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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?
Wouldn't most of that nitrogen/phosphorus be recycled into the next generation of algae after extraction of the fuel?
ie. Once the cycle is started it doesn't take anywhere near that amount to keep it going.
No sig today...
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?
My question is whether these requirements are for growing 'new' fuel; the biggest boon in biofuels is using 'scrap' and 'waste' material, in which case your costs are relatively near zero for those fuel sources.
Even growing sagebrush doesn't require much in the way of input water. It's a weed and grows on it's own on land that isn't farmable. Still uses the nitrogen/phosphorus but water would be the biggest expense.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Assuming algae is grown in tubes, how does the nitrogen/phosphorus go from the burning of the fuel into the air back into the tubes?
(not a chemist so I'm curious)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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.
>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
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.
Yes, and and the assumption they make is that algae requires the same levels of both nutrients as regular crops do, which it doesn't. They are also basing their conclusion on a study that DOE did with open ponds, not considering the advancements the closed PBR's have made in recycling the water and with growth rates. Algae offers many advantages that almost all other "green" energy sources lack: primarily it absorbs a lot of CO2, it grows best in waste water (think sewers), can be used for both bio-diesel and bio-butanol, and the pressings can also be used as fuel for pellet type heaters, used as fertilizer as well as feed supplement. Another thing about algae is that you don't have to use land to produce it, we have vast tracks of ocean that floating PBRs could be deployed in and use filtered sea water which has all the nutrients needed. Algae fuel is the best of all the green energy scenarios, its is liquid stored solar power, so you don't need batteries, don't need new storage and delivery infrastructure and in one stroke solves global warming. We just need to put forth the effort and do it.
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.
Assuming that their process produces pure hydrocarbons, the fuel output would only have Hydrogen, Carbon, and Oxygen, which come from C02 and H2O. When the algae is converted into fuel, there should be a "waste" stream that would be perfect fertilizer for the next generation of algae.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
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.
Soylent Green! It's Algae!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
... and if we use it at that rate, soon all of the Earth's water will be gone forever!
We're using 100M+ years of accumulated carbon...
Hah, you've just failed to convince 40% of all the US citizens and your argument hasn't even properly started yet!
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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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.
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?)
Assuming algae is grown in tubes, how does the nitrogen/phosphorus go from the burning of the fuel into the air back into the tubes?
Even a non-chemist should know that no nitrogen/phosphorus comes out of car exhaust pipes .... it's all CO2 and H2O.
No sig today...
Exactly. And furthermore, most of that water is just required for the little guys to swim around in and is just as recyclable as the N and P. Also, IIRC, at least some of the strains actually excrete the hydrocarbons (or possibly their esters) which makes processing dead easy.
Car exhaust usually contains carbon dioxide, water, carbon monoxide, and various nitrogen or sulfur oxides.
Now, that nitrogen is from the atmosphere when running oil based gasoline. Is algal biofuel exactly the same? I DON'T FUCKING KNOW SINCE I'M NOT A CHEMIST.
And so I asked the question.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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?
Either – does it matter?
Using “scrap” for fuel is fine. Every bit of efficiency that can be wrung out of the system is great.
The point that the report was making is that if we use current technology and used everything – new and scraps – we would not even hit the 5% mark.
That is, we are currently using x units of nitrogen fertilizer, etc for our inputs. Let say 50% of the output waste and can be converted. Yeah efficiency! Now, let us saw we redeploy all of our units of nitrogen fertilizer away from food and into fuel – we still fail to hit the 5%.
Which means we need to figure out how to make ethanol more efficiently.
Using corn for ethanol is bad, sugar cane is something like 8 times as productive energy wise. Brazil is oil independent now because of sugar cane ethanol I think.
Sagebrush likewise is many times more energy productive than corn, so even with existing tech we could get a lot more out of it.
That said, the sheer acreage needed to grow enough of either to replace oil is prohibitive. It will be a relative niche fuel, ideally suited for the military since it is has all the upsides of oil with only a few relative downsides. And I suspect our military oil usage is below 5% of total, though I'm just guessing on that.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Indeed, hence why I said that in my post. Different fuels made in different ways aren't necessarily the 'same' though.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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?
