Renewable Energy From Algae?

Ravalox writes "With alternate fuel becoming a fairly hot trend in recent months, some academics may have applied their theoretical know-how to give us a practical solution. They offer up the idea that certain types of algae are well-suited to biodiesel production as they are nearly 50 percent oil. The article speculates that large pools could be created to farm out biodiesel from algae in areas near waste streams and salt water. They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert."

Got life insurance?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is true, I expect these guys will be involved in a "tragic fatal accident". *cough* Shell *cough* Imperial.

I wish them luck

Re:Got life insurance?

[cshark]

Anyone remember KnightRider 2000? They postulated the same thing in the beginning of the movie. They also said it would cause the cost of oil to go down to nothing. Only they predicted Dan Quale would be president. So much for the nostradomous theory. Heh heh.

Gulf War II

[Embedded Geek]

I remember the President Quayle bit (shudder), but other thing that slips through the psychic scars was the mention that he was leading our country through "Gulf War II." Mildly creepy, that.

<stands back and prepares for Dan Quayle/George W. Flame War>

Re:Got life insurance?

[Rei]

Oh, please. The oil industry doesn't kill people. ... outside of Columbia, at least.

Re:Got life insurance?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

I know quite a number of people using straight vegetable oil to fuel their diesel engines, modified by themselves. There are quite a few of them around, and they share the information and technology freely. In fact, they are in a lot of sense, like computer geeks and open source software. Quite a number of these people I know have heard about this concept for using algae, and a couple are heavily researching it. And sharing that info with other enthusiasts. We are talking non-heirachical, distributed operations here; very difficult to take down, as we all know.

In fact, even the designs of some of these algae-plants are small scale - a few tubes of algae sitting on top of the van/truck collecting energy, these being fed into a centrifuge at the back to seperate the water, then through some filters, and into the engine.

Near-self-sustainable transport.

That's TOO small scale.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In fact, even the designs of some of these algae-plants are small scale - a few tubes of algae sitting on top of the van/truck collecting energy, these being fed into a centrifuge at the back to seperate the water, then through some filters, and into the engine.

Nice idea but TOO small a scale - if you want to run the truck more than a few minutes per day.

Solar input at noon-intensity is on the order of a kilowatt per square yard. Solar input is equivalent to about five hours noon-intensity per day (vary

Alge grows in the desert?

[NoDoZ]

Alge grows in the desert?

Re:Alge grows in the desert?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

All you need is water, sun, and spores for algae to grow. Klamath Falls, OR is high desert- and anybody going swimming in upper Klamath Lake is going to come out GREEN. Algae production is already a primary industry there, albeit for New Age vitamins [celltech.com]

Re:Alge grows in the desert?

[Smidge204]

Fish, plankton, sea-greens, and protein from the sea!

</Obscure reference>
=Smidge=

Here's a stupid question...

[MachDelta]

...how much energy would it take to PUT a 10,000 square mile pond in the middle of a desert in the first place? Last I checked, water was kind of heavy and had a really annoying tendancy to evaporate or sink into the soil. Ya'll might need to fire up a couple more nuclear powerplants [slashdot.org] before you go terraforming a bigass sandbox.

Unless of course, someone has a really big garden hose nearby. I know thats how I did it back when I was 5... but I wasn't paying for power or water back then either. Sure did give

Re:Here's a stupid question...

[nelsonal]

In the 1930s we had a huge surplus of labor that FDR put to use making dams (and canal works) all over the west. They were (and are) engineering marvels in that they operate only by gravity and provide water to millions of square miles of farmland. Not quite a garden hose, but a 1/4 acre's allotment of water would easily fill a pool.

Re:Alge grows in the desert?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It will if you put a pond there.

But if we put a pond there, isn't it no longer a desert?

Yep. B-)

Am I to believe that folks have wanted those dry arid conditions to ensure their silicon riches are preserved, and thats why nobody thought to build a pond there?

Nobody put a pond there before because it cost a LOT to come up with water in a place where there was little, and exposing what litte there is makes it evaporate and blow away. Desert is 'WAY fertile (the trace elements aren't washed out).

But plants need to dump most of their water into the air to pump their nutrients around. Then they make most of that energy into their structure, only a small fraction into their fruit, seeds, stored starch, sugar, or what-have-you harvestable material.

And they need serious manipulation and babying: Maybe clean the soil of toxins over years before starting. Dig it up every year, add fertilizer, bury the seeds, kill the weeds, add LOTS of water (if it isn't provided by rain), kill MORE weeds, kill bugs, tear up the plants, separate the fruit.

It's much cheaper to do it where the soil is already good, roads and industry are handy, water is available (and keeps raining back to be reused several times if you DO import it, as in California's central valley) than to haul water a couple miles UP and a couple hundred horizontally to start from scratch in a desert. (The trace elements are a LOT easier to haul to good soil and water.)

Net result is that using crops like corn for fuel is just about a break-even proposition.

But production of algae only needs tanks, air, water, trace nutrients, and lots of sunlight. No plows and tractors - you pump the material through a small harvesting plant rather than working a field - much cheaper. The land itself is only a support for the tanks, so you don't need to pull expensive quality dirt out of other production.

Desert has lots of cheap flat land and sunlight.
Put your tanks on it. Add your air by pumping it through (powering your pumps with the absorbed solar heat) - and recapture the lost water for reuse. Your crop is 50% oil - made from water, atmospheric CO2, and solar energy. The other half is the trace nutrients, which you also recycle. Now you've converted solar energy efficiently to oil with essentially no fossil fuel input and litte water loss (mostly the water that supplied the hydrogen for the oil).

Yes, it makes VERY good sense. Low initial capital (cheap land, some machinery, lots of clear pipes or transparent tanks). A SMALL amount of water (compared to growing plants) in, along with a little bit of miscelaneous consumables (filter paper, nutrient replacement for making up recycling inefficiencies), and LOTS of sunlight. Oil out. Add a much smaller tank of some OTHER bug to fix nitrogen if you really want to cut your inputs.

A desert would be great for this.

Solar Power

[Stevyn]

And people thought solar power was useless.

(I'm not saying this is useless, I'm saying it's a form of solar power that is cheaper and more efficient than huge metal arrays)

Re:Solar Power

[cens0r]

But there is the problem of how you power your car from those solar panels. The move to biodiesel requires less changing of the infastructure.

