Slashdot Mirror
Algal Biofuels Not Ready For Scale-Up
Tator Tot writes with this quote from Chemical & Engineering News:
"Using today's technologies and knowledge, a scale-up of fledgling algal biofuel production sufficient to meet even 5% of U.S. transportation fuel demand is unsustainable, says a report released last week by the National Research Council. The report examines the efficiency of producing biofuels from microalgae and cyanobacteria with respect to energy, water, and nutrient requirements and finds that the process falls short. The energy from algal biofuel, the report finds, is less than the energy needed to make it. In terms of water, at least 32.5 billion gal would be needed to produce 10 billion gal of algae-based biofuels, the report states. The study also finds that making enough algal biofuels to replace just 5% of U.S. annual transportation fuel needs would require 44–107% of the total nitrogen and 20–51% of the total phosphorus consumed annually in the U.S."
Yes, I know that 'algal' is perfectly good english. But wouldn't 'algae-based' be much more clear to the 99% of the population that are not chemists?
The energy from algal biofuel, the report finds, is less than the energy needed to make it. In terms of water, at least 32.5 billion gal would be needed to produce 10 billion gal of algae-based biofuels, the report states. The study also finds that making enough algal biofuels to replace just 5% of U.S. annual transportation fuel needs would require 44–107% of the total nitrogen and 20–51% of the total phosphorus consumed annually in the U.S.
In other words... we're SOL.
Well hey it was a good effort. One peg down. Lets try to find something else renewable that will work.
Based on a review of literature published until the authoring of this report, the committee concluded that the scale-up of algal biofuel production sufficient to meet at least 5 percent of U.S. demand for transportation fuels would place unsustainable demands on energy, water, and nutrients with current technologies and knowledge. However, the potential to shift this dynamic through improvements in biological and engineering variables exists.
So... you're saying there's a chance...
Ethanol from corn requires more energy than it produces, but due to subsidies it makes money for some politically connected businesses.
We flush whole shit-tons of water, nitrogen, and phosphorus down our toilets. Why not turn that into biofuels? Cities will pay good money for you to process their waste, and you can charge for the fuel, too.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Okay how's this for some numbers. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one bushel of corn. That doesn't include processing to ethanol. Oil also takes huge quantities of water to produce refined gasoline or diesel. They are talking 3 to1 for biodiesel from algae. That's actually impressive! Also they assume we'd use chemical fertilizers. Why? Most proposals I've seen used farm waste especially pig waste which goes to waste and pollutes rivers. There's a frightening amount of farm waste, both pig and chicken, that could be used for algae production. FYI, some types of algae live in brackish water and there is effectively an unlimited supply of that. Most of the extraction techniques involve squeezing out the oil with maybe a small amount of alcohol used to soften the cell walls so there's limited energy needed in processing. If you cherry pick data you make the numbers sound scary.
TFA doesn't even link to where the actual report can be found (shame on you Chemical & Engineering News)
The actual report is behind a paywall, but has some summary points Sustainable Development of Algal Biofuels (2012)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Why doesn't anyone suggest using algae fuel for a smaller part of the transportation workload instead? I'd suggest either buses or trucks, for example. They already don't use gas stations along with cars, and usually run on diesel already. Converting their stations and vehicles should be much easier than doing so for all the gas stations across the country. Even small steps add up.
Part of it will be in the fuel itself, or lost in the process in run off or even bound in compound which makes too expansive in term of energy to gain the Nitrogen or Phosphorus back.
So whats the cost of Nitrogen and Phosphorus in comparison to oil? Also can nitrogen and Phosphorus make us less dependent on foreign countries? Is it easier to produce? ETC none of these are menthttp://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/10/26/153259/algal-biofuels-not-ready-for-scale-up?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29#ioned in the article or the post. Did we expect Algae to be free? or just better then the alternative?
people really, really don't get that.
We're using 100M+ years of accumulated carbon AND EVEN THAT'S NOT SUSTAINABLE.
Thinking that we can somehow achieve breakeven on an ongoing basis, when we're already deep in debt to the past is probably not going to work well.
We need an energy source that far exceeds our requirements. Fusion works. Solar works (storage problem).
Fission might work but not if it's based on Uranium.
