Boeing Helping to Develop Algae-Powered Jet

jon_cooper writes "Air New Zealand, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation and Boeing are working together to develop and test a bio-fuel derived from algae. Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation began operating in May last year after it met a request from the local council to deal with excess algae on sewage ponds. Boeing's Dave Daggett was reported this year as saying algae ponds totaling 34,000 square kilometers could produce enough fuel to reduce the net CO2 footprint for all of aviation to zero."

In other news

[saibot834]

In other news, the gathering of algae lead to an increased production of CO2, as the machines and techniques used in this progress were powered by normal gasoline.

Re:Only

[spun]

Looked at another way, that's .009% of the surface area of Earth's oceans.

Re:practical?

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

In the ocean?

34,000/361,000,000~=0.01%

Re:Only

[utopianfiat]

Well, also note they said the CARBON footprint. Algae uses photosynthesis (ie: CO2 + H20 = C6H12O6 + O2 + H2O), so the process itself, for 32,000 km^2, might be factored into their calculations. On the whole, it seems pretty damn green. Algae grows like nobody's business using only sunlight, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. If you could streamline that process and generate energy from it at low cost with a decent volume-to-output ratio, it seems pretty plausible that it would have a pretty big impact on the environment.
However, low-cost is KEY. The biggest bottleneck in travel prices right now is the fluctuating price of oil- if you can offer a low-cost alternative that happens to also be green, you may get a bloody nobel prize. Otherwise, you simply won't sell and we'll all still be S.O.L.
Of course, the government could like, subsidize this initiative instead of giving more money to the sheepfucking corn farmers. D:<

Where to put it?

[Darlantan]

To all of you asking "Where would you put a pond the size of X nation!?!"

The same place you'd put a refinery large enough to refine every last drop of oil we use today: NOT IN ONE PLACE, DUMBASSES.

Is it really that hard to imagine that these ponds will be spread out over multiple areas? There are many large cities producing tons of the waste this stuff is supposed to thrive on, so logically the processing plants would be near them. Aside from that, it only makes sense to have your production facilities spread out so that one hurricane or whatever doesn't knock out the entire world's supply of jet fuel.

Along the same line of reasoning as the last reason, it also makes sense to have widely distributed production facilities so that you don't have to ship the final product halfway around the globe to serve, say, Indonesia.

Re:34k square kilometers...

[sleigher]

Well, do we have to have the 13,000 miles/2 all in one place? Or could we have smaller ponds strategically placed around the world with refineries nearby to produce the biofuel from the algae? This would be FAR more practical as it would reduce shipping/transporting of the fuel and only add to the overall goal of carbon neutrality. Unfortunately, this might require governments to actually cooperate with one another and we all know how easy that is.

Re:cost...

[macmurph]

Are the tar sands located under a forest in Canada? What will happen to that environment? Shouldn't we list that forest as a cost?

Re:Only

[Doc Ruby]

The 3rd largest (by area) country in the world [wikipedia.org], the US is 9,629,091Km^2 (not including marine territorial waters, of which the US has vast amounts). 34,000Km^2 is only 0.35% of the US territory.

So "only 34,000 square kilometers of algae needed to do this" is an entirely unironic, nonsarcastic statement.

A worthwhile sarcastic statement would be something like "gee, only a century of internal combustion engines, and mere years from the brink of irreparable environmental collapse, before we thought to do this".

serious response to funny post

[Analogy Man]

Airliners always takeoff from airports and (usually) land at them.

They refuel at these airports.

Airports are usually vast areas of grass interrupted by tarmac and a terminal.

Nobody wants to live under the clearways on either end of the runways anyway.

Most large airports are near urban centers that product loads of free nitrogen fertilizer (otherwise known as effluent).

Why not produce the fuel at the source - eliminating a significant amount of transportation and infrastructure?

Another take

[belunar]

This is discussing using waste treatment facilities to grow the algae needed to fuel aircraft. So build the airports and water treatment facilities next to each other. A few things Im looking at when I say that, 1) noone wants to live near ether 2) both are usualy in industrial areas anyway 3)shorter distance for the biofuel to travel to get to the aircraft.

      I dont know how to figure this out, but if one takes a look at all the sewage treatment facilities around the world, what would the total area of them be?

      Also something else to take into account, it is talking about NET CO2 being reduced to 0. From what I can tell that meens that if 100% of all aircraft were running on this algae made biofuel, the production of CO2 from aircraft would balance the CO2 intake of the algae used to make the biofuel. It isnt saying that they would no longer make CO2, just it would balance with natural intake by organic processes such as algae growth. Nice goal, probly wont happen for a while though. It would meen aircraft moving completely away from the finite nonrenewable resorces of oil.

      It looks like something worthy of trying, does make me wonder if Big Oil is going to try something against this though. People have been fighting to get electric, hydrogen, biodiesel, and other nonoil vehicles on the road for years. Just sounds to me like this war has finaly gotten wings.

Just my opinions

Other costs

[Valdrax]

Unfortunately, that will only exacerbate all of our other problems from energy use -- namely the carbon footprint of our industry.
We should be working on getting carbon back into the ground and not on pulling more out.

Re:Still we think stupidly

[Control Group]

Well, see, it turns out that combustible fuels are really nice from an energy-density standpoint. Liquid combustible fuels are particularly nice from a portability and distribution standpoin. And if you're planning on flying, pushing air backwards is the most efficient way to do it, since then you don't have to carry your own reaction mass as well as fuel. I suppose it wouldn't have to be hot, but jet engines have proven to be more efficient than props.

Moreover, there certainly are people looking to improve electricity storage to be used for transportation. Of course, you take a huge end-to-end efficiency hit for that (combustion -> electricity -> electricity storage -> kinetic energy versus combustion -> kinetic energy) unless we move to a non-combustion powered electrical grid, but people are working on it.

If you have suggestions for flight that don't involve moving air - or suggestions for equivalently-useful non-flight travel (particularly across oceans) - or even suggestions for feasible alternatives to combustion, by all means pursue them. There's a lot of money to be made.

Re:If You're About Saving the Planet...

[SatanicPuppy]

Uh huh. I'm curious as to why you felt the fact that Gore served a particular fish at his daughters wedding to be at all relevant to an article about airplane biofuel, if you were not specifically pushing an anti-environment agenda through an offtopic attack on a popular environmentalist? It's a classic propaganda technique.

But no no, I'm being hugely irrational because I don't associate an unrelated person's private life with the benefits of biofuels.

The thing that bothers me isn't the attack on Gore; I could care less. The thing that bothers me is the fact that this isn't about Gore, and but you're trying to make it about him because you hate his politics and you want to keep this a politically polarized issue. And I think that fucking sucks. If you can't come up with anything better to say about this issue than to whine about Gore's diet, you've got no fucking place here.