Re:Solar Power

[wealthychef]

I think you make a great point. It sounds easy, just plop some algae into a big pool of water, but I wonder what the actual production costs would be **per mile driven** compared to gasoline? And I don't see much benefit to the environment here, since "biodiesel" still produces the same pollutants when burned as "nonbiodiesel." I think net costs and emissions would be in the same ballpark as drilling might be. We need to go nuclear or figure out a radically new technology. ( no troll intended here )

Re:Solar Power

[portforward]

Read the article. It does an cost analysis and indicates that after the initial investment of around $130 billion, we start saving $50 billion a year from the money we don't send overseas, PLUS another $50 billion that stays in the US economy. Isn't that worth not hearing "no blood for oil" ever again? It would be kind of funny to hear "no blood for algae".

Re:Solar Power

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Same pollutants? True (actually, not quite true - mineral-based diesel contains sulfur and other nasties not found in biodiesel), but biodiesel is carbon-neutral. i.e. the amount of carbon that is released into the atmosphere is exactly the same as the amount the plant/algae removed from the atmosphere in the first place. Mineral-based diesel unlocks carbon that has been locked away for millions of years in the Earth's crust.

Re:Solar Power

[puck01]

I have to say, I was about to reply and ask where you came up with that number. I thought the efficiency was much higher than that in plants. Fortunately, I took time to check into it before I opened my big mouth, and you're right. Turns out sugar cane is about the most efficient plant at converting solar energy into chemical energy, and that is at 1% efficiency.

Having a major in biochem, I wanted to say the effiency is closer to 90%. Turns out I was thinking of the Calvin cycle.

So, I have to agree with your main point, solar cells would seem to make more sense. Perhaps algae are more efficient than plants? Or perhaps the cost of maintaining an algae farm would be so much cheaper it could be worth it?

In any case, my main concern about a biological solution is infection and poisoning. I would think algea, just like most other living organisms are sususptable to both. If we truely became dependent on these farms for energy, one bad algea virus or bacteria (natural or designed by man) could be a catastrophe.

just some thoughts,

puck

Re:Solar Power

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Please, people, look at the bigger picture. Sure photovoltiacs are more efficient in raw conversion of solar energy. What about in their entire lifecycle? What about storage? I haven't seen an entire lifecycle analysis on either biodiesel or photovoltiacs, and we can't argue either way until one is done.

As for infection and such, this is very much a concern, particularly if we are talking about one huge farm. But is there one huge power plant that feeds all of the US? No, there are many, and if one goes down the rest keep going (excepting software failure :). Say every town has a algae plant...

Think distributed systems.

Re:Solar Power

[Doubting Thomas]

Hey! You're spoiling the self-congratulatory pseudo-Green backslapping, man!

This is just another one of those situations that gives proof to the saying that you can't solve a technical problem with the level of thinking that created it in the first place. Everyone's so stuck on trying to find a 'green' replacement for the spectacular amounts of energy we use that they don't realise that the energy gluttony itself isn't green.

I too, remember from school that deserts make their own weather. If you filled a desert with a solar farm that absorbed 30% of the solar energy, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it stopped being a desert. Worse, when it starts raining there, whose rain did it used to be?

The only things this sort of giant-scale solar collection would be useful for are removing the 'heat island' effect in cities, and in halting desert encroachment in areas where desertification is already a problem (for instance, Sub-Saharan Africa). Anything else, and you're playing with fire.

Hmm.

[jpsowin]

I can hear the "People for Algae" advocacy groups getting angry already. They're people too!!

just a little genetic engineering

[morcheeba]

Mix that algae with vinger-producing algae, and then splice these into lettuce. You'll have a salad that dresses itself!

Finally

[mysterious_mark]

My swamp land will make me rich!

Hey!

[iswm]

I live in the Sonora desert. Now I would appreciate if if you don't cover up my living area with algea, you insensitive clods!

But really, it wouldn't makse much sense to have it all in one area. Lots of little farms of it all over the world would be quite interesting though. A few miles here, a few there, and the world is happy.

Re:Hey!

[irokitt]

I would be more than happy to donate my pool to the world's energy supply. Damn thing's too hard to clean anyway.

Re:Hey!

[jjo]

Don't worry, if you read the article, you'll find that they aren't in fact proposing to cover the Sonora Desert with algae, but just using it as a comparative yardstick to indicate how much land would be needed. The Slashdot summary, as usual, is wrong: the area needed is not the whole Sonora desert, but only 9% of its area. They actually say pretty much what you say:

"The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course. In fact, it would be preferable to spread them around throughout the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks."

The best thing is that it eliminates the contribution to global warming. While burning biodiesel releases just as much carbon into the air does burning fossil fuel, producing biodiesel takes all of that carbon right back out again.

Another good place to put it:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Another good place to put it might be OVER the freeways in sunny areas as a sunshade. That area is lost to vehicles already, so why not ALSO collect the energy to fuel some of them without using up even desert land?

Use transparent pipes and let the green light through. Like a plesant drive through a forest rather than in direct sunlight.

Politicize much?

[Faust7]

As more evidence comes out daily of the ties between the leaders of petroleum producing countries and terrorists (not to mention the human rights abuses in their own countries), the incentive for finding an alternative to petroleum rises higher and higher. The environmental problems of petroleum have finally been surpassed by the strategic weakness of being dependent on a fuel that can only be purchased from tyrants.

I must say, I wasn't expecting quite that sort of introduction to an otherwise very informative and logical essay.

That aside, I'll never understand why pure alcohol has never been seriously pursued as a substitute for gasoline.

Re:Politicize much?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That aside, I'll never understand why pure alcohol has never been seriously pursued as a substitute for gasoline.

They tried it in the 1970s. Ended up taking about 1.5 gal in the tractor to grow enough corn to produce 1 gal of alcohol. But for a while, in my home county fair, lots of FFA boys got blue ribbons for building stills.

pure alcohol as fuel

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

Ended up taking about 1.5 gal in the tractor to grow enough corn to produce 1 gal of alcohol.

If you use corn you do get these negative results, but here in Brazil we use sugar cane. The alcohol program, started in the 1970s, produced millions of cars (many of which are still running) until a shortage in the early 1990s scare most consumers away. It is making a major comeback since the introduction of "flex power" cars about a year ago. These work with either gasoline or pure alcohol so the buyer doesnt have to worry about future supply problems.

