I want a presidential candidate that uses that line and that line alone as their campaign to solve the energy crisis.
That's pin head engineer thinking. "The conversion of mass into energy is a square so my square head concludes it's the best." Never mind, you will create poisons that last thousands of years. Never mind it's politically impossible. Never mind there are sound alternatives, see right there, it's a square. Well your irrationality and emotional blindness seems also to function as a square.
No that's E=MC^2
Whats the soccer mom alternative? Voodoo?
Yes, they will be safely stored. C'mon we've been through this.
Politics change, we've been through this too.
There are NO ALTERNATIVES that are as efficient and as widely adaptable. We can use geysers for energy too but not everyone is near a fucking geyser. Is that hard to understand?
What?! My alleged lack of reasoning and alleged inability to read emotions has an exponential mathematical function? WTF? Do you like putting random words together to sound smart? Or are you high on some serious shit?
QuantumPion
Diamond Member
- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
Gee, middle-school chemistry is neato, huh! Oh look, I have a perpetual motion in my back yard I'd like to sell you.
I hope your engineering skills aren't on a par with your lack of capacity to reason. Your perpetual machine remark is truly off the wall. One of the things I had in mind, however, is the sterling engine which is close in a way.
M: That's pin head engineer thinking.
KK No that's E=MC^2
M: See you are a pin head.
---------
KK: Whats the soccer mom alternative? Voodoo?
M: Probably no sex with her husband till she gets her way.
------------
M: Never mind, you will create poisons that last thousands of years.
KK: Yes, they will be safely stored. C'mon we've been through this.
M: Yup, we've been through it all right and the facts are obvious. We have never cleaned up our nuclear waste and we never will. When all the nuclear waste in the world is cleaned up it will then be time to rethink nuclear. Until that time you delusional idiots that think we will clean up need to be held down. You are a bunch of drunks promising you'll give up drinking but us tough lovers have seen though your act.
----------
M: Never mind it's politically impossible.
KK: Politics change, we've been through this too.
M: So does technology. Solar wind and geothermal, bio-fuels, etc are coming on fast. Why go down an alley full of poisons.
------
M: Never mind there are sound alternatives, see right there, it's a square.
KK: There are NO ALTERNATIVES that are as efficient and as widely adaptable. We can use geysers for energy too but not everyone is near a fucking geyser. Is that hard to understand?
M: You're the dunce that keeps claiming energy can't be transported efficiently over long distances.
----------
M: Well your irrationality and emotional blindness seems also to function as a square.
KK: What?! My alleged lack of reasoning and alleged inability to read emotions has an exponential mathematical function? WTF? Do you like putting random words together to sound smart? Or are you high on some serious shit?
M: See the second line of my sig. I have run into thousands of idiots like you. Anybody who out thinks you must be high. You can't comprehend the reasoning so you grasp at straws. You'll never notice the problem is your own ignorance.
KK No that's E=MC^2
M: See you are a pin head.
---------
KK: Whats the soccer mom alternative? Voodoo?
M: Probably no sex with her husband till she gets her way.
------------
M: Never mind, you will create poisons that last thousands of years.
KK: Yes, they will be safely stored. C'mon we've been through this.
M: Yup, we've been through it all right and the facts are obvious. We have never cleaned up our nuclear waste and we never will. When all the nuclear waste in the world is cleaned up it will then be time to rethink nuclear. Until that time you delusional idiots that think we will clean up need to be held down. You are a bunch of drunks promising you'll give up drinking but us tough lovers have seen though your act.
----------
M: Never mind it's politically impossible.
KK: Politics change, we've been through this too.
M: So does technology. Solar wind and geothermal, bio-fuels, etc are coming on fast. Why go down an alley full of poisons.
------
M: Never mind there are sound alternatives, see right there, it's a square.
KK: There are NO ALTERNATIVES that are as efficient and as widely adaptable. We can use geysers for energy too but not everyone is near a fucking geyser. Is that hard to understand?
