise derived from petroleum distillation.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd heard a coworker describe an Algae plant his dad was developing round Texas. I uses waste water from some factory, and warm water off of a nuclear plant.
To conserve space and optimize for algae, it's all in clear vertical tubes -- so light gets to the top layer where the algae grows.
The water doesn't get used up because it's a closed system -- but it's waste water anyway.
Air bubbles up into it.
I would figure it would be pretty carbon neutral, except that you would avoid NEW carbon being introduced from burning fossil fuels. Any ORGANIC process is merely going to be recycling existing carbon for the most part.
And scientists "poo-pooing" organic energy is kind of an ironic statement -- I'm sure I'm not the first to notice.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
... do NOT come from petroleum.
I have often considered the prospects of mass cultivating regular pondscum style algae, then using a solar accumulator furnace and a hermetically sealed crucible to reduce the garbage algae (very different from high quality algae used for feed, nutritional suppliments, etc, and thust not a valuable commodity at all really) into very high purity reduced carbon.
Should some absurd tax sheltering scheme for big business that revolves around "Carbon credits" comes into vouge, it might actually be a profitable enterprise to extract atmospheric carbon in such a manner. Elemental carbon is much easier to sequester than CO2 (being stable over geological time, as long as you dont burn it), and can be directly weighed.
Failing that, you could transform the elemental carbon produced into coal gas by injecting water into the crucible, then putting it back into the solar accumulator. Any resulting ash (calcium, sodium, potassium salts, and other non-volatile minerals) could be returned to the cultivation tank, and recycled.
It could be possible to run pretty much the entire operation on solar energy as well. I wonder if you could get a government subsidy for such a project?
"Oh Zarquon, oh heavens," he mumbled pathetically to himself, "I've
been found. I've been rescued..."
"Well," said one of the officials, briskly, "you've been found at
least." He strode over to the main computer bank in the middle of the
chamber and started checking quickly through the ship's main monitor
circuits for damage reports.
"The aorist rod chambers are intact," he said.
"Holy dingo's dos," snarled Zaphod, "there are aorist rods on
board...!"
Aorist rods were devices used in a now happily abandoned form of
energy production. When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one
point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted
that one place which had never used up all its available energy was -
the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such
insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same
night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of
all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the
past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulging in an extremely
expensive form of sentimentality. The past provided a very cheap,
plentiful and clean source of energy, there could always be a few
Natural Past Reserves set up if anyone wanted to pay for their upkeep,
and as for the claim that draining the past impoverished the present,
well, maybe it did, slightly, but the effects were immeasurable and you
really had to keep a sense of proportion.
It was only when it was realised that the present really was being
impoverished, and that the reason for it was that those selfish
plundering wastrel bastards up in the future were doing exactly the same
thing, that everyone realised that every single aorist rod, and the
terrible secret of how they were made would have to be utterly and
forever destroyed. They claimed it was for the sake of their
grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of
their grandparent's grandchildren, and their grandchildren's
grandparents.
The RSS headline said " Researchers Pooh-Pooh Algae-Based Biofuel" and the first thing I thought was "It's bad enough being on a motorcycle behind a normal diesel car at a stop, if they start putting pooh in the fuel I'm going to be making a lot of sudden right turns".
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
You live east of the Dakotas, don't you?
Feedlot cattle are mostly an eastern thing. Out here cattle are grass-fed on land unsuitable for growing corn and soy. While it is true that the two largest beef-cattle states (Nebraska and Texas) raise a majority of their cattle on lots, they are the exception. Head north or west and almost 100% of the cattle is grazed.
In 2003 only ~40% of US beef cattle was grain-fed, and of that most were only grain fed the later days of their lives.
WTF? I suspect that biofuel researchers aren't going to flock to read a paper written by researchers who appear unaware that the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. If any of the researchers read this, I recommend googling on just what is in our atmosphere and follow up by googling on "nitrogen fixation".
Tech Public Policy stuff
Gotta love the scientific publishing industry; I wonder if the authors see a thin dime from the publication of their research. . ?
Anyway, given what I've read regarding the fledgling 'Algae as Fuel' industry, I'm inclined to agree with the reported conclusions of the pooh pooh paper. One company I looked at last year, (after one dug through their shiny spin and investor brochure fluff), was that they used wood chips to feed their algae. Biofuels don't just come from thin air; they needed sugars.
Now, when you're running a demonstration model plant with a very small output, then woodchips are great; there's plenty of waste biomass available. But when you scale up for mass production, suddenly you're having to make some pretty severe choices. The point of the paper was that nobody had come up yet with a sensible solution to Algae-based fuel production which would not place a bigger energy 'footprint' on the land than other forms of biofuel production. And that's saying something given that other biofuels are kind of insane at the moment.