At about $0.23 per liter (multiply by 4 for gallons) vs $0.57 for gasoline, alcohol is the current choice for everyone who can use it here even with up to a 20% loss in mileage.

Starting the car in very cold days has proved to be the only real problem in nearly three decades of continous use. This isnt a big worry in Brazil, but probably would be in other countries.

Re:pure alcohol as fuel

[SAN1701]

Just to put a common misconception apart, Brazil isn't only rain forest. Sugar cane isn't cultivated in rain forest locations, only in northeast and southeast - much of it in my own state, Sao Paulo, which, if you try to look in a map, is far from Amazonia.

As a Brazilian, I do not like the idea of the rain forest being destroyed - it's a terrible loss, and that's why I voted many times in the green party. Anyway, part of it is still our country, and, if we decide to burn it all, it's only our problem. At least, until the biggest pollution makers in the world, U.S., China, etc., decide that all have to share responsibilities about the global environment and try to reduce their fossil pollution. It's too easy live in a rich, high pollutive country, and point fingers against a poor country trying to develop.

Having said this, I totally agree, rain forest destruction is a terrible problem. But not nearly as terrible as fossil fuel pollution.

Re:Politicize much?

[SAN1701]

That's because your country was making alcohol from corn, and not from sugarcane. My country, Brazil, has a climate which facilitates the growing of sugarcane, and therefore cheaper sugar and alcohol production.

Government invested in a big plan for cars in late 70s / early 80s, which was successful for some years, but, when oil prices fell, that program was cancelled (altough alcohol-fueled cars continued to be produced, in small numbers, all this time ).

Now that oil prices rise again, cars with motors, called "FlexPower", which work with both gasoline and alcohol interchangeably ( and even with any mix of these combustibles ) are again selling very well. And they cost pretty much the same as cars with traditional, single fuel motors.

Re:Politicize much?

[Rei]

Completely incorrect. Visit the DOE's website sometime and read some statistics that aren't from the 1970s/early 80s. There still is one person pushing those bogus numbers (Pimental), but the general scientific concensus is that it contains 30-40% more energy than we put in.

And regardless, even if it did take more energy than went in, that is irrelevant (the relevant issue is cost of inputs vs. value of outputs - for example, if you can get your energy to make ethanol from farm waste, you're in good shape, since people can't put farm waste in their gas tank, and it would otherwise be wasted).

In World War II, the Nazis made fuel by hydrogenating coal. The energy to do so came from coal, the source material was coal, and the end product had far less energy than the inputs - and yet, it ran the Nazi war machine.

Another way to put it: produced gasoline has 20% less energy than what we take out of the ground, but we still mine it. It's all an economic equation, not an energy equation. There's tons of energy in the earth; most of it, however, you can't put in your gas tank.

This is, of course, all an aside. Ethanol has notably more energy than we put into making it.

Re:It has been.

[ncc74656]

You can set up your own still and run your car off of ethanol

You'd get in trouble with the revenuers [ttb.gov] if you did that...and telling them "it's not for me, it's for my car" most likely won't get you off the hook.

First Turkey guts, now Algae

[Marxist Hacker 42]

At this rate, we'll be able to abandon the middle east in 5 years completely.

Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[JessLeah]

For us to avoid a catastrophe with the US running out of fossil fuel and ending up in an awful post-apocalyptic scenario, "alternative energy" needs to be far, far more than "a fairly hot trend". It needs to be a serious movement. Getting all rosy-eyed talking about this bacterial production of biodiesel needing "only" 10,000 square miles is ridiculous. First, we need to persuade the Sheeple that (A) we are going to run out of fossil fuel, and (B) it it is imperative that we do devote those 10,000 square miles so that we can finally do so. (Or, alternatively, we could go with another alternative source of fuel, such as the TDP machines featured recently here.) Then, and only then, we can start patting ourselves on the back over devoting a 100x100 mile area of our own land to renewable fuel production, rather than depending upon volatile foreign nations to supply us with oil drawn from an ever-dwindling supply. At the moment, to the average Merkin, it will sound amazingly ridiculous to "waste" a 100x100 mile area "just so some pinko environmentalist wackos can stop using oil". (I'm sorry, but that's how the right-leaning folks in this nation will interpret it.)

The general public in the US is so amazingly ignorant, they probably never even bother thinking that we could run out of oil, much less that we will, and that is is only a matter of time before we do (if no action is taken, which is looking rather likely as always).

And half of them probably would say "Poppycock; there's no way we could run out of fuel. God wouldn't let that happen to us!" It sounds like an anti-religion troll, but I seem to recall actually hearing rubbish like that from the far-right...

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Martin Blank]

First, we need to persuade the Sheeple that (A) we are going to run out of fossil fuel

Nope. Just start producing it cheaply and they'll have a reason to switch all on their own.

At the moment, to the average Merkin, it will sound amazingly ridiculous to "waste" a 100x100 mile area "just so some pinko environmentalist wackos can stop using oil". (I'm sorry, but that's how the right-leaning folks in this nation will interpret it.)

Wasting a 100x100 mile area is what the enviros will also complain about because of the disruption to the local ecology. There is no group harder to please than they are.

The general public in the US is so amazingly ignorant, they probably never even bother thinking that we could run out of oil, much less that we will, and that is is only a matter of time before we do (if no action is taken, which is looking rather likely as always).

That's because the sky has been falling for half a century and it's still nowhere closer to landing. Go back to the 40s and 50s, and you'll see just as many articles about there being only 50 years of oil left as there are now.

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Jahf]

You don't have to use an entire 100x100mi chunk.

1) To be capitalist friendly, more than one entity needs to do the production.

2) Every region will want to have production closest to them.

3) You don't have to completely replace oil TODAY to make it replaceable TOMORROW.

4) Biodiesel is only 1 alternative fuel ... why should we have to rely only on that when there are others?

Start off with smaller chunks and as the economics start to take effect the rest will open up.

And no matter what, Bush won't be in office by the time a full-scale system (not 100x100mi, but perhaps 5% of that) is working. Even if he gets re-elected that's going to be over in 2008, and I don't see a system like this being in production in under 5 years.

One of the best ways people can go support something like this is to convert a vehicle to biodiesel and start buying it. Encourage the economics.

Or buy a hybrid or an all-electric and/or pay a bit extra on your utility bill to subsidize the flegling wind or solar power options in your area if you have them.