The nitrogen oxides are the product of atmospheric nitrogen combining with oxygen at the high temperatures present inside engines. It doesn't come from the fuel.
Ahem!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Having worked on a solar car project in college we were made very much aware of how dilute solar power is. What algal fuels does is soak up solar power to drive algae growth, then take the algae and process it into a liquid fuel, with that fuel getting entered into the existing liquid fuel distribution system. Unlike the solar electric car I was working on the algae farm does not have to fit on the roof of the vehicle it powers.
Given that the power the sun provides is dilute there is going to have to be some other source of power to drive the processing of the algae into fuel. I highly doubt anyone is going to put up photovoltaics to drive this processing since that would only subtract from the area the algae could use. Even at sea this area is going to be valuable since each square foot of solar panels is going to have to be supported by some floating structure. The algae pond might just need a big plastic bag that floats on the water but that can't be done with photovoltaics. This power is going to have to come from something else.
Out at sea, as you propose, the ability to tap into a land based power grid may be difficult. Not impossible but certainly expensive. Then there are losses in the processing of the algae into fuel. I have no idea of how much is lost in each step but just the distances that have to be crossed in getting the algae fuel to shore where it is wanted will add to those losses.
This sea based algae farm is going to need the waste water carried by ships or brought by pipes to it. Even if it was attached to shore there is going to be considerable distances that have to be crossed, even if only to get from one side of the farm to the other because the power from the sun is so dilute.
I have to wonder if this would only come to the point, after all the losses are added in, where this becomes less of a means to collect the power of the sun and more of a means to convert the power of coal, nuclear, or wind into liquid fuel. All it's own that is not a bad thing. Right now liquid fuels are much more expensive than electricity, comparing Joules to Joules, which could make this process beneficial. What I have to ask, would this process be profitable?
There are other ways to convert coal, nuclear, and wind into liquid fuels. One that comes to mind is the Fischer-Tropsch process. One nice thing about algal fuels is that it can eat up waste water in the process, solving two problems in one. The Fischer-Tropsch process also does this, it can be fed sewer water as it's source of hydrogen and carbon to build up its hydrocarbons. The benefit of Fischer-Tropsch is that is does not require the huge tracts of land like algae does.
It just seems to me that anything that relies on solar power is not going to be practical or profitable when other options are available. I believe that nuclear power is going to take over as our primary source of energy as fossil fuels become more expensive and politically toxic. What we need is an efficient means to convert this nuclear power into something that can power our transportation. Algal fuels might be that process but I just don't see that ever happening, only because some other process will prove more profitable.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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 ?
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.
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..
If you've got significant amounts of either of those in your car exhaust you should get your engine checked. Just sayin'.
No sig today...
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?
Solar power isn't really all that dilute, you just get that impression because you were using it to drive a relatively compact, low surface area, ton or so of steel at high speeds through an atmosphere. You are at least somewhat aware of that since you noted that the algae farm doesn't need to fit on the roof of a car.
Given that the power the sun provides is dilute there is going to have to be some other source of power to drive the processing of the algae into fuel.
Not really. Once you've actually set up the infrastructure, you can use algae-based fuel to power the processing of the algae into fuel. You have to bootstrap it first, of course.
This power is going to have to come from something else.
Once again, why?
Out at sea, as you propose, the ability to tap into a land based power grid may be difficult. Not impossible but certainly expensive. Then there are losses in the processing of the algae into fuel. I have no idea of how much is lost in each step but just the distances that have to be crossed in getting the algae fuel to shore where it is wanted will add to those losses.
Why do you need to tap into a land-based power grid? Even if you process the algae on land rather than at sea, why can't you ship fuel from land in a tanker? As for the losses at every stage of the process, those exist in all other forms of power. Heck, they exist in everything. Citing their existence isn't really an argument for anything. Hard numbers and comparisons to other options would be a good argument.