M: You're the dunce that keeps claiming energy can't be transported efficiently over long distances.
----------
M: Well your irrationality and emotional blindness seems also to function as a square.
KK: What?! My alleged lack of reasoning and alleged inability to read emotions has an exponential mathematical function? WTF? Do you like putting random words together to sound smart? Or are you high on some serious shit?
M: See the second line of my sig. I have run into thousands of idiots like you. Anybody who out thinks you must be high. You can't comprehend the reasoning so you grasp at straws. You'll never notice the problem is your own ignorance.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
Oh, you silly pin-head engineer, all your time in college was wasted, since you obviously know nothing about anything.
Originally posted by: Xavier434
I want a presidential candidate that uses that line and that line alone as their campaign to solve the energy crisis.
Sounds like a good slogan.e=mc^2 pwnz j00!
They'd probably get props for just trying something like that.
Put those soccer moms on bicycles and have them generate power.
We need a new thread on this subject, and try to ensure that it won't get Moonbeam'd to death. We'll try to restrict it to real-world physics.
Who do you think is going to build your solar plant?
That won't happen. The cartoon you live in is rated PG-13
....uhhhhh.....we never had to clean it up because it was stored. Define "clean up".
Neither of those technology convert matter into energy. The only alternative would be an anti-matter reactor but that is way off. E=mc^2 is a very, very big fucking number. Don't count on those technologies even coming close to nuclear. A nuclear submarine can operate for 20 years without refueling. Name me a solar/thermal/wind/bio-fuel/...etc engine that can drive a piece of machinery for that long.
It can it just isn't efficient and there are not enough geysers, deserts, and open spaces to power the entire country. What I am saying is that alternative sources are NOT REPLACEMENTS to nuclear and coal.
You never "out thought" me. "your irrationality and emotional blindness seems also to function as a square" is a statement that makes no fucking sense. It sounds like something Raoul Duke would mutter in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
putting big words together is not thinking.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
Pin-headed engineers, who else? But they'll be so goddamned narrow-minded that they'll forget to make the solar cells conductive. They'll generate an electrical potential, but it won't flow anywhere.
I think antimatter would actually be used more like gasoline is now - an energy transport method, not energy production, since antimatter doesn't occur naturally in any significant quantities.
"We'll try to restrict it to real-world physics."
You mean like,
"I think antimatter would actually be used more like gasoline is now - an energy transport method, not energy production, since antimatter doesn't occur naturally in any significant quantities."
Hehehehehe hahahahaha
You mean like,
"I think antimatter would actually be used more like gasoline is now - an energy transport method, not energy production, since antimatter doesn't occur naturally in any significant quantities."
Hehehehehe hahahahaha
"putting big words together is not thinking."
Sadly, in your case, you can't even put small ones together and you sure as hell can't read.
Go look up the number of sq miles of concentrated solar farm required to power the US then the sq mi in Los Angeles county. You are so ill informed it's disgusting.
Sadly, in your case, you can't even put small ones together and you sure as hell can't read.
Go look up the number of sq miles of concentrated solar farm required to power the US then the sq mi in Los Angeles county. You are so ill informed it's disgusting.
Of course there is a certain catchiness to the expression "e=mc^2 pwnz j00!", but if confinement problem can be solved wouldn't you prefer the fission version over fusion?
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
That is real-world physics, which somehow has escaped your all-encompassing sphere of knowledge. We can create antimatter right now, but it's just really expensive.
If you could produce it in significant quantities, and store it safely, it could be taken on long trips through space as a source of immense amounts of power from a minimal quantity of material.
No, it would not be used in consumer-level cars. It is "like" gasoline in that it is an energy transport method.
That's all it is. Energy transport.
I would prefer fusion. More abundant fuel, and if there would be any radioactive waste, it would be low-level, with a short half-life. No danger whatsoever of a "meltdown" - if there were a containment problem, the contained plasma would expand, immediately cool down, and the fusion reaction would stop, so it would be self-extinguishing.