I am not saying you're argument is wrong, only that it is counter productive. Don't explain why it will never happen with today's situation, try and figure out how you can do your part to change that for tomorrow.

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[thule]

"And, needless to say, any of this sort of stuff is highly unlikely to happen under the leadership of Shrub & Co, what with their ties to big oil..."

Ummm. Let me speculate a bit. If bio-fuel is oil-like, wouldn't an oil company be interested in it? They are already dealing with the stuff. With this they don't have to buy it from some far off land and ship it here. They don't have to drill and explore for it. They simply feed it! That sounds like a great deal for an oil company.

Big oil seems to be the boogey-man. It's just a business like any other business. If the economics change, they will eventually have to change. You don't think that if some cost effective way to make oil was developed they wouldn't jump on it like white on rice?

It all comes down to economics. Right now fossil oil is still relatively cheep. They could try to fight the economics, but why?

Oil Interest

[Klync]

Sure, if other cheap energy forms came along, oil companies would be interested. But don't forget, these companies (their exectutives, I should say) don't operate in a theoretical economy. They have real investments -- Billions of dollars -- in everything from extraction technologies and patents to real estate and leases on oil fields, to refineries, to private armies in Sierra Leone. These investments are not easily transferrable to another, albiet related, industry. PS Sorry about the italics

The point you're missing...

[wurp]

It is in fact a business like any other business, run by average to slightly above average people. They have been making tons of money and have lots of power based on the way things have been. They don't want things to change - there might be something unforseen that upsets their apple cart.

From a purely selfish point of view, when what you've been doing has put you in a powerful place and kept you there, it's perfectly sensible. It's not some conspiracy to keep things from getting better. It's fear of the unknown in play to keep things from getting worse (from their POV).

It's selfish and wrong, but in an ordinary human sort of way. You can see examples of this (why don't paper companies all convert over to bamboo or other quick-growing renewable plants? It's not because there's something wrong with the idea. It's because changing might rearrange the power structure. They already know all the right people and right things to do to be very good at making paper from wood. Someone else might know the right people to take over if they start demonstrating it's profitable to make it from something else.)

Young companies have to try new things - they can't succeed if they don't figure out a better way to do it than everyone else.

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Nobody You Know]

First off, why does there need to be just one area of production? It would make much more sense to have several smaller areas closer to the refineries/consumers. And from an economic point of view, it would be better to have lots of companies producing this. Otherwise you get back to where we are now with a cartel that controls a significant chunk of worldwide production.

Second, a change in the public's consumption habits will not happen overnight. If nothing else, you have a huge number of cars that

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to persuade people to your cause, calling them sheeple, there. ...
A problem with many geek movements is that geeks are every bit as smarmily elitist as the CxOs and MBAs they are fighting. The average person on the street (okay, I'm in europe) is NOT dumb, and treating them as such does not win their support.

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Metaldsa]

I like my culture and laugh because 300 million people rule over 6+ billion people. We do it by working hard. So keep your 35 hour work week, elitist views, and socialist economy and complain about whoever is in charge.

Money and power come from having a strong economy and military. If you want the money and power in this world then work for it. If your culture isn't suited to the greed lifestyle then get used to being dominated. Thats just a fact of life.

And people in America understand supply and de

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Sgs-Cruz]

Except that when gas hits $10 a gallon, we won't just see the average American "switch", because they won't have money to switch.

Why? Because they lost their job, because the economy collapsed because there was no gasoline available and the majority of industries couldn't just "switch" like the average consumer can.

People have to realize it's not just people driving to work that use petrochemicals - the entire world economy is pretty much driven (lol) by them.

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[lpangelrob2]

What?

You make some good points, but I'll take up issue with some of them.

First, we need to persuade the Sheeple that (A) we are going to run out of fossil fuel...

Considering all the media hype that's gone into oil in the past year (and to a lesser extent, the past two years), I think this is common knowledge. If not yet, maybe $2.50 gas prices will... and seeing the recent decline of SUV sales, I think that message is getting through at least.

At the moment, to the average Merkin, it will sound amazingly ridiculous to "waste" a 100x100 mile area "just so some pinko environmentalist wackos can stop using oil". (I'm sorry, but that's how the right-leaning folks in this nation will interpret it.)

Among other things, people live in this 100x100 square mile area, you don't know what kind of an environmental effect covering it with algae would do to a desert, environmentalist wackos are generally limited to people that are a part of the A.L.F., and... have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, right-leaning folks (like me) are looking at the bottom line and think about how much money this would cost to actually do the things you said instead of talk about them? I am looking forward to owning my own house and installing a solar panel system. That is possible. 10,000 square miles of algae is just less possible, less feasable, and less economical.

"Poppycock; there's no way we could run out of fuel. God wouldn't let that happen to us!" It sounds like an anti-religion troll, but I seem to recall actually hearing rubbish like that from the far-right...

You're not the only one, I've heard this from people at church, too, and it bothers me to no end, considering we're supposed to take care of what we've been given.

When technology becomes economical, you'd be surprised at what happens [enquirer.com].

Interestingly enough, you'd find that shrimp farms aren't all that great for the environment either...

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[shepd]

>The general public in the US is so amazingly ignorant, they probably never even bother thinking that we could run out of oil, much less that we will, and that is is only a matter of time before we do (if no action is taken, which is looking rather likely as always).

Ignorance is only a factor for those willing to forget basic economics 101 from elementary school. It dictates a simple principle that is as follows:

We will never "run out" of anything. It will simply become unaffordable for almost everyo

Re:Preach doom all you want.

[JessLeah]

This is absolutely ridiculous.

We are never going to run out of water, presuming we manage to avoid bleeding it all off to space via global warming. Even if the water is dirty, you can always filter it. Perhaps at a great cost of power-- but you can filter it.

And as for sunlight... Well, in fact, we probably won't run out of water until the exact same time we run out of sunlight-- when the sun goes supergiant, and the Earth finds itself in the middle of its corona. By which time we will certainly no lo

Re:Preach doom all you want.

[torinth]

Consider that the rate of expenditure on alternative power sources is closely tied to how far off doom is. If we won't run out of fossil for 50 or 500 years, we're probably perfectly on track. Without evidence that the problem is more pressing, why waste money on solving it so long before we need to?

