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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...
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?
At least they didn't poo-poo the algae.
Hold on there, I for one do want to be next to a nuclear power plant.
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.
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
I don't mind living next to nuclear power plants. As a matter of fact I did. In fact it was the primary employer for my town.
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?
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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)
someone inform Cheney of the news
Some true some false there. Electrons aren't created during power generation, but they are moved around. They don't come from mass. There does have to be a power plant and saying 'use hydrogen and there won't be any pollution' is definitely missing the issue.
Algae biofuel = solar power harvesting via photosynthesis. The algae contain more energy once grown, but it might not be worthwhile to do all the extra work to get that energy into a useful form. It is theoretically possible, but so are highly efficient solar cells. Only time will actually tell.
I'm not worried about living next to a nuclear power plant. I grew up right near one... Just a mile or two outside of town. Of course I'm not the average American, so I can see your point...
But the nice thing about power plants, as opposed to internal combustion engines in your cars, is that they're centralized. One big chimney, instead of hundreds or thousands of them. A single chimney to inspect, regulate, filter, clean, whatever.
Sure, you've got to get the power to your cars... So there's transmission and storage losses to worry about... But I suspect we could cut down on emissions somewhat just by centralizing our power generation, even if we didn't move to a clean fuel source.
And if we were to standardize on electric cars, we're no longer quite so reliant on fossil fuels. Sure, for now, a lot of our electricity comes from fossil fuels... But electricity is electricity. Your electric car really doesn't care where that electricity comes from. It could be wind power, or solar, or nuclear, or whatever... And your car will work just the same.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
You mean organic? Going vegan would probably let us double the world population considering the huge amount of grain and soy that's fed to animals.
Oil and natural gas won't last forever. The most optimistic estimates says 30 years before peak production rate, and we hit shortages on a growing planet. What's the plan to feed ourselves after that? Grow bigger and crash harder?
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.
I'm not being judgmental against you here, but it's true that one head, two eyes is the norm.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oh yeah? Well you know what nuclear power plants emit? Water vapor. The silent killer.
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.
Did you know that water vapor is many times more effective as a greenhouse gas that CO2? You know what that endangers? Polar Bears, the other silent killer.
This message was brought to you by Steven Colbert.
Safer than living next to a coal plant, that's for sure.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why not? It emits one hell of a lot less radiation and other pollution than a coal-fired one does.
Do your homework before you consign everyone to freezing in the dark.
Regards;
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.
To make fertilizer, you want fixed N (that is, N that is connected to carbon). Doing that is a big part of the energy cost in the fertilizer.
(this doesn't mean you can't come up with an algae good at fixing N; but there's plenty of N around anyway, N2 is most of our atmosphere. Such would be a good starting point for using algae to make fertilizer. My point is what we're really trying to get out of the algae is energy, which making fertilizer also requires).
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.
I think you've over-estimated the chance in being Barack Obama by quite a bit. Your estimate for being hurt by a nuclear power plant seems right on, though.
Redundancy is good And also good.
Sure, I'm all for it, provided that (a) we don't treat this as a miracle cure for our petroleum dependency (because then we'll be dealing with nuclear fuel dependency) and (b) the costs of decommissioning the plant and handling spent fuel are factored into the construction and operation costs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I used to work there. Good people.
Science never settles, never rests.
I think you mean dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO for short).
hydrogen dioxide is also known as "hydrogen peroxide", which is a relatively harmless bleaching agent, and it contains more oxygen than DHMO, so it's got to be healthy.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
That's not quite true. The vast majority of the world's livestock farms aren't on land that's suitable for arable farming. Furthermore, without the livestock farms you are wholly dependant on petrochemical-derived fertilisers and human waste for farming - but it turns out that to make human waste from sewage plants safe to use as fertiliser, you need lots of petrochemicals. Oops.
for b: the cost of decommissioning and cleanup have never been counted for when building a coal plant. While those costs have always been considered for nuclear plants. That is one of the reasons coal is perceived as cheaper.
a: its not a miracle cure, buts more than just a few steps in the right direction. The US has one of the largest supplies of uranium, both mined and in the ground. With the more efficient feeder-breeder reactors, it can meet our needs for hundreds of years and that is if it was our only energy source.
A strong mix of feeder-breeder nuclear reactors and efficient solar thermal plants, we would be well on our way to complete energy independence with very low pollution for the forseeable future.
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! --
"but arable farming uses an unholy amount of petrochemicals. "
Begging the question of what is a "holy" amount of petrochemicals....
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Ah. LPAC stands for LaRouchePAC. I thought the rhetorical style was familiar.
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.
Algae is grown in margianl places too, such as in waste water treament plants/pools./ Also, places like the desert are ideal for algae production because of the generous amounts of sunlight and heat. Water is not a big issue because algae is best grown in closed tanks and the water can be reused.
Good question. Even industrial rotary drum filters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_vacuum-drum_filter
get clogged easily by the microscopic algae.
Also "the container" to be economical must be these so-
called raceway ponds and there is no "tilting" something
the size of a farm.
Again if you read up, algae has been a proposed source
of fuel for a very long time. Unfortunately the devil is in the
engineering challenges (and the biology -- this is a kind
of agriculture but with major disadvantages in that the "weeds"
are microscopic). It seems like every problem conspires to
make it more expensive.
This a link to a paper from a guy who has been in the field
for some time (and is sceptical of the hype).
http://www.futureenergyevents.com/algae/whitepaper/
If the entire population of the world went vegan, we'd survive for about a decade.
If we all went vegan, and were very careless about securing a supply of B12, we might survive for only a few years.
>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.
I have a simple solution that involves algae-eating lizards, Chinese needle snakes and gorillas.
Unless your long time vegetarian or vegan, then steak truly is just disgusting.
Vegetarian for 8+ years - never once felt the desire to go back to eating warmed dead rotting animal carcass. The point is that what tastes and looks good is largely dependent on what you consider food.
Going vegan would actually decrease the amount of land needed, since it's more efficient to just make wheat/corn, instead of making wheat/corn and then (inefficiently) converting it to steak.
You're really not getting this. Cows don't eat corn, they eat grass. This is why in most of the world, cows are fed on grass or grass-like feed (hay, silage etc) with relatively small amounts of things like oats and wheat. Over here, we make a lot of use of "draff" which is spent distillery mash - malt that's been boiled up for the sugar to be used in brewing. The other important thing that you're missing is that a lot of the "undesirable" stuff that your cow food gets turned into is actually cow *shit*. You let this compost for a while (it helps to mix it with straw and burn it, but that smells awful) and yay, free fertiliser *without* petrochemicals. All this stuff about livestock farming "using up all the water" is just nonsense - cows don't magically make mass disappear. They are not nuclear reactors. They drink water - quite a lot of water - and either pee it out (yay, nitrogen compounds, just what nitrate-poor grassland needs) or sweat it out (okay, water vapour is the most significant greenhouse gas, I'll give you that). Either way nothing is lost for the water cycle. Eventually more fresh water just falls from the sky. Oh, here comes some now!
Even better than cows are sheep, which can eat tough heathery plants and tough grasses that not much else can eat. We hardly have to feed sheep at all over the winter (maybe a little bit of draff mixed with shredded sugar beet - yes, technically something you could feed humans. You get enough sugar already, fatso). The good bit about that is you can make use of farmland that isn't really suitable for arable farming. Go and have a look at pretty much any country that has hills (ie. not rolling cornfields like the middle states of the US), and work out how you're going to plant it.
I'm so domestic.