What a surprise, moonbeam telling me to do research. Its like saying "I'm right the answer is somewhere on the internet"
BTW fission also converts matter into energy.
Yup, it's on the internet and it's also in the links in this thread, which you in your arrogance are too good to read. The area required to power the US is around 90 to 100 sq miles and the area of LA county is somewhere around 4000 sq miles. But of course a dumb bell like you claims there isn't enough desert.
And regarding your incapacity to understand language try reading this again:
M: "Of course there is a certain catchiness to the expression "e=mc^2 pwnz j00!", but if confinement problem can be solved wouldn't you prefer the fission version over fusion?
In English the question I asked was which version of e=mc2 do you prefer. In other words you are telling me fusion converts matter to energy which is exactly what I said. Now perhaps you would care to answer that question.
you're retarded if you think solar power in a desert is enough to power the entire nation. You won't find me any links claiming otherwise.
Link
Link
Mojave desert = 25000sq miles
Oh nozers Homework:
Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae
Michael Briggs, University of New Hampshire, Physics Department
(revised August 2004)
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. The economic strain on our country resulting from the $100-150 billion we spend every year buying oil from other nations, combined with the occasional need to use military might to protect and secure oil reserves our economy depends on just makes matters worse (and using military might for that purpose just adds to the anti-American sentiment that gives rise to terrorism). Clearly, developing alternatives to oil should be one of our nation's highest priorities.
In the United States, oil is primarily used for transportation - roughly two-thirds of all oil use, in fact. So, developing an alternative means of powering our cars, trucks, and buses would go a long way towards weaning us, and the world, off of oil. While the so-called "hydrogen economy" receives a lot of attention in the media, there are several very serious problems with using hydrogen as an automotive fuel. For automobiles, the best alternative at present is clearly biodiesel, a fuel that can be used in existing diesel engines with no changes, and is made from vegetable oils or animal fats rather than petroleum.
In this paper, I will first examine the possibilities of producing biodiesel on the scale necessary to replace all petroleum transportation fuels in the U.S.
I. How much biodiesel?
First, we need to understand exactly how much biodiesel would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels. So, we need to start with how much petroleum is currently used for that purpose. Per the Department of Energy's statistics, each year the US consumes roughly 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline. First, we need to realize that spark-ignition engines that run on gasoline are generally about 40% less efficient than diesel engines. So, if all spark-ignition engines are gradually replaced with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines for running biodiesel, we wouldn't need 120 billion gallons of biodiesel to replace that 120 billion gallons of gasoline. To be conservative, we will assume that the average gasoline engine is 35% less efficient, so we'd need 35% less diesel fuel to replace that gasoline. That would work out to 78 billion gallons of diesel fuel. Combine that with the 60 billion gallons of diesel already used, for a total of 138 billion gallons. Now, biodiesel is about 5-8% less energy dense than petroleum diesel, but its greater lubricity and more complete combustion offset that somewhat, leading to an overall fuel efficiency about 2% less than petroleum diesel. So, we'd need about 2% more than that 138 billion gallons, or 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel. So, this figure is based on vehicles equivalent to those in use today, but with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines running on biodiesel, rather than a mix of petroleum diesel and gasoline. Combined diesel-electric hybrids in wide use, as well as fewer people driving large SUVs when they don't need such a vehicle would of course bring this number down considerably, but for now we'll just stick with this figure. (note - my point here is not to claim that conservation is not worthwhile, rather to strictly look at the issue of replacing our current use of fuel with biodiesel - to see how achievable that is). I would like to point out though that a preferable scenario would include a shift to diesel-electric hybrid vehicles (preferably with the ability to be recharged and drive purely on electric power for a short range, perhaps 20-40 miles, to provide the option of zero emissions for in-city driving), and with far fewer people buying 6-8,000 pound SUVs merely to commute to work in by themselves. Those changes could drastically reduce the amount of fuel required for our automotive transportation, and are technologically feasibly currently (see for example Chrysler's Dodge Intrepid ESX3, built under Clinton's PNGV program - a full-size diesel electric hybrid sedan that averaged 72 mpg in mixed driving 6, 7).