This sea based algae farm is going to need the waste water carried by ships or brought by pipes to it. Even if it was attached to shore there is going to be considerable distances that have to be crossed, even if only to get from one side of the farm to the other because the power from the sun is so dilute.
Waste water only comes into it when you need a local source of water on land and you don't want to waste fresh water. At sea, there's an abundance of seawater.
I have to wonder if this would only come to the point, after all the losses are added in, where this becomes less of a means to collect the power of the sun and more of a means to convert the power of coal, nuclear, or wind into liquid fuel.
That's a good point. Even if the process can't be made energy positive, the liquid fuel you can make this way might be an effective power-storage medium. For coal or any other fossil fuel it doesn't make much sense because there are better ways. With nuclear and wind, however, it might be an effective idea. Also, starting out as an energy-negative, but useful, fuel generation process, might allow the construction of the physical base required to bootstrap into an energy positive process over time.
I thought we killed birds with wind turbines? Or was that cats and plate glass windows?
Once again, why?
Cost. It's the same reason that ethanol brewers don't burn their own ethanol for distillation. This heat can be obtained more cheaply with coal or natural gas. Barring some technological breakthrough in the production of algal fuels I find it very unlikely that it would be able to compete with coal, nuclear, and natural gas in the production of the electricity required to keep the lights on, the computers running, and so on.
Waste water only comes into it when you need a local source of water on land and you don't want to waste fresh water. At sea, there's an abundance of seawater.
I was under the impression that the waste water was desirable because it contained nutrients that the algae needed. If it needs only seawater and sunshine then that certainly simplifies the logistics. Putting the algae farm next to a dried up oil rig at sea would allow the use of the existing pipes to pump the bio-diesel to shore, simplifying the logistics further.
As for the losses at every stage of the process, those exist in all other forms of power. Heck, they exist in everything. Citing their existence isn't really an argument for anything. Hard numbers and comparisons to other options would be a good argument.
I mention the losses because I know that the energy source, the sun, is inherently dilute and unreliable. With something like nuclear, coal, petroleum, wind, and others the losses are minimal compared to the energy density of the source. That is why these energy sources have been shown to be profitable. I've seen some of the numbers with other means to collect solar power, like photovoltaics and ethanol, and the numbers are not good. People are even arguing whether or not ethanol is energy positive. I see the same argument over algal fuels.
I've seen people do the math on how much area would be needed to provide the fuels needed for our transportation and it's a lot. I just don't see this being viable without some other source of energy to help the process along. It's quite possible someone will prove my concerns to be unfounded.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Cost. It's the same reason that ethanol brewers don't burn their own ethanol for distillation. This heat can be obtained more cheaply with coal or natural gas. Barring some technological breakthrough in the production of algal fuels I find it very unlikely that it would be able to compete with coal, nuclear, and natural gas in the production of the electricity required to keep the lights on, the computers running, and so on.
Coal and natural gas are only cheap on the short term. Completely aside from all the eternalized costs that are ignored in extracting and burning them, there's the fact that they'll run out. Even if the algal fuels are mildly energy negative and you're using some other form of power, such as nuclear to power refining facilities, once you have the refined fuel, there's no magical reason you can't use that as the power source for the rest of the algae production process. If you can make it energy positive, then there's likewise no reason you can't use the algal fuel to power the algae production process.
If ethanol brewers aren't using their own ethanol for distillation, it's probably because, as you say, it's cheaper to do it other ways at present. A big part of that is probably that most groups producing ethanol for fuel are energy negative, probably mostly because they're using corn. They're using corn mostly for political reasons.
Also, my original question of "why" was specifically asking why you couldn't use algal fuel to power the algae farms out at sea as opposed to something like running power lines to shore. You haven't really addressed why shipping refined algal fuel from shore would be impractical as opposed to other methods.
I was under the impression that the waste water was desirable because it contained nutrients that the algae needed. If it needs only seawater and sunshine then that certainly simplifies the logistics. Putting the algae farm next to a dried up oil rig at sea would allow the use of the existing pipes to pump the bio-diesel to shore, simplifying the logistics further.