Don't you think that money's better spent on education, health care and disease control, political stability, and a little bit of hedonism to make it worth it? Is it better to have a world of plague-ridden and destitute people who have unlimited power, or a balanced world with lots of healthy people and enough power for it not to be a problem?

And you really ought to quit overusing emphasis on specific words. It ends up distracting the reader from what you're actually trying to say.

Re:Preach doom all you want.

[pb]

Between 5 years and 500 years, most likely. Instead of asking silly questions, why don't you use Google, and find out about all sorts of interesting things, like the hubbert peak of oil production, which countries have the most oil reserves, when OPEC will have a majority of them (2006 last I heard), etc.

At least there should be more interest into alternatives to fossil fuels now that oil prices are higher, and seem unlikely to go back to their old levels anytime soon. For bonus points, you can figure out

Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight...

[Zordak]

First, you really should stop shouting (use the "em" tag sparingly). It makes you sound crazed and fanatical when it appears in every single one of your posts, and several times in most.

Second, the Bush administration does not constitute the "ringleaders of the right wing." Bush is just like most presidential candidates: too moderate for the hardliners of his own party, too far to the other side for the tastes of the opposition party, but very electable to the moderate masses who are inconsistent in support of one party or the other.

Third, your posts in this thread consist of vague accusations, generalizations and strawman arguments. If you're going to say that the Bush administration is in bed with the Saudis (as the parent seems to imply), or that we should panic right now because the oil reserves will last no longer than 24, or that energy corporations will resist all alternative forms of energy, at least provide some kind of reference (even a "study" by the Cato institute would be more reputable than absolutely nothing). Just saying that it is so on your own authority does not so make it.

Fourth, you really should consider that energy corporations are in the business of making money. The premise of your arguments would seem to be that they are in the business of destroying the environment and depleting the fossil fuel reserves at all costs, as you ascribe no logical economic attitudes to them. What self-respecting capitalist would not prefer to grow cheap algae in his own back yard and sell it at increased margin instead of importing oil at the whim of a foreign cartel? Andrew Carnegie figured it out more than a century ago: if you can make it cheaper, you can sell it cheaper and you can undersell your competition. If this technology works out (you should note the 'if' -- it's not a given yet, though that seems to be another false premise you operate from), you can bet that the energy MegaCorps will be stumbling over each other in a mad dash to the USPTO to be the first to get a 20-year lock-in on this thing.

Fifth, if you put together that little Unix utility, kudos to you. It looks like a good quick-and-dirty alternative when you don't have Cygwin handy.

come over to my house

[ForestGrump]

my pool is green.

-Grump

Or we could switch to Hemp

[fsterman]

Or we could switch immediately to hemp which also eats up CO2, require ZERO modification to current engines, and support farmers in the U.S. http://www.artistictreasure.com/learnmorecleanair. html [artistictreasure.com] Hemp Car [hempcar.org] Hemp For Fuel [hemp4fuel.com] Norml [norml.org]

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[stephenisu]

While I am a tree huggin hippy myself, hemp uses top soil and is much less efficient than algae.

Now hemp as a renewable PAPER source.. I am all about that.

As much I see the positive uses of hemp, keep efficiency and our limited top soil resources in mind. We currently have an abundance of saltwater and sunlight. 100miles squared is not THAT much to lose. Plenty of space in utah and nevada.

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[kamapuaa]

Hemp can be legally grown in other countries, where they'd be free to use hemp as a fuel source - and they don't! Using Ethyl alcohol as a mainstream fuel source is thoroughly discredited - it takes a lot of energy to grow plants. Susbtantially more energy than is derived from distilling it.

I'm sympathetic to hemp advocacy, but in practice it comes off as blind support by people who primarily are pro-marijuana - why not advocate sunflowers as an energy source?

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[SEE]

Hemp requires too much arable land per gallon to be a successful biofuel. You could replace all the cropland in the world with it, and you wouldn't cover worldwide motor fuel consupmtion. Same with all the other crops-to-fuel systems, whether ethanol or biodiesel.

Algae is a reasonable possibility, since it can be grown with salt water in shallow pools on otherwise economically useless land. I'm not certain it'd work, but it's the only biofuel that even has a chance.

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[Hektor_Troy]

Same with all the other crops-to-fuel systems, whether ethanol or biodiesel.

Ah yes - this is quite true. Even Google [google.com] agrees with you on that.

No - wait ...

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[SEE]

Brazil has sugar cane, which is a far more efficient source of ethanol than anything you can grow in temperate areas. And it has far fewer motor vehicle miles per person than the developed world. That Brazil can do it does not mean the world as a whole can. The numbers just don't work.

Now, if you massively reduce motor fuel consumption worldwide, you have a chance. But as China and India develop, the odds of that happening are close to zero, no matter how far you tighten fuel efficiency standards and a

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[john.r.strohm]

How interesting it is to see the waffling.

On the one hand, we see no problem at all with dedicating 10,000 square miles of "otherwise economically useless land" to algae pools to produce oil (and waste material: recall that there is about 50% of that algae that is NOT oil).

On the other hand, we scream bloody murder at the idea of dedicating a few DOZEN square miles of that same "otherwise economically useless land" for building nuclear powerplants and waste storage facilities, even though the nuclear plants will deliver one hell of a lot more power than the algae will.

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[barc0001]

Wow. Someone piss in your Corn Flakes this morning?

or, to use your terminology: Please for fuck's sake will you stop using hemp and marijuana interchangably in conversation? They are *NOT* the same thing.

Hemp != marijuana. It's of the same family, but it has almost no THC at all. You'd have to smoke a crate full of it to get high. But by that time you'd be dead from all the other shit in it.

There are lots of uses for hemp. And in every country that doesn't have "United States of America" in it's name, it's legal to use it for those purposes. Hemp cloting. Hemp rope. Hemp paper. Hemp oil. Hemp soap. Hemp fireboard (Ford even had a prototype car that was 70% made from this). Hell, even back during World War II, the US suddenly decided that it was a good idea to grow it again. Hemp for Victory [globalhemp.com], anyone think that was just a bunch of hippie army people trying to get high?

Quit doing the job of the War on Drugs idiots by equating hemp and marijuana.