One of the biggest advantages of biodiesel compared to many other alternative transportation fuels is that it can be used in existing diesel engines without modification, and can be blended in at any ratio with petroleum diesel. This completely eliminates the "chicken-and-egg" dilemma that other alternatives have, such as hydrogen powered fuel cells. For hydrogen vehicles, even when (and if) vehicle manufacturers eventually have production stage vehicles ready (which currently cost around $1 million each to make), nobody would buy them unless there was already a wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system in place. But, no companies would be interested in building that wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system until a significant number of fuel cell vehicles are on the road, so that consumers are ready to start using it. With a single hydrogen fuel pump costing roughly $1 million, installing just one at each of the 176,000 fuel stations across the US would cost $176 billion - a cost that can be completely avoided with liquid biofuels that can use our current infrastructure.
With biodiesel, since the same engines can run on conventional petroleum diesel, manufacturers can comfortably produce diesel vehicles before biodiesel is available on a wide scale - as some manufacturers already are (the same can be said for flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on ethanol, gasoline, or any blend of the two). As biodiesel production continues to ramp up, it can go into the same fuel distribution infrastructure, just replacing petroleum diesel either wholly (as B100, or 100% biodiesel), or blended in with diesel. Not only does this eliminate the chicken-and-egg problem, making biodiesel a much more feasible alternative than hydrogen, but also eliminates the huge cost of revamping the nationwide fuel distribution infrastructure.
II. Large scale production
There are two steps that would need to be taken for producing biodiesel on a large scale - growing the feedstocks, and processing them into biodiesel. The main issue that is often contested is whether or not we would be able to grow enough crops to provide the vegetable oil (feedstock) for producing the amount of biodiesel that would be required to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel. So, that is the main issue that will be addressed here. The point of this article is not to argue that this approach is the only one that makes sense, or that we should ignore other options (there are some other very appealing options as well, and realistically it makes more sense for a combination of options to be used). Rather, the point is merely to look at one option for producing biodiesel, and see if it would be capable of meeting our needs.
One of the important concerns about wide-scale development of biodiesel is if it would displace croplands currently used for food crops. In the US, roughly 450 million acres of land is used for growing crops, with the majority of that actually being used for producing animal feed for the meat industry. Another 580 million acres is used for grassland pasture and range, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service. This accounts for nearly half of the 2.3 billion acres within the US (only 3% of which, or 66 million acres, is categorized as urban land). For any biofuel to succeed at replacing a large quantity of petroleum, the yield of fuel per acre needs to be as high as possible. At heart, biofuels are a form of solar energy, as plants use photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy stored in the form of oils, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.. The more efficient a particular plant is at converting that solar energy into chemical energy, the better it is from a biofuels perspective. Among the most photosynthetically efficient plants are various types of algaes.
The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this program was to investigate high-oil algaes that could be grown specifically for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production1. The research began as a project looking into using quick-growing algae to sequester carbon in CO2 emissions from coal power plants. Noticing that some algae have very high oil content, the project shifted its focus to growing algae for another purpose - producing biodiesel. Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates. From the results of the Aquatic Species Program2, algae farms would let us supply enough biodiesel to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel in the US (as well as its other main use - home heating oil) - but we first have to solve a few of the problems they encountered along the way.
NREL's research focused on the development of algae farms in desert regions, using shallow saltwater pools for growing the algae. Using saltwater eliminates the need for desalination, but could lead to problems as far as salt build-up in bonds. Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended.
NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.
The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course (and should not for a variety of reasons). The case mentioned above of building it all in the Sonora desert is purely a hypothetical example to illustrate the amount of land required. It would be preferable to spread the algae production around the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks. Algae farms could also be constructed to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms) as a food source, which would provide a beautiful way of spreading algae production around the country. Nutrients can also be extracted from the algae for the production of a fertilizer high in nitrogen and phosphorous. By using waste streams (agricultural, farm animal waste, and human sewage) as the nutrient source, these farms essentially also provide a means of recycling nutrients from fertilizer to food to waste and back to fertilizer. Extracting the nutrients from algae provides a far safer and cleaner method of doing this than spreading manure or wastewater treatment plant "bio-solids" on farmland.