Ok. I wasn't thinking of that. I was just thinking of wastewater in terms of cheap non-potable water. If we're talking outright sewerage or other industrial slurry that algae will grow well in, then you could still ship it out to sea, but there might be some environmental issues. In any case, the waste clearly isn't absolutely vital, just helpful. Algae clearly already grows at sea, and a practical infrastructure for refining it might lead to an industry harvesting it from sources where it grows (and is sometimes a huge nuisance) such as bays at the end of large rivers where all the fertilizer runoff causes huge blooms.
Re-using oil-gathering infrastructure also seems like a very good idea.
I mention the losses because I know that the energy source, the sun, is inherently dilute and unreliable. With something like nuclear, coal, petroleum, wind, and others the losses are minimal compared to the energy density of the source. That is why these energy sources have been shown to be profitable. I've seen some of the numbers with other means to collect solar power, like photovoltaics and ethanol, and the numbers are not good. People are even arguing whether or not ethanol is energy positive. I see the same argument over algal fuels.
I don't really agree with you on how dilute the sun us. The average insolation for a square meter of the earth's surface is higher than the heat output of an average human being. As for the sun being unreliable, weather may get in the way sometimes, but the sun itself has operated without interruptions for a few billion years, so I'm not sure where that's coming from.
Over the long run, coal and petroleum are a very unreliable source of power. We're using them faster than they're being replenished, so we'll run out in a very short time-frame historically speaking and it will be a very bad thing if we don't have replacem
The algae run on solar power but the pumps, lights, computers, and so on will need electricity. It's possible to use the algae to power a generator but something has to bootstrap the process and/or provide a back up in case there is a problem with the algae. This is going to mean a power line from shore (being coal, nuclear, or whatever) or an on site power source (being wind, solar, nuclear or whatever). If the power needed for the pumps and so on rely on an external energy source (like coal or oil) then that has to be brought in. Buying that fuel, or perhaps using the algae for the fuel, adds cost and reduces the total power output.
Spreading out the algae farms over many square kilometers is a problem. I recall it would take something like the area of Arizona to provide the liquid fuels we require in the USA if it all came from algae. We could put that out in the sea or the Sahara Desert but that distance adds cost and reduces the total energy output.
What I'm saying is that there are other means to get liquid fuels, even if we exclude fossil fuels. Algal fuel is going to have to compete with them. I just don't see algal fuel as competitive. It may be possible to make it work but the level of infrastructure required is massive. One just does not level out square kilometers of desert on the cheap. Even putting it out at sea is going to take a lot of steel, plastic, energy, people, and so on. That will not be cheap.
I have greater confidence in synthetic fuels derived from nuclear power in being profitable. If algal fuel can be cheaper than nuclear power then that would be massively impressive. It's only then that algal fuel could bootstrap itself. Lacking that it will always rely on nuclear power to keep the lights on and the pumps running.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You haven't really addressed why shipping refined algal fuel from shore would be impractical as opposed to other methods.
I did address that, cost. Every step in the process has a cost. That cost may be in manpower, energy, materials, or legal costs like tariffs and taxes. There are other means to produce liquid fuels. There are other means to convert solar power into liquid fuels. Algal fuels have to compete with them to be viable.
I don't really agree with you on how dilute the sun us.
Then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've done the math, I've seen others do the math, it's just going to take unfathomable amounts of land to collect enough solar power to keep the world running. Like I said before I may be wrong.
Over the long run, coal and petroleum are a very unreliable source of power.
I agree. This is why I believe that we, meaning the entire human race, need to transition to nuclear power. I believe that solar power and bio-fuels are not viable and will not be in the foreseeable future. Right now nuclear power is cheap, reliable, safe, and domestically sourced. I got no problem with research in algal fuels, I believe it may prove beneficial. The problem I have is too many people placing the eggs of our economic future all in the bio-fuels basket. Despite what can be argued as centuries of research in bio derived energy we have not yet found one that can replace nuclear and fossil energy.