Re:Or we could switch to Hemp

[Kallahar]

Just for clarity, hemp does not contain THC, the active chemical in pot. If you try to smoke hemp, it's like smoking any other weed you find in your yard. The only gray part is that hemp plants look visually the exact same as pot plants, so you could grow the illegal stuff mixed in with legal stuff and it makes the DEA's job harder :)

Some of us really don't care about smoking it

[MythoBeast]

The more the pro-legalization community uses this stupid tactic of lying about your motivations the less seriously it will be taken by people in power.

Believe it or not, there really are people out there who really couldn't care less about the smoking part. Some of us don't smoke it, but nobody really has any trouble getting it under the current system anyway. Unfortunately, you're right in that this post is so full of technical holes that nobody who isn't a marijuana reformer (not hemp, marijuana) would believe it. It's so bad, in fact, that it encourages people to disregard the GOOD reasons for ending prohibition.

The GOOD reason is that the current system of drug prohibition is expensive, abusive, harmful, and even counterproductive. If the harm of the system exceeds the harm of those things it's trying to stop, then the system must be fixed or abolished. That has nothing to do with smoking pot.

Robert Rapplean
PERDL

Oh, hey, Moderators. It isn't off topic if it addresses a main point of the parent's post.

Sounds like the premise for Metal Gear 2

[VistaBoy]

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX had a plot involving an algae called OILIX that could create oil, and of course some bad guys kidnap the scientist and his creation. Kinda interesting that it can actually be done in real life though.

Hydrogen

[Keighvin]

Some types of algae, in environments high in sulfur, when deprived of sunlight for a few days also give off reasonable concentrations of hydrogen. The cycle is repeatable without any damage.

Re:Hydrogen

[aarku]

Not only that, but easy storage of hydrogen looks like it could take a serious turn for the better. From the guy who gave us NiMH batteries, Stanford Ovshinsky and his wife Iris [pbs.org] have invented some metal alloy that soaks up a high concentration of hydrogen [pbs.org] like a sponge... safely.

So now we have potential of plentiful cheap hydrogen, and a great mobile way to store it for autos. . . Why is there this big holdup!

It's Essentially Solar Energy

[osewa77]

Algae ultimately get their energy from the sun, as do plants. Whether this is a more efficient way of harvesting the sun's energy than other ways remains to be seen. The major potential advantage is that in this casethe algae produce oils/hydrocarbons which (hopefully) could be used in place of fossil fuels (no need to design new machines)
___________________
and by the way, i blog [seunosewa.com]

Re:It's Essentially Solar Energy

[The Master Control P]

Compared to silicon solar cells, biological processes are ultimately morbidly inefficient: "The primary reactions have close to 100% quantum efficiency (i.e., one quantum of light leads to one electron transfer); and under most ideal conditions, the overall energy efficiency can reach 35%. Due to losses at all steps in biochemistry, one has been able to get only about 1 to 2% energy efficiency in most crop plants. Sugarcane is an exception as it can have almost 8% efficiency. However, many plants in Nature often have only 0.1 % energy efficiency." - From Here [uiuc.edu]

However, unlike solar cells, the algae produce no nasty by-products during manufacture, regenerate themselves if damaged, and eat up human waste on the side. Plus, the algae are quite simply far cheaper:

• Assuming the algae are 4% efficient. Solar cells are roughly 5X as efficient, and therefore would need cover only 10 thousand square kilometers. At $400/M^2, covering ~10,000 square kilometers would cost 4.14 trillion dollars, compared to the stated cost in the article of 169 billion for algae farms. Algae win with a 30:1 cost advantage.
• If you are more realistic and assume that the algae are more like 1% efficient, the solar cells will need to cover 2500 square kilometers, costing an even trillion dollars: The algae maintain a 6:1 cost advantage.

Note that I'm not taking into account here what the economy of scale would do for the cost of the solar cells, but I'm imagining that the lower cost to maintain algae would still make them the preferred choice.

Re:It's Essentially Solar Energy

[cens0r]

You're simply not thinking. Ever bit of CO2 we release by burning biodiesel is composed of carbon from the algae. All the carbon in the algae comes from CO2 taken from the air. Therefore, you cannot increase the amount of CO2 in the air by using biodiesel. Every bit you release is taken right back out by growing more algae.

not enough

[feelyoda]

Given the crazy estimates from enviro fear mongering of how much we would need to reduce greenhouse gas consumption to make a real impact, the 10000sq.mile area is not enough. What would it replace? all...

...petroleum transportation fuels.

...which account for only 16% of greenhouse gasses produces in America.

Clearly such research is good. But beware the big numbers. First, they require large government intervention(otherwise, we needn't worry and the market will take care of things), which means that you shouldn't trust their figures to be that realistic. Second, they are talking about a change in a large sector of the oil economy. This would have to be slow by design.

Again, this is good, but more needs to be done. Anyone want to fund a Grand Challenge/X-Prize for the best price/performance renewable fuel?


What? You don't have $1B to blow?

Exactly what is needed.

[pavon]

Given the crazy estimates from enviro fear mongering of how much we would need to reduce greenhouse gas consumption to make a real impact, the 10000sq.mile area is not enough. What would it replace? all... petroleum transportation fuels ... which account for only 16% of greenhouse gasses produces in America.

Yep, and most of the rest could easily be solved if we switched to nuclear power, but those same fear mongerers are primarily the ones that are opposed to it. So they can just blame global warming o

Cost, cost, cost

[skwang]

As with all alternative energy sources. It's the cost that holds it back. Whether we like it or not, oil is still the cheapest source of energy we have. Not only because of the price per barrel, albeit the highest is been in a while, but also because of the infrastructure costs associated with any new energy source.

What we need in the US, and in the rest of the world, is a real effort to fund and off-set the costs of these alternative sources. Although I will support the free-market until my face is blue, I believe this is a good case for a the public sector to intervene in the business world. The problem is that this effort must come from the top. The presidential administration, who ever is in office, must be the one to lead this effort.

I'd rather not get into a heated political discussion, but I do believe that the Bush administration wants to see us move from oil (you can stop laughing now). But they want the oil companies to lead the way. You notice that many of them, Exxon-Mobile for instance, now bill themselves as "Energy Companies," no longer wholy concentrating on petroleum. Despite the cynic, these companies do develope much of the solar, wind, and other non-oil technologies today, but don't pursure them due to cost.

(That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes.)

True freedom from fossil fuels will not come quickly or cheaply, but I believe that if we pressure our leaders to help fund these alternative sources and lower their total cost of implementation, we can speed up the process. It may be naive but I can hope.