These projected yields of course depend on a variety of factors, sunlight levels in particular. The yield in North Dakota, for example, wouldn't be as good as the yield in California. Spreading the algae production around the country would result in more land being required than the projected 9.5 million acres, but the benefits from distributed production would outweigh the larger land requirement. Further, these yield estimates are based on what is theoretically achievable - roughly 15,000 gallons per acre-year. It's important to point out that the DOE's ASP that projected that such yields are possible, was never able to come close to achieving such yields. Their focus on open ponds was a primary factor in this, and the research groups that have picked up where the DOE left off are making substantial gains in the yields compared to the old DOE work - but we still have a ways to go. But, consider that even if we are only able to sustain an average yield of 5,000 gallons per acre-year in algae systems spread across the US, the amount of land required would still only be 28.5 million acres - a mere fraction still of the total farmland area in the US.
==========
How much land is 100 sq mi:
How much land is 100 miles by 100 miles?
About the same as all the land disturbed by coal mines.
About one-sixth of the area devoted to lawns.
About 1/15 of the area once devoted to raising feed for horses.
Less than 1/30 of the area devoted to parks, wilderness, and wildlife refuges.
Yes, it looks like somebody didn't know the difference between 100 sq mi and 10, 000 sq mi.
Link
Mojave desert = 25000sq miles
Oh nozers Homework:
Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae
Michael Briggs, University of New Hampshire, Physics Department
(revised August 2004)
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. The economic strain on our country resulting from the $100-150 billion we spend every year buying oil from other nations, combined with the occasional need to use military might to protect and secure oil reserves our economy depends on just makes matters worse (and using military might for that purpose just adds to the anti-American sentiment that gives rise to terrorism). Clearly, developing alternatives to oil should be one of our nation's highest priorities.
In the United States, oil is primarily used for transportation - roughly two-thirds of all oil use, in fact. So, developing an alternative means of powering our cars, trucks, and buses would go a long way towards weaning us, and the world, off of oil. While the so-called "hydrogen economy" receives a lot of attention in the media, there are several very serious problems with using hydrogen as an automotive fuel. For automobiles, the best alternative at present is clearly biodiesel, a fuel that can be used in existing diesel engines with no changes, and is made from vegetable oils or animal fats rather than petroleum.
In this paper, I will first examine the possibilities of producing biodiesel on the scale necessary to replace all petroleum transportation fuels in the U.S.
I. How much biodiesel?
First, we need to understand exactly how much biodiesel would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels. So, we need to start with how much petroleum is currently used for that purpose. Per the Department of Energy's statistics, each year the US consumes roughly 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline. First, we need to realize that spark-ignition engines that run on gasoline are generally about 40% less efficient than diesel engines. So, if all spark-ignition engines are gradually replaced with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines for running biodiesel, we wouldn't need 120 billion gallons of biodiesel to replace that 120 billion gallons of gasoline. To be conservative, we will assume that the average gasoline engine is 35% less efficient, so we'd need 35% less diesel fuel to replace that gasoline. That would work out to 78 billion gallons of diesel fuel. Combine that with the 60 billion gallons of diesel already used, for a total of 138 billion gallons. Now, biodiesel is about 5-8% less energy dense than petroleum diesel, but its greater lubricity and more complete combustion offset that somewhat, leading to an overall fuel efficiency about 2% less than petroleum diesel. So, we'd need about 2% more than that 138 billion gallons, or 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel. So, this figure is based on vehicles equivalent to those in use today, but with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines running on biodiesel, rather than a mix of petroleum diesel and gasoline. Combined diesel-electric hybrids in wide use, as well as fewer people driving large SUVs when they don't need such a vehicle would of course bring this number down considerably, but for now we'll just stick with this figure. (note - my point here is not to claim that conservation is not worthwhile, rather to strictly look at the issue of replacing our current use of fuel with biodiesel - to see how achievable that is). I would like to point out though that a preferable scenario would include a shift to diesel-electric hybrid vehicles (preferably with the ability to be recharged and drive purely on electric power for a short range, perhaps 20-40 miles, to provide the option of zero emissions for in-city driving), and with far fewer people buying 6-8,000 pound SUVs merely to commute to work in by themselves. Those changes could drastically reduce the amount of fuel required for our automotive transportation, and are technologically feasibly currently (see for example Chrysler's Dodge Intrepid ESX3, built under Clinton's PNGV program - a full-size diesel electric hybrid sedan that averaged 72 mpg in mixed driving 6, 7).