>The energy from algal biofuel, the report finds, is less than the energy needed to make it.
Yet another failed attempt at perpetual energy! Why oh why does the laws of physics mock us so?
All joking aside, for most applications, we don't mind energy loss. The key is getting the energy into a compact and transportable form usable in cars.
God spoke to me
RTFA
Here's something: (in a simplified nutshell)
Those corn subsidies make US corn really cheap, which is then exported to Mexico. The Mexican farmers couldn't compete and went out of business. So to make ends meet, those million+ farmers came to the US to make some money and then are treated like criminals - all because of farm subsidies.
Talk about unintended consequences.
Next up: farm subsides destroying Gulf fisheries requiring more subsides to fishermen.
Two things.
1) The lovely thing about bio-fuels is not primarily its efficiency or viability, but the energy density, utility and ease of handling of the product....
2) Fundamentally solar energy production will ultimately boil down to minimization of real-estate usage (efficiency) _and_ maximization of desired products...
FWIW
p.s. - Still waiting for my jet-powered electric hybrid flying car
Both side of the aisle are sufficiently full of poo that we'd be in bio-fuel heaven for the foreseeable future.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Corn is also a nitrogen hog. The amount of chemical fertilizer needed to grow corn for ethanol is similarly a net waste.
To paraphrase Dickens:
If it takes 0.99 barrels of oil equivalent to extract 1 barrel of oil equivalent, all is well.
If it takes 1.01 barrels of oil equivalent to extract 1 barrel of oil equivalent, all is not well.
... and if we use it at that rate, soon all of the Earth's water will be gone forever!
What's your address so I can send you a one way ticket to Vietnam or Cuba? Also say which one you'd prefer.
" transportation fuel needs would require 44–107% of the total nitrogen and 20–51% of the total phosphorus"
There's no phosphorus or nitrogen in bio fuel. I don't see how it's removed/lost from their system.
The left over organics after the fuel extraction should be returned to the system as fertilizer.
Now imagine the people in that world imagining what it would take to create a petroleum-based economy like ours from scratch. The amazing drilling technology; the massive investment in super-ships and pipelines; the scale and sophistication of refineries; the ubiquitous distribution networks; the engine technology to burn petroleum cleanly and efficiently.
Imagining all those things happening in the space of, say, ten or even twenty years would be impossible. And in fact it didn't happen that way. It took us more like a century.
People seem to be daunted by any new energy technology because they can't imagine it replacing petroleum overnight. But it doesn't have to happen that way, and in fact it won't. The dominance of petroleum we've known all our lives will be gone someday, probably within the lifetime of some people alive today but that might be fifty years or more into the future. And as with any technology, success with the replacement technologies will depend on timing. You wan to be ahead of the curve, but not investing so far ahead of the curve you're dealing with impracticability. Back in '94 I worked for a new boss who was betting the company on the emergence of something like Netflix streaming in the next year or two. I explained all the difficulties and why it would not happen any time in the next decade, but she was so certain it was going to happen she could not be dissuaded (so I quit). I envisioned the same future as her, but I thought her timing was premature -- as it turned out to be by some 14 years.
Apple's success is, apart from design, largely a matter of timing. They weren't the first to develop a tablet, but the iPad came when it was possible to make something thin enough, light enough, long-lasting enough and powerful enough to be useful. People who tried when you needed to make the things ten pounds and an inch thick to accommodate the battery failed, no matter how impressive their design was for the time, because he time was wrong.
As I said, petroleum will fade away in the lifetime of many of us, and what replaces it would seem astonishing to us today, but it won't happen overnight. And we'll never run out of oil. We'll use less and less of it as the prices rises against the falling price of the alternatives. At the outset, those alternatives won't look competitive at all. And most of them will never be competitive. The few that will work out will be very difficult to pick out from the rest of the pack of doomed technologies.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... With natural gas?
Biofuels should be used in conjunction with clean energy, then it doesn't really matter how much energy that they take to produce because it will produce zero emissions. I wonder if this article is from the same kind of people who would drive an electric car in a country that has brown coal for electricity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now imagine the people in that world imagining what it would take to create a petroleum-based economy like ours from scratch.
