Company Claims Potential Magnification In Bio Fuel Production 260
duanes1967 writes "A company called Joule Biotech claims to have a breakthrough in biofuel production. Their process can create 20,000 gallons of fuel per acre per year at a cost of about $50 per barrel. 'Algae-based biofuels come closest to Joule's technology, with potential yields of 2,000 to 6,000 gallons per acre; yet even so, the new process would represent an order of magnitude improvement. What's more, for the best current algae fuels technologies to be competitive with fossil fuels, crude oil would have to cost over $800 a barrel says Philip Pienkos, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Joule claims that its process will be competitive with crude oil at $50 a barrel. In recent weeks, oil has sold for $60 to $70 a barrel.'"
Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry (Score:4, Interesting)
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.
You may want to inform Exxon Mobil that their recent six hundred million dollar investment [gas2.org] is snake oil.
Big oil's investing in this, I wouldn't write it off as snake oil:
Variant of algae? (Score:3, Interesting)
As best as I can tell, their process is likely using genetically engineered algae that perform better than the best existing "natural" algae for biofuels production. There aren't really any other candidates for genetically engineered organisms for this particular goal.
The problem is that to be so efficient at biofuels production, such algae are at a severe competitive disadvantage to other less suitable species. Based on what I've seen so far, one of the biggest problems with algae biofuels production has been contamination of bioreactors with species that grow more easily but are not suitable for biodiesel production. If someone engineers algae to be even better at biofuels production, it'll likely make the contamination problem even harder to solve.
a factor of 3 is NOT an order of magnitude (Score:2, Interesting)
> yet even so, the new process would represent an order of magnitude improvement.
Nope.
6,000 to 20,000 is somewhere around a factor of 3. An order of magnitude is a factor of 10. Or as wikipedia puts it:
"An order of magnitude difference between two values is a factor of 10. For example, the mass of the planet Saturn is 95 times that of Earth, so Saturn is two orders of magnitude more massive than Earth. Order of magnitude differences are called decades when measured on a logarithmic scale."
Still impressive.
-Steve
Re:Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry (Score:4, Interesting)
Big Oil is investing in such tech because it will continue to squeeze revenue out of the distribution systems the oil companies have spent many billions creating.
They will do anything to keep people from switching to electrical grid/self-generation systems for their energy needs. They really don't care WHAT they are selling as long as they can do it at a profit and do it from the existing stations. There is an entire industry based simply on the middle-man aspect of distribution. People make money from it, so it remains. But it also cost the consumer more, in the long run.
The electrical grid already exists, is in the public realm for the most part, and the middlemen have no part in it. Granted, the electrical grid needs some improvement in order for everyone to switch to it for ALL our energy needs, but it is not, by any means, impossible.
Biofuels do NOT solve many problems. In fact, they simply create new ones.
And, yeah. Snake oil. Hrmm...now that I think about it...I wonder what the energy storage of a snake is...
Re:It's always a startup... (Score:5, Interesting)
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Are you saying we were supposed to learn that revolutionary breakthroughs are ALWAYS snake-oil?
Re:It's always a startup... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Invest early?
Sell often?
No seriously, if you could have invested in Google's IPO you would have been a rich man today.
The problem with the tech boom is that people were investing in bad ideas, not good ideas with bad results. You know... Like Pets.com
Re:big oil is not stupidly evil (Score:3, Interesting)
They are greedy. they are in a for-profit business. Once we realize that green investments by most of the big oil companies is not some show to appear green, and really a strategy for them to continue operating refineries it all starts to make sense.
This is woefully uninformed. They are in business to turn a profit *this quarter*. There is no commitment to "future shareholders", only current ones, so no the company has little incentive to do anything aside from very short term "investment". Think of it this way, if it boosts PR enough to avoid a public outrage that leads to a windfall profits tax being levied the next time oil gets above $100 a barrel, it will have been worth billions. Considering the current political climate, that is not a far fetched scheme at all.
Re:Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Biofuels solve two major problems, they are carbon neutral and they are not dependent on the middle east. Are the problems they create worse than those?
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:3, Interesting)
The US has the production capacity of over 2.5Billion gallons a year of BioDiesel [biodiesel.org] with another half billion gallons a year coming online in the next year.
So, if you pay attention, you are frustrated, because it doesn't seem to be coming fast enough, and if you go away for a few years and come back, you don't notice the differences, because they are baked into the system by then.
Re:Uhh, Heavily Bought Into By Oil Industry (Score:3, Interesting)
Because some bureaucrat in at NStar is going to shortchange the training and operations budget in the end, and we'll have TMI all over again.
Re:And you don't think... (Score:3, Interesting)
If they are the most profitable businesses in the world then they aren't dinosaurs.
By that logic you would have no problem with Steve Jobs owning 60% of the wealth of the country. I mean, if he's rich, he's obviously doing something correctly. There's no way he's corrupt or engaging in anti-competitive business practices. His profit margin proves his innocence!
What a brilliant idea!