One of the biggest advantages of biodiesel compared to many other alternative transportation fuels is that it can be used in existing diesel engines without modification, and can be blended in at any ratio with petroleum diesel. This completely eliminates the "chicken-and-egg" dilemma that other alternatives have, such as hydrogen powered fuel cells. For hydrogen vehicles, even when (and if) vehicle manufacturers eventually have production stage vehicles ready (which currently cost around $1 million each to make), nobody would buy them unless there was already a wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system in place. But, no companies would be interested in building that wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system until a significant number of fuel cell vehicles are on the road, so that consumers are ready to start using it. With a single hydrogen fuel pump costing roughly $1 million, installing just one at each of the 176,000 fuel stations across the US would cost $176 billion - a cost that can be completely avoided with liquid biofuels that can use our current infrastructure.
With biodiesel, since the same engines can run on conventional petroleum diesel, manufacturers can comfortably produce diesel vehicles before biodiesel is available on a wide scale - as some manufacturers already are (the same can be said for flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on ethanol, gasoline, or any blend of the two). As biodiesel production continues to ramp up, it can go into the same fuel distribution infrastructure, just replacing petroleum diesel either wholly (as B100, or 100% biodiesel), or blended in with diesel. Not only does this eliminate the chicken-and-egg problem, making biodiesel a much more feasible alternative than hydrogen, but also eliminates the huge cost of revamping the nationwide fuel distribution infrastructure.
II. Large scale production
There are two steps that would need to be taken for producing biodiesel on a large scale - growing the feedstocks, and processing them into biodiesel. The main issue that is often contested is whether or not we would be able to grow enough crops to provide the vegetable oil (feedstock) for producing the amount of biodiesel that would be required to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel. So, that is the main issue that will be addressed here. The point of this article is not to argue that this approach is the only one that makes sense, or that we should ignore other options (there are some other very appealing options as well, and realistically it makes more sense for a combination of options to be used). Rather, the point is merely to look at one option for producing biodiesel, and see if it would be capable of meeting our needs.
One of the important concerns about wide-scale development of biodiesel is if it would displace croplands currently used for food crops. In the US, roughly 450 million acres of land is used for growing crops, with the majority of that actually being used for producing animal feed for the meat industry. Another 580 million acres is used for grassland pasture and range, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service. This accounts for nearly half of the 2.3 billion acres within the US (only 3% of which, or 66 million acres, is categorized as urban land). For any biofuel to succeed at replacing a large quantity of petroleum, the yield of fuel per acre needs to be as high as possible. At heart, biofuels are a form of solar energy, as plants use photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy stored in the form of oils, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.. The more efficient a particular plant is at converting that solar energy into chemical energy, the better it is from a biofuels perspective. Among the most photosynthetically efficient plants are various types of algaes.
The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this program was to investigate high-oil algaes that could be grown specifically for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production1. The research began as a project looking into using quick-growing algae to sequester carbon in CO2 emissions from coal power plants. Noticing that some algae have very high oil content, the project shifted its focus to growing algae for another purpose - producing biodiesel. Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates. From the results of the Aquatic Species Program2, algae farms would let us supply enough biodiesel to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel in the US (as well as its other main use - home heating oil) - but we first have to solve a few of the problems they encountered along the way.