As straw men go, that's a pretty poor one. This article is talking about producing algal fuel, not distributing it; when oil first began to be used as a fuel, it just squirted out of the ground ready to burn... who cared whether someone a thousand miles away can't burn it because there's no pipeline to get it there?
BTW, when I was a kid, we only had twenty years of oil left. Oddly, we seem to have about twenty years of oil left, thirty years later.
Second, what is known of lipid production is that it is a response to nutrient stress -- which means the photosynthetic efficiency is highest with optimal nutrients but the biomass is going to be dominated by non-lipids. Why isn't this work being funded?
Third, the optimal nutrient biomass is largely amino acids and although amino acids have lower market value than lipids (in the large scale markets like agricultural feedstocks and fuels) the gain in photosynthetic efficiency means you have to pay attention to amino acid market value or you are missing basic economics.
Fourth, if you start producing amino acids on a macroengineering scale, you are going to be reducing overall demand for fertilizers because the efficiency of utilization is so higher in algal photosynthesis than it is in, say, soybeans.
Fifth, O&M cost of nutrients (including water and agricultural grade CO2 as well as NPK) are high but the debt service cost of the photobioreactors (or ponds) per unit output is even higher -- so you had better pay _very_ close attention to photosynthetic efficiency as that drives your total area, hence capital cost.
Seastead this.
..if you use agricultural (or even residential) runoff. Here in the NE USA we build treatment plants to remove the phosphorus (from lawn chemicals and detergents) from wastewater and stormwater so as to prevent algal blooms in our lakes and streams.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I'm surprise no one has figure how to grow algae in the ocean - There is Atlantic, Pacific ocean on both side of US - with trillions gallon of water -
Imagine hundred of ships use to harvest the algae in ocean water.
We are doing all this research to turn algae into fuel for machines.
Why not turn it first into fuel for humans. A contained system that runs on low power consumption could be made for everyone's home.
We could virtually eradicate or drastically reduce commercial food production and distribution requirements.
Once we fix the issue of feeding ourselves freely and without being forced into a slave system. We will be free to solve our other energy, waste management, utility needs, enlighten ourselves, and find a real solution to governing, ourselves.
Then we might just have a chance at freedom from this rock or the choice to take care of it until the earth can no longer sustain life.
Just some thoughts and an opinion from an AC.
And if you knew anything about oil production when you were a kid, you'd know how much it's changed today.
The easy oil is gone. People could once get oil squirting out of the ground...but not any more. There's a reason why Pennsylvania isn't oil country.
You may not have noticed, but the GP talked about more than just distribution, but also production.
It does matter.
What's your address so I can send you a one way ticket to Vietnam or Cuba? Also say which one you'd prefer.
Are you certain Vietnam counts here? (Does anybody else find the name "Ho Chi Minh Stock Index" amusing?)
I don't understand how the nitrogen and phosphorus is consumed. Presumably the end product is supposed to be some kind of hydrocarbon fuel. In which nitrogen and phosphorus are neither needed, nor particularly desirable.
If the two end up somewhere else, in some waste product of the process, then why can't the waste be processed and the two elements recycled?
On the other hand, Diesel designed his engine, originally, to run on Peanut Oil.
So - switching from petroleum-based diesel, to algae-biofuel, is not the huge leap it's being made out to be. In fact, it doesn't have to be a leap. If we use that as an argument, even a gradual transition won't be possible.
Ammonia, though toxic, can be manufactured at a huge scale with essentially only air (nitrogen), water (hydrogen), heat, and electricity. The economics of manufacture by a large-scale concentrated solar power array may be worth looking at, but nuclear has major advantages that should be developed. We are awash in the energy-dense uranium and thorium, and it is quite foolish of us to not vigorously explore the limits of nuclear technology so that we may better exploit these sources. We will likely continue to encounter major hurdles as we try to pave a path to sustainability with only energy farms at our disposal.
Slashdot needs a like button. Either that or I need to get off my ass and get an account. Nah, been here as a proud AC since the beginning.
THANK YOU. Thank you for pointing out that it is the job of scientists and engineers everywhere to slowly and steadily make the world better. Thank you for pointing out that making something better 1% every year adds up to a significant gain over time.
We also don't spend enough time realizing that if you invent 10 technologies that each independently solve 10% of a problem, eventually you will solve 100% of your problem.