But it sure would be nice to be able to read the paper myself. So long as we're going to stay stuck in a burning-stuff-to-make-wheels-go-round culture, then Algae seems to offer some significant benefits if you can get it up and running efficiently.
-FL
Someone, somewhere, doesn't have a clue about basic chemistry. Most likely the reporter/ PR flack who wrote this story up and then failed to get his version checked by the original specialists for the science (not the English, nor the style, but the science).
Nitrogen and phosphorus are both essential elements in the diet of anything (including nitrogen-fixing bacteria and archaea ; they just happen to be able to take their N2 neat), but neither of them are found in petroleum, except in the most trivial of amounts.
What the reporter meant to say, I suspect, is that nitrogen and phosphorus are essential nutrients which are often produced or made into a metabolisable form using energy from petroleum (and in the case of nitrogen, also hydrogen from petroleum). And I'm sure that's what the researchers actually said. But the reporter fluffed it.
That said ... using "waste" water to supply these nutrients kills several birds (OK, dinosaurs) with one stone (of unspecified type ; trust me, I'm a geologist : the type of stone doesn't matter in this case. I know it's not normal to hear a geologist say that, but this time, it doesn't matter!)
Where is this "away" place that such wastes were sent to before. I've looked on a map, and I've looked on Google Maps, and I've not found "away". It must be a popular place : "put it away", "throw it away", "just go away and never darken my doorstep again" ; but I can't find it on a map.
Oh, Bowdlerisation! Google maps have spoiled my joke.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Re: torture
He could be talking about the millions of children now left homeless due to a war started over a lie and fought for the enrichment of the Bush family and their friends.
Granted, it's not direct torture, but I'd wager that watching your family die of cholera due to flattened civil infrastructure is not pleasant.
Also, if you're a war apologist, FUCK YOU.
it eats wastewater to grow really fast, produces significantly more starch per acre than corn Engineering News at NC State, Fall 2009 Online Magazine
The Virginia researchers promptly suggested "clean coal" as the answer to our woes?
Meanwhile, I kept dumping bleach into the kiddie pool all summer to keep the algae from growing. The neighbor must have been throwing in the fertilizer.
Most algae is perfectly happy fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere all on their own (phosporus, not so much). Of course, that costs the algae energy to do, energy better spent fixing carbon from CO2.
The important point is, there is no nitrogen or phosphorus in algae-derived oil or ethanol (only carbon, oxygen and hydrogen). If you're throwing in nitrogen and phosphorus to grow the algae, you are leaving it behind when you make the biofuel, so the net cost of petroleum for this is 0 assuming you find something to do with what's left (like, I dunno, use it for fertilizer)?
Hopefully this kind of brain-death is attributable to whatever "science writer" coughed out this gem, and not the hapless researchers. Either way, IANRTFA.
Biofuels don't just come from thin air"
You are mistaken. Biofuels do indeed come from thin air.
CO2 (from thin air) + H20 + sunshine = biofuel
The bulk of the mass in biofuel, just like the bulk of the mass in all plants and animals, indeed originates from thin air.
True fact.
Or, to specifically address the ignorance of these "researchers",
CO2 + H20 + "fixed nitrogen" + phosphates + algae = biofuel + "fixed nitrogen" + phosphates + "dead algae".
Biofuel contains nothing but oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. Anything else you need to add to make biofuel, you get just as much back out. Unlike carbon, once biology "fixes" nitrogen and phosphorus, they stay fixed. So they come back out just the way they came in, with the energy investment to fix them left intact.
If you set up algae-biofuel production without accounting for what you're going to do with the heaping mounds of stinking dead algae, you have much bigger problems than fretting about your "petroleum balance".
If you set it up as part of a water treatment facility, or as a way to deal with heaping mounds of stinking chicken poo, or whatever, you will still need to do something with the heaping mounds of stinking dead algae.
Algae don't have cultural taboos about eating their dead friends and neighbors, so you can use all that dead algae as "fertilizer" for your next algae batch. Or sell it as fertilizer, thereby displacing an equivalent amount of petroleum necessary to make the fertilizer in the standard way. Or sell it as animal feed to displace an even larger amount of petroleum needed to make the fertilizer to grow and harvest the crops to make the animal feed.
This is just a long winded way of saying this is bull on the face of it.
No, there is no point in reading the paper because there is nothing they can say or do to negate these basic biochemical facts.
Clearly you've forgotten the grandfather of the modern flying chair. This is what I think of when I see flying chair mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvRO2GE4x4M of course I was a freshman at Purdue when this happened.
Wish I could mod this +5 off-topic.
Re: torture He could be talking about the millions of children now left homeless
citation please.
Range fed cattle, the ones that are marketed that way, eat grass or grass-like feed.
Feedlot cattle are the ones that get corn, soy or other items as part of the fattening up process. In some instances range fed cattle go to the stock yards for a few weeks for 'finishing'.