Re:Cost, cost, cost

[king-manic]

That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes

And how does a family that drived much of it's wealth from oil seem more likly to implement alternative energy sourceS?

Re:Cost, cost, cost

[MAXOMENOS]

That being said, John Kerry doesn't exactly strike me as someone whose presidental administration will supprt non-petroleum/fossil fuel causes

For what it's worth, part of Kerry's platform is an "alternative energy Apollo Project" to switch 20% of our energy production to renewable resources. Here's some information [johnkerry.com] that might be of use. Click on the link that says "Reduce our Dependence on Foreign Oil" as evidence of my claim; it will display my source paragraph.

Something along the lines of hoover dam

[chaffed]

This is an interesting idea. I've always maintained that a biodiesel industry would be best suited for a distributed model. Small installations around soybean farms to produce the oil and lower transportation costs.

I guess a model like hoover damn would work. Build a large central installation that would produce a vast amount of energy. In doing so it provided a state with an economy that would have otherwise ended up like maine.

No offence to maine but asside from lobster, timber, and steven king their aint much.

I'm sure there are other costs and payoffs but that's the biggest I see so far, aside from the forgone conclusion of a cleaner environment and energy independence.

Where to put it...

[Tailhook]

10,000 square miles isn't that big; a 117 mile diameter pool. You could build that somewhere in Nebraska and no one would notice for years aside from airline pilots.

Sounds good to me. Supplant oil production with algae and we can stop attempting to protect middle east oil resources from theocratic dictators. The only reason civilization still persists there is to maintain enough control to pipe out the oil...

Solve two problems at once

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

If we can get usable energy from pond scum, are spammers now a national resource?

Household production of biodiesel?

[Mr. Sketch]

I use about 800 gallons of gas a year, so according to their estimates of how much space it would require, would seem like I only need about 200m^2 (about 2000ft^2 for the metric-challenged) of space to produce my own biodiesel. So, could I just buy a 15mx15m biodiesel facility to put on my lot, and if it feeds on waste, we could pull that from the house, and we could buy in bulk the additional requirements (salt for the salt water and additional waste if our house doesn't produce enough). According to their cost estimates, the cost of a pond that size would be $1,200 with an annual maintance cost of $120/year, considering that I probably spend about $1,500 a year on gas, that would be quite a savings and it would be environmentally friendly.

What would the feasability of that be? Of course, while traveling I would have to buy someone elses biodiesel, but it would be nice to be able to save some money for people who have the 200m^2 to put a algae pond.

Re:Household production of biodiesel?

[joebolte]

Keep in mind that the figures are based on a giant economy of scale. They are estimating for one 10,000 sq. mile pond. you can't just multiply the number by the fraction of the space your pond would take up.

Also keep in mind that you would have to maintain your personal pond in your free time. They don't say how many man-hours per gallon they esitmate, but again your efficiency woudl be a lot lower. You would do better to start some sort of algae co-op with your town and have everyone use it.

Re:Household production of biodiesel?

[Johnno74]

Problem is I doubt if you can just siphon off the sludge from your (no doubt smelly) algae pond straight into your tank.

The article does mention that the oil produced by the algae would have to be processed by a refinery.

So, this is not going to replace diesel, its replacing crude oil.

you did read the article, didn't you... :^)

Sonora Desert

[Nom du Keyboard]

like the Sonora Desert

Hey, I live in the Sonora Desert. And it's called desert for a reason. And the only way you'd ever begin to get me interested in wanting that in my backyard is if everyone here was profiting from it.

Did I mention we already have a mosquito problem, strange as that might sound.

Btw, has anyone considered what adding an additional 10K square miles of evaporation will do to the weather patterns? Of course not.

If you want to use the desert, why not hydrogen farming using solar cells? Much less impact.

Re:Sonora Desert

[Hektor_Troy]

Hmm ... how about this idea: Covering it, so there isn't an evaporation into the atmosphere? Sure, building a 10,000 miles^2 roof is rather difficult, but build small ponds instead, cover them - not nearly as difficult ...

Hell - you could probably have one in your back yard, if it's big enough, like a poster mentioned.

Desert != wasteland

[ozbird]

I wish people would stop assuming that desert is somehow worthless tracts of empty land - they've obviously never been to a desert!

If you're serious about being environmentally friendly, convert 100x100 miles of cotton fields (heavy pesticide users) or rice paddies (heavy water users) to bio-diesel factories instead.

I still want a *battery* car.

[Colin Smith]

Why?

Independance from the oil companies.

1: Charge from domestic supply.
2: Charge from PV on the roof of my house.
3: Upgradable range. You can get 250-380 miles from NiMH batteries, LiON and LiS should improve on that.
4: Acceleration, peak torque at 0rpm.
5: Servicing costs.

10,000 SqMile Pool?

[jonbrewer]

They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert.

Wouldn't it make a little more sense to make 10,000 1SqMile pools? Make one and you still have to ship oil all over the world. Make many and keep the production close to the consumption.

The Most Pathetic Part of the Whole Thing

[Un pobre guey]

...We found that at NREL's yield rates, 11,000 square miles (2.82 million hectares) of algae ponds would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels with biodiesel. At the cost of $60,000 per hectare, that would work out to roughly $169 billion, to build the farms.

The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $50.7 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the more than $100 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries.

The most pathetic part is that the entire cost of the project, all of it, is less than the money we have already spent in Iraq to give that nation as a gift to energy traders so that they may continue on their merry international price-fixing way.

Nobody seems to have realized that we have long passed the point where it is much more cost-effective to substitute fossil fuel consumption with something else than it is to defend our alleged interests in Persian Gulf oil with military might. And that does not include construction, production, and transportation costs, amortization, etc.

Biodiesel and Linux are very similar

[kwhilden]

I like to tell people why biodiesel and linux are very much based on the same principles. Biodiesel is an Open Source fuel supply. Quite literally, anyone can make it, just by going to the supermarket and buying the ingredients off the shelf. Because of this, the knowledge to make biodiesel can't be stopped by the fossil fuel interests.

Think about it....
Fossil Fuel companies == Microsoft
Biodiesel == Open Source and Linux

The parallels are just so numerous, it's astounding. There are many many stories of some kind of fuel efficient engine or other technology that has been bought by FF or Auto companies, and quietly disbanded so the technology was never applied. MS has done the same thing countless times, but look how far it got them with Linux. :) Biodiesel is the same damn thing.