You've worked on a solar car, so you must be aware that if you tried to run a modern car on the kind of engines they had when they first started building horseless carriages, the inevitable conclusion would be that a car is impossible if you didn't think engines could improve.
It's because of what I learned that I have become intimately aware of how much energy it takes to move a mass down a smooth and flat roadway. Add in things that are not so flat and smooth, like agriculture, sea travel, air travel, and more, we are going to need some massive advances in harnessing solar power, and massive amounts of land, to make enough fuel to drive all of this from solar power.
Even if we could convert 100% of the sun's power that we collected into useable fuel it's going to take a lot of land and infrastructure to make it work. We have other means to produce liquid fuels so not only does algal fuels have to become energy positive to compete but it must also do so at a lower cost of these other sources.
We already have other means to produce liquid fuels that do not rely on fossil fuel or algae. Algae has to beat them out to be viable. One obstacle is how dilute solar power is. No technology is going to change the amount of energy the sun places onto the surface of Earth. Just the cost of the land places a limit on the price of algal fuels.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I did address that, cost. Every step in the process has a cost. That cost may be in manpower, energy, materials, or legal costs like tariffs and taxes. There are other means to produce liquid fuels. There are other means to convert solar power into liquid fuels. Algal fuels have to compete with them to be viable.
Every step in every process has a cost. You haven't actually given any reason why the cost of using algal fuel in that process _must_ be greater than using some other method. You are certainly right that there are other methods to convert solar power to liquid fuels and that algal fuels would need to compete with them. On the other hand, they might also have a niche in which they are better than other alternatives. I'm certainly not saying that algal fuel production has to use algal fuel to power it, merely that there isn't any proven principle I'm aware of that requires other power sources (except, obviously, the sun) for it.
Then we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I've done the math, I've seen others do the math, it's just going to take unfathomable amounts of land to collect enough solar power to keep the world running. Like I said before I may be wrong.
It takes unfathomable amounts of land to feed us, yet we still manage it. Unfortunately, it also takes a lot of fossil-fuel and other fossil material at present. The fact that we're using that material faster than it's being replaced is worrying. How dilute the power from sunlight is comes down to a matter of perspective. Certainly the power density is a lot, lot lower than, for example, the interior surface of an engine cylinder in an internal combustion engine. When you consider how low the power production from fusion actually is by unit volume in the core of the sun , it's actually pretty remarkable how much power we get per unit of area on our planet. Also, the sun seems to keep the parts of the world that aren't us running just fine. All that wind, and weather, and life, and wave action (except that caused by tides), etc.
I agree. This is why I believe that we, meaning the entire human race, need to transition to nuclear power. I believe that solar power and bio-fuels are not viable and will not be in the foreseeable future. Right now nuclear power is cheap, reliable, safe, and domestically sourced. I got no problem with research in algal fuels, I believe it may prove beneficial. The problem I have is too many people placing the eggs of our economic future all in the bio-fuels basket. Despite what can be argued as centuries of research in bio derived energy we have not yet found one that can replace nuclear and fossil energy.
Nuclear power doesn't always seem to be as cheap as you make it out seeing as how far over budget most nuclear power plant projects seem to go. It may well be a better alternative, but there are problems too. The number of aging reactors out there may make nuclear look less appealing than it could. However, unless people get more comfortable with plutonium 238 (which is actually pretty safe stuff) and we start making hybrid cars with Stirling engines with PU238 as a heat source, nuclear power is only going to be good for centralized power production. Without significantly better battery technology (which may be coming in the form of air-breathing rechargeables) we're still going to need portable fuels and we're going to need to get them from somewhere. I certainly agree with you that we shouldn't put all of our eggs in one basket.
As far as bio-derived energy that can replace fossil fuels or nuclear energy, we actually do have that to a degree. Good old fashioned trees harvested as firewood work pretty well. Properly designed cities surrounded by cultivated forests could quite practically be run, and in a carbon-neutral fashion, by wood-fueled power plants. It would take a lot of planning and decades of lead-time, and would be unpopular with various groups (on very different areas of the political