What are you saying? It would be VERY easy to start a petroleum industry in that world. Literally scoop up oil and burn it. 0 technology required and you have an energy source, unlike this, which is still not a positive energy source even with modern technology.
A lot of people think that we are utterly dependent on burning oil for energy for our modern existence, but this is patently untrue. One example of potential independence is biodiesel. I own two diesels (a car and a truck) and I put biodiesel into them when I can, but it costs significantly more than petroleum diesel. This is due to the tax breaks given to Big Oil, and the fact that no one is paying for the major externality of burning petrofuels, carbon dioxide. The US government proved at Sandia NREL in the 1980s that producing biodiesel from algae grown in open raceway ponds was not only feasible, but that it should be profitable with diesel fuel retailing at $3/gallon.
We could easily replace our diesel fuel consumption with only a relatively small amount of land. Unfortunately, virtually all the land not already in use that is useful for this process is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, and they have approved only a tiny portion of renewable energy projects proposed for BLM land even when it is shown to be beneficial. What chance is there to undertake a massive project like replacing a significant portion of our diesel consumption with biodiesel from algae?
Our own federal government has already shown that replacing diesel-based fossil fuels in transportation with algae is feasible, and it is likewise our own federal government that prevents any such projects going forward, largely through the Bureau of Land Management. Would anyone like a tax break on oil production, while we're here?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now imagine the people in that world imagining
Yeah, man...
We'll use less and less of it as the prices rises against the falling price of the alternatives.
The price of petroleum today is waaaay higher than its actual cost. If alternatives become energy-positive and cheap, the OPEC can just drop the prices to become more competitive. Why should the petroleum price rise against the falling price of the alternatives?
That's it. the best solution to the base demand for power is a nuclear generator powered by Thorium. Look it up.
In this day of Google and the ease of finding out information, you gripe about the PROPER verbiage and are too fucking lazy to look it up. My god, but when I was a kid, we actually had these thick books called dictionaries and encyclopedias. It was TIME CONSUMING to actually look things up, but we did it. And you are bitching about this? Seriously? If this is the best that you can come up with, well, Dude, you really need to get a fucking life.
These guys did NOT do their homework.
Joules Unlimited/Joules Fuel actually turns SEWAGE into fuel; diesel, ethanol, etc. Now, does it use water? Yup. But that is water that would normally be cleaned up at high expenses. With this case, it turns it into a profit center. Hell, this might make it profitable enough that we will willingly send water to Colorado (via building up clouds on the west coast) to cascade into the various rivers that supply the vast majority of America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The price of petroleum today is waaaay higher than its actual cost.
Please support your assertion. Show your math.
Why should the petroleum price rise against the falling price of the alternatives?
I'm going out on a limb here, but - maybe supply and demand ?
Except there would be no Deep Drilling technology, no exploration techniques that costed tens of billions of dollars developing, no refinery to speak of, and no engines to burn it.
But yeah you're right it would be easy because the right and means to use petrol to power our cars were in fact given to us by our lord and savior Jesus Christ so, easy peasy..
You sadden me as a human, not to understand even in the slightest the clever thought experiment the previous guy designed.
You don't really need math to realize that the price difference of gasoline between Europe and USA cannot be due to the actual cost of producing gasoline. The price of gasoline is defined by how much people are willing to pay for it, not by how much it actually costs to produce.
Supply and demand was my thought, too. The OP said: "And we'll never run out of oil. We'll use less and less of it as the prices rises against the falling price of the alternatives." Why on earth should the price of oil rise while there is no shortage? Right now oil has no competition. When faced with competition (i.e. the alternatives) prices drop, don't rise.
Nitrogen, and phosphate are cheap, its called the Mississippi river, and it causes some of the best algae growth on earth. Lets kill two birds with one stone on this one.
Why on earth should the price of oil rise while there is no shortage?
I think OP didn't say there would be no shortage, he was saying we'd never extract the final drop from the earth. That doesn't mean supply won't decrease.
It looks like a programming language to me..
From the article you linked: "Jeb Bush says illegal immigration is 'net zero'". Is he trying to say undocumented immigrants use a particular ISP?
But seriously, that's an interesting statistic. Does that refer to existing illegal immigrants going home or to U.S. citizens going to other countries illegally?