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."

cost...

[BlueParrot]

Technologically there is nothing to stop us from using renewables to make liquid hydrogen and fuel jet planes with that ( yes, a jet engine will run fine on liquid hydrogen, it has been done ). The problem is that such a scheme is very costly ( about 4 times the cost of fossil fuels ). Given that you will hav eto extract the stuff out of these algae, refine it, and of course the trouble of growing themin the first place, I must wonder if it can ever become eonomically practical. I guess eventually something must replace Oil, but these things are quite a bit away still.

The FAA is making this an initiative as well..

[StressGuy]

BTW - not surprising that the article keeps running into the "proprietary data" wall. This is typical of dealing with Boeing (and other avition firms for that matter).

However, check this out:

http://www.faa.gov/news/speeches/news_story.cfm?ne wsId=8257 [faa.gov]

The FAA has been showing interest recently in reducing the environmental impact of the aviation industry.

Personally, I'd love to see bio-fuels take off (no pun intended). Turn Death Valley into a big algae farm (although watch that impact global weather patterns somehow).

Algae ponds

[fishfish]

So that is about 100, 9x15 mile sized ponds. Not quite Indiana (and who says they need to be on land)?

Maybe put them out in Nevada where the sun shines all the time. And pump waste water from LA to give the algae water and nutrients. Someone else needs to do the energy (pumping, mixers, etc.) and cost-of-water calculations. But carbon offsets for all of aviation should be pretty valuable.

Re:The FAA is making this an initiative as well..

[Anonymous Coward]

How insensitive. Death Valley is a national park.

Good!

[RAMMS+EIN]

Good news! It's good to see a good idea take hold. I was convinced that bio fuels are not just a good idea in practice, but actually tenable in practice by some reading I did sometime last year. When I talked about it with my father, he asked me "If it's such a good idea, why is nobody doing it?" Since then, magazines have written about bio fuels, more and more people have started using them, and now even Boeing is behind them. And they're getting it right: no mucking around with corn, soy, or even rapeseed, but actually using high-yield algae for feedstock. Thanks, Boeing!

Re:Only

[WED Fan]

Hey, if it saves the planet, then I say screw the Netherlands.

Now, seriously, if this is the strain of algae I'm thinking about, it is very high in oil content. Not all algae are. It is also very sensitive, and other more aggresive forms of algae are prone to force it out. So, like wine making, it has to be done in the right conditions where the wrong airborne yeast getting into the mix will turn your wine into garbage, or worse, Gallo, letting the wrong algae get into the ponds will be bad.

But, why not go cubic with the ponds? Build huge production plants that are like greenhouses. Stack ponds ontop of each other, and give them a certain level of clean room control.

That, or we really flood the Netherlands.

Hell, flood them anyways.

Re:cost...

[shlashdot]

I don't think tar sands or especially oil shale represent a solution. Shell is already backpedalling on their promises for oil shale.

http://www.aspencore.org/images/pdf/OilShale.pdf [aspencore.org]

Re:Only

[Andy Dodd]

Look at some of UNH's studies on algae-derived biodiesel.

Because algae grows well in waste water from human sources (in fact LOVES sewage) and because it needs no soil, it can be grown in areas where it is utterly impractical to grow crops. UNH typically uses the Sonoran Desert in the U.S. Southwest as an example - Something like 1/4 of that area (which is mostly unpopulated) could supply the transportation fuel needs of the entire country (if all vehicles were converted from gasoline to biodiesel, of course.) They did assume special "high oil content" algae breeds that are difficult to grow/maintain without less "efficient" strains taking over though, it looks like this company is focusing on less efficient (but easier to grow/keep alive) algae strains with lower oil content.

Re:Where to put it?

[dominiccara]

There's 8,543 square miles suitable for algae farming where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/17/gulf.de adzone.ap/index.html [cnn.com]

Re:It's not that hard to come up with that land...

[misleb]

Sure, but you have to get the water from somewhere to run such an operation in a desert. Don't you have to circulate the air to "feed" the algae? Won't that cause significant evaporation?

You don't want to use valuable fresh water for that. If you pipe in sea water (assuming you can grow the right kind of algae in sea water), I imagine you might have trouble with salinity levels as the water evaporates from the constant air circulation.

-matthew

Re:Jet fuel is easy to make

[Orange Crush]

Except that Algae yields vegetable oil, not petroleum. Transesterification of vegetable oil yields something almost entirely not quite unlike diesel fuel. It's similar enough that a diesel engine won't care, but there are certainly differences--it's biodegradable, non-toxic if processed correctly (some methanol is used in its production, it's still possible to have dangerous levels of methanol in a 'bad batch' so you really don't want to drink the stuff). And one of the biggest reasons you'll usually find it blended with petro-diesel: it basically turns into Jell-O in cold weather.

I don't know how they intend to get "bio-jet fuel" but I doubt they're synthesizing kerosene. Much like biodiesel production, I'm guessing they've found a way to process vegetable oil into something similar enough to kerosene that a jet engine won't mind.

Re:Economics of scale - this may not work

[smellsofbikes]

This is only sort of related to *production* of fuel, but Denver International Airport produces 70% of the fuel used at DIA through oil wells on the airport property. I can't find a supporting cite, but this [bondsonline.com] at least indicates DIA has 53 gas/oil wells. The refineries are a few miles away, but I believe they're connected by pipeline both ways, since the DIA fuel farm is near the refineries.