Another parallel is how fast people are jumping on the biodiesel bandwagon. Fossil fuels are causing a world of catastrophic problems, and the obvious solutions are lacking. But biodiesel is an VERY obvious solution, that just about anyone can gravitate toward. It gives farmers jobs, and reduces pollution from any diesel vehicle, it increases energy security, it doesn't cause global warming... etc.

The Algae aspect is really the first nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel Age. Think about it... a year's worth of fuel for the USA, from just 11,000 square miles of desert. And those figures use 1996 technology for algae production... given a little bit more R&D, it will get better.

There's a lot more parallels for biodiesel and Open Source... for example the distributed nature of fuel production and the distributed nature of code production. You can think of more and reply to this post.

About me...
I have used B100 in my VW Jetta Wagon for two years straight, without a single problem. My car runs cleaner, quieter, and smells like french fries from the exhaust. I am one of the founding members of the GoBiodiesel Cooperative in Portland Oregon (www.gobiodiesel.org).

Re:Okay....

[Derkec]

Algae generally would feed on sunlight and ambiant CO2. We'd probably need to seed their waters with appropriate minerals, like iron, so they could grow healthily. A nice perk of this is that instead of digging up carbon in the form of oil or coal which we then send into the atmosphere, we take carbon out of the atmosphere, arrange it into oil using solar powered algae and then burn it back up into the atmosphere.

Re:Okay....

[fantastic max]

Actually, it's a little more interesting than Sun and CO2. They use controlled eutrophication. As it stands, industrial and agricultural eutrophication is a huge problem because pollutants and fertilizers run-off into streams and creeks resulting in huge algal blooms that kill off downstream ponds by cutting off sunlight. They take advantage of this and indicate that agricultural waste can be used to induce this controlled eutrophication. So you don't have to feed it anything special... just other people's garbage for a good nitrogen source that they'd have to send off for treatment anyway.

Re:Okay....

[pedantic bore]

Not only what do they feed on, but what do they "produce" (for lack of a more polite term)? There are some algae that produce dangerous toxins that could be a hassle to deal with. For example, how would we deal with 10,000 m^2 of the algae that cause red tide? (the article claims that the "left-over sludge remaining makes an ideal fertilizer", so maybe it's not toxic, but merely smelly, but this is something I'd want to know more about.

Re:Okay....

[monster811]

Well, based on the fact that they state that "Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some as much as 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates.", I dont think they plan to just harvest from whatever happens to be growing in the swamp. More likely, they are going to pick particular species of algae that do not produce harmful toxins. Not to mention that it was suggested that this be performed in a controlled environment.

Re:Okay....

[n1ywb]

Well, since you're farming the algea, you just don't grow that kind.

Re:Okay....

[spazzmo]

This reminds me of an article i read in New Scientist about 15 years ago. Someone had designed an electric powerplant that ran on dried, powdered algae, which surprisingly burns rather well. The algae was grown in a Biocoil (i think thats what it was called, big glass vessel) then dried and burnt to drive the generator. What made it neat was the way the waste heat from the engine was used to dry the algae, and the waste gases from the burning were used as nutrients for the algae. Neat, nearly closed loop requiring sunlight and some extra nutrients.

Re:Okay....

[Anonymous Coward]

based on research I'm involved with, they'd convert sunlight to oil with nutrients coming from sewage or farm/industrial waste. This has been in development for at least twenty years and not nearly as simple as it sounds.

Getting optimal yields (or even any yield) out of an aquarium is not cut and dried.

This article is a very broad and very simplistic overview of the concept. I have no idea why someone in a physics department would write such a pithy article when it's a biology problem and much more compli

Re:Its all good but...

[cens0r]

Think for a minute. Burning the oil creates CO2. What do the algae eat? CO2. As long as we are constantly growing more algae, it's a closed loop where we take all the CO2 out that we produce. The reason that fossil fuels are bad is that we are introducing CO2 that has been trapped for millions of years.

Re:Its all good but...

[lfourrier]

Diesel is difficult to clean, because combustion is often incomplete, but recent cars with particules filters are quite clean (in Europe, where diesel is a reality, even for small/medium cars).

Now, for biodiesel, you have to remember that all the carbon you release in the atmosphere was not captured by plants eons ago, but just a few month ago. So, replacing petrol by biodiesel result in no increase, but a stabilization of CO2 level.

Re:Contamination

[pclminion]

Even if we could make this idea a reality, we will still be contaminating our enviroment.

No we won't, because the algae grows by consuming CO2 from the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 removed is exactly equal to the amount released when the diesel is burned. Yes, biodiesel emits the same particulates as petro-diesel, but it has no sulfur emissions, and honestly, the kinds of emissions we're talking about here (the kind DEQ checks for, for instance) are not really that harmful to the environment -- they're simply irritating to humans.

This is very, very different than fossil fuels, where the carbon has been sequestered underground for millions of years, and we take it out and release it into the atmosphere.

In fact, algae might be a way to re-sequester some of that carbon, by growing large masses of algae then simply burying it deep, somewhere where it will not decay and release CO2 again.

Re:Contamination

[cft_128]

In fact, algae might be a way to re-sequester some of that carbon, by growing large masses of algae then simply burying it deep, somewhere where it will not decay and release CO2 again.

This also has a cool side benefit - now our descendants 100 million years from now can have their own fossil fuels, conveniently stored underground for them by us!

Re:It was a pretty interesting read...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Look up in the sky. Observe the giant glowing thing pouring lots of energy down on you. Note that a portion of this energy lands on farmers' fields.

Now do you understand how this doesn't violate thermodynamics?

Re:It was a pretty interesting read...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Replying to my own comment ... You might have missed this part in the last paragraph:

That brings the overall energy balance down to 1.38:1, roughly three times better than the 0.36:1 of the hydrogen fuel cell car. This figure means that for each unit of energy that goes into growing the crops and producing the biodiesel, 1.38 units of energy are available to be used for moving the vehicle, a net gain of 38%, compared to a net loss of 64% for hydrogen.

So they are in fact using the same assumptions for overall efficiency calculations for biodiesel and hydrogen.

And, as another poster pointed out, you still haven't explained why you think this is thermodynamically impossible.

Re:"Only" 10000 square miles?

[The Unabageler]

I wonder how much land space is used up by oil fields, refineries, etc