The power of pond scum

[werepossum]

Thought this was interesting. Very short article on using algae to produce light sweet crude; I snipped only a portion.

http://www.edn.com/electronics-blog...scum?cid=Newsletter+-+EDN+on+Power+Technology

The potential of algae-based biofuel has long been known, but not seriously considered largely because making a barrel of the stuff was too expensive compared to traditional fossil fuels.

“Everyone understands that you have to be able to ship a product at a competitive price with fossil fuels,” Kassebaum said.

1970’s research on algae-based biofuels was conducted and the price of a barrel of oil was around $20. Today, oil is around $80 with recent spikes over $100 a barrel, a price range where algae fuel producers believe than can compete.

Doing so, Kassebaum noted, will take major capital investment and perhaps government support to enable the industry to produce commercially viable quantities, but in the coming years he believes algae “will become part of the oil industry.”

The industry will still need to confront concerns such as water supplies – perhaps by producing algae in parts of the country where water supplies are abundant, such as the Midwest, where Algaeon is located.

The U.S. could produce enough of the algae-derived fuel to eliminate 48 percent of the fuel it currently imports for transportation needs, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But doing so would require 5.5 percent of the land area in the lower 48 states and consume about three times the water currently used to irrigate crops.

The Midwest, Kassebaum noted, is already rich with corn, much of it grown for ethanol.

Kasselbaum also said “An acre of corn can be used to generate 300 gallons of ethanol per year, while an acre of algae can produce 6,000 to 10,000 gallons of light sweet crude oil annually.”

Honestly, the only advantage corn-based ethanol has over algae-based light sweet crude is Iowa's early Presidential caucus. Hopefully this can be combined with our sewage output - algae doesn't grow without nutrients, and growing bacteria to break down sewage (major by-product - CO2) seems much inferior to growing algae to break down sewage (major by-products - O2 and high grade oil.) Algae is also much less susceptible to damage from weather and has a much more evenly distributed harvest. And being both more dense and not a direct competitor to food crops - algae needs sun, water and nutrients, but not necessarily prime farmland - growing algae for fuel should have much less effect on food crop prices.

Now if we can just arrange things so that the excess nutrients we dump into the oceans are instead dumped into algae production . . .

 

[alzan]

It does look interesting. The amount of water it would take is a concern though; could the water used be recycled/reused to produce more algae or filtered back to potable water?

I would think that developing biofuel from algae could be viable along our coastlines; the sewage that normally gets dumped in the ocean could be diverted to biofuel facilities. Facilities near large metropolitan areas would effectively kill two birds with one stone; less or no landfill usage/ocean-dumping and a pro-active use for the large amounts of sewage. A facility near Washington D.C. could potentially produce huge amounts of fuel, considering all the sewage.

Fossil fuels are only going to get more expensive as developed and developing nations compete for finite resources.

 

[dmcowen674]

The power of pond scum

There is scum alright but it has nothing to do with the green stuff in the water.

It's the Execs behind the desks.

 

[rayfieldclement]

Sorry I am for Hydrogen the last 10-15 years.

 

[techs]

I thought this was a Karl Rove thread.

 

[DrPizza]

Sorry I am for Hydrogen the last 10-15 years.

That's nice. Hydrogen isn't a fuel source though. It's merely a means of transporting energy. You still need an energy source, so what you would be in favor of is burning the algae for the energy necessary to create hydrogen? I suppose though that in a way, the vast majority of our "fuels" can be viewed the same way - the source of the energy is ultimately the sun. Do you have a better way of changing sunlight into hydrogen than there is for changing sunlight into the energy in bio-diesel?

 

[Ventanni]

The U.S. could produce enough of the algae-derived fuel to eliminate 48 percent of the fuel it currently imports for transportation needs, according to researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But doing so would require 5.5 percent of the land area in the lower 48 states and consume about three times the water currently used to irrigate crops.

I, for one, would love our nation to expand on algae based fuels, but I don't think we have the water supplies for it. Currently our farming practices uses approximately 70% of our water resources already, and we're rapidly depleting water tables faster than they can recharge.

It's the same thing with hydrogen fuels, err, hydrogen carriers. The steam reforming process of creating pure hydrogen doesn't bypass the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, so what's the point. The electrolysis method of creating pure hydrogen just splits hydrogen and oxygen from pure water, which goes back to the main point; we should be avoiding any process that contributes to our already heavily taxed water supplies.

Heck, considering how much water growing corn uses, we should be avoiding that too.

 

[davmat787]

There is scum alright but it has nothing to do with the green stuff in the water.

It's the Execs behind the desks.

Does this include the execs of Algeon, the company mentioned in the OP that is behind this algae to biofuel technology?

They are not all meany poopy heads McOwned, no matter how many times you interject these simpleton comments into threads, where they don't really belong either.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Now just imagine if we had gone after solutions like this over the last 100 years instead of plodding along believing that oil would just magically continue to be produced at the rates we see. I wonder what a 2012 Tucker automobile would look like, what it would run on.

Sorry to derail but the auto industry is a shining example of the fat cats running this country into the ground.

 

[EagleKeeper]

There is scum alright but it has nothing to do with the green stuff in the water.

It's the Execs behind the desks.

Including those that attempt to start up a saloon

 

[werepossum]

I, for one, would love our nation to expand on algae based fuels, but I don't think we have the water supplies for it. Currently our farming practices uses approximately 70% of our water resources already, and we're rapidly depleting water tables faster than they can recharge.

It's the same thing with hydrogen fuels, err, hydrogen carriers. The steam reforming process of creating pure hydrogen doesn't bypass the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, so what's the point. The electrolysis method of creating pure hydrogen just splits hydrogen and oxygen from pure water, which goes back to the main point; we should be avoiding any process that contributes to our already heavily taxed water supplies.

Heck, considering how much water growing corn uses, we should be avoiding that too.

I can see two Holy Grail applications within algae-based oils. The first would be sewage treatment, where the water is already necessary. The second would be salt-water algae, as we have a virtually unlimited supply of salt water. In the eastern to central southern states though we have lots of water and aren't significantly drawing down our underground aquifers because the vast majority of our water is drawn from surface sources. In the end though, water is probably going to be our limiting factor unless and until fusion power makes electricity cheap enough for desalination on a massive scale.

I like hydrogen power too, but unless and until we come up with a cheap way to split salt water for its hydrogen, we're limited to off-peak production from nuclear or hydro plants. And while I'd love to see a lot more nuclear plants in this country, there too we're limited by water scarcity. Takes a LOT of water to cool current nuclear plant designs, which decimates riverine ecosystems - not that we have a lot of suitable rivers which aren't already dammed. Hopefully a new generation of nuclear plants not requiring water cooling will be designed, or even better we'll get a LOT better at trapping and utilizing waste heat. Really, waste heat isn't so different from solar, just longer waves.

One big advantage of algae-base oil over hydrogen is that little or no modifications of our existing petroleum-based infrastructure would be required. Hydrogen is much less energy dense and would require engines made of non-rusting parts as well as storage and dispensing equipment for a pressurized gas rather than a relatively non-volatile liquid.