NREL's research focused on the development of algae farms in desert regions, using shallow saltwater pools for growing the algae. Using saltwater eliminates the need for desalination, but could lead to problems as far as salt build-up in bonds. Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended.
NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.
The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course (and should not for a variety of reasons). The case mentioned above of building it all in the Sonora desert is purely a hypothetical example to illustrate the amount of land required. It would be preferable to spread the algae production around the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks. Algae farms could also be constructed to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms) as a food source, which would provide a beautiful way of spreading algae production around the country. Nutrients can also be extracted from the algae for the production of a fertilizer high in nitrogen and phosphorous. By using waste streams (agricultural, farm animal waste, and human sewage) as the nutrient source, these farms essentially also provide a means of recycling nutrients from fertilizer to food to waste and back to fertilizer. Extracting the nutrients from algae provides a far safer and cleaner method of doing this than spreading manure or wastewater treatment plant "bio-solids" on farmland.
These projected yields of course depend on a variety of factors, sunlight levels in particular. The yield in North Dakota, for example, wouldn't be as good as the yield in California. Spreading the algae production around the country would result in more land being required than the projected 9.5 million acres, but the benefits from distributed production would outweigh the larger land requirement. Further, these yield estimates are based on what is theoretically achievable - roughly 15,000 gallons per acre-year. It's important to point out that the DOE's ASP that projected that such yields are possible, was never able to come close to achieving such yields. Their focus on open ponds was a primary factor in this, and the research groups that have picked up where the DOE left off are making substantial gains in the yields compared to the old DOE work - but we still have a ways to go. But, consider that even if we are only able to sustain an average yield of 5,000 gallons per acre-year in algae systems spread across the US, the amount of land required would still only be 28.5 million acres - a mere fraction still of the total farmland area in the US.
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How much land is 100 sq mi:
How much land is 100 miles by 100 miles?
About the same as all the land disturbed by coal mines.
About one-sixth of the area devoted to lawns.
About 1/15 of the area once devoted to raising feed for horses.
Less than 1/30 of the area devoted to parks, wilderness, and wildlife refuges.
Yes, it looks like somebody didn't know the difference between 100 sq mi and 10, 000 sq mi.
Why do you keep posting if I can't read. Show me solar, fool. You understand that algae needs water and stable conditions, right?
I keep posting because you are arrogant and shameless and the whatever embarrassment your stupidity earns you will be good for you in the long run. It helps if others can see how ridiculous you are. The links I posted were about solar. 90 to 100 sq miles to power the nation.
Did you ever decide if you liked your e=mc2 better in the form of fusion or fission?
The handwringing about nuclear waste is much ado about nothing. The waste is kept isolated. No one has died from it, no one is in danger of being harmed by it. Contrast that with the known results of current energy practices that man accepts as the course of daily business: the tailpipe emissions from cars, natural gas explosions, coal power plant emissions. These things kill, these things harm the world we leave future generations, and yet this true danger is what is lived with. It's time for mankind to grow up and realize that the danger from nuclear power is practically nil. The boogeyman associated with it is a tool to continue the status quo.
Moonbeam, you've constructed a fantasy world in your head, where solar power is an idealized solution removed from any real world constraints; a world sustained by your own willful ignorance of the physical and capital realities involved in the energy business. Your immature labeling of anyone involved in engineering as "pinheads" is made ironic by the fact that those very same professionals would be involved in any widescale massive ramp up of solar power, and are currently among those involved in the present solar power industry.
Moonbeam, you've constructed a fantasy world in your head, where solar power is an idealized solution removed from any real world constraints; a world sustained by your own willful ignorance of the physical and capital realities involved in the energy business. Your immature labeling of anyone involved in engineering as "pinheads" is made ironic by the fact that those very same professionals would be involved in any widescale massive ramp up of solar power, and are currently among those involved in the present solar power industry.
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