The ideal situation is as you describe, letting the various types of livestock graze on marginal land like hills and flood plains. You do have to worry about overgrazing though.
You are mistaken. Biofuels do indeed come from thin air.
CO2 (from thin air) + H20 + sunshine = biofuel
The bulk of the mass in biofuel, just like the bulk of the mass in all plants and animals, indeed originates from thin air.
True fact.
You're deliberately mis-interpreting me in order to argue your point. Please don't do that. It makes you look like an ass and you can serve your ends better.
Yes, the biological world is one big sunlight battery. But that doesn't mean we are using this reality wisely or smartly. Algae farming can work, but it isn't efficient enough yet to compete with crude oil or other biofuel systems in terms of energy-in/energy-out. The paper suggests, (if the article is reporting correctly), a number of methods to address this. From what I gather, it wasn't against the idea but was simply a summation of the situation as it currently stands. But I'd like to know myself, so yes, I WOULD like to read the paper despite your meager assurances that I only need to read your snide little post in order to obtain all the information I need.
-FL
As I said.
Actually, someone did the math on that, and in a vegan system, the world population would have to *shrink* by at least 2/3rds to be sustainable on the available level of food production. The reason is twofold:
1) Crop agriculture largely depends on animal ag (which is to say, manure) for *fixed nitrogen* to fertilize crops. Most crop plants are NOT nitrogen fixers and rely entirely on fertilizer or on existing nitrogen compounds in the soil (which are rapidly depleted if not replaced; this nitrogen goes into making the proteins in the crop). This is actually the most important limiting factor in crop yields. -- Without manure, you have to rely on industrial ammonia, as several posters detail above -- a fairly costly process in terms of energy use. The only reason our crop yields are as good as they are today is because manure, never in sufficient supply, is being supplemented by industrial ammonia. To get off that dependency on industrial ammonia for fertilizer, we'd need to approximately DOUBLE manure production (which is to say, animal ag).
2) Getting rid of animal agriculture actually pulls a lot of land OUT of food production, since only about a quarter of the ag-utilized land is suitable for crops. Livestock are grazed mainly on land that CANNOT grow food crops, either for soil being too poor or terrain being unsuitable (thin, rocky, steep) or for not having enough evenly-distributed water (e.g. most of the American west, most of central Asia, etc.) Cattle can drink at a trough; plants need water distributed to their roots, and irrigation uses a lot of fuel, since most irrigation water needs to be pumped. (And irrigation pipe is hideously expensive, presently over $100 for a 20 foot piece of 4" pipe. That's right, it's over 5 bucks per FOOT.) With population growth using more and more water for urban survival, or water being pulled away from crop use (like the debacle in central California) water itself is rapidly becoming another limiting factor, and in some areas is actually too expensive to use on crops at all.
Crop-producing plants, especially those that produce a lot of protein, need a LOT of nitrogen and water, compared to graze and fodder useful for feeding animals. This animal fodder is not at all useful for feeding humans. (Unless you can figure out how to grow multiple stomachs or another 20 yards of intestine, so you can digest grass.) Animals serve as a very efficient means of converting NON-FOOD CROPS (mostly grass) from NON-ARABLE LAND (ie. pasture) into HUMAN-USABLE PROTEIN.
The other problem is that strict veganism is actually a recipe for human extinction, since it is not possible to raise healthy children on a vegan diet. It is catastrophically deficient in vit.B-12 (which leads to a variety of problems in children, from retardation to death), plus you need to eat about 3x the calories to get the required level and balance of animo acids, and even then it will be deficient in some of them.
Soy is actually not a very good or efficient protein, is processing-intensive to get it to the point where it is human-digestible, and has some other negative impacts; there is a lot of good research (with citations) compiled at http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/
[BTW my background is biochemistry, and I'm from farm and ranch country, so I actually do know what I'm talking about. Unlike the average urbanite who has no real idea what it takes to produce the food he eats.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Sorry you interpreted me as being snide.
Most people are not aware of the chemistry of biofuels, or the carbon cycle. I was just adopting the accepted sophomoric slashdot style in an apparently failed attempt at humor.
The main and important point is this: There is no net consumption of fixed nitrogen or phosphorus to produce biofuel. There is no practical way to make the fixed nitrogen and phosphorus magically go away somewhere so that its no longer part of the energy equation. You can't simply overlook this either because it is embodied in the accumulating piles of dead algae as you make the biofuel. These piles are equivalent to fertilizer produced from petroleum sources energetically, biochemically, and in every way that's relevant to this discussion.
This failure to account for all of the inputs and outputs of biofuel production is a standard way for interested parties to manipulate the mainstream press into publishing articles both for and against biofuels. This latest is the most egregious attempt I've seen. Usually its limited to things like playing with the petroleum cost of mining the iron and smelting the steel to produce farm equipment. Trying to brush the literal mountains of dead algae under the rug is something new.
Sorry for any misunderstanding.