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Renewable Energy From Algae?
Posted by
michael
on Tue May 25, 2004 05:07 PM
from the oilent-green dept.
from the oilent-green dept.
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."
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Got life insurance? (Score:5, Funny)
I wish them luck
Re:Got life insurance? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Got life insurance? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Alge grows in the desert? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Alge grows in the desert? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Alge grows in the desert? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Solar Power (Score:5, Insightful)
(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 (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Solar Power (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Solar Power (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
just a little genetic engineering (Score:5, Funny)
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
Hey! (Score:5, Insightful)
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! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hey! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Another good place to put it: (Score:5, Interesting)
Use transparent pipes and let the green light through. Like a plesant drive through a forest rather than in direct sunlight.
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come over to my house (Score:5, Funny)
-Grump
Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Or we could switch to Hemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some of us really don't care about smoking it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Sounds like the premise for Metal Gear 2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrogen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
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It's Essentially Solar Energy (Score:5, Informative)
___________________
and by the way, i blog [seunosewa.com]
Re:It's Essentially Solar Energy (Score:5, Interesting)
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:
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.
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Re:It's Essentially Solar Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cost, cost, cost (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Household production of biodiesel? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The Most Pathetic Part of the Whole Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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.
Parent
Re:Consider our spectacular lack of foresight... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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Oil Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
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The point you're missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Preach doom all you want. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Its all good but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Contamination (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Contamination (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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pure alcohol as fuel (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:pure alcohol as fuel (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Politicize much? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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