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Filling Up On Algae
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 29, 2005 09:31 PM
from the why-doesn't-nasa-ever-return-my-calls dept.
from the why-doesn't-nasa-ever-return-my-calls dept.
grqb writes "News.com is reporting that GreenFuel Technologies, a Cambridge, Mass. based start-up, is using algae fed with sunlight, water and emissions from power plants to make biodiesel. The benefits are that heavy polluters can cut back on their emissions and at the same time make biodiesel. The algae consumes carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and they also break down nitrogen oxide, reducing the amount of polluting gas released. Once the algae are grown, the conversion to biodiesel is a relatively simple process. The company uses technology licensed from a NASA project. The only barrier now is to prove that it is economically viable."
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Tsk! Tsk! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tsk! Tsk! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not American, so hopefully I can get away with linking to www.greasecar.com [greasecar.com]
If you're interested in running your vehicle on biodeisel or straight vegatable oil, it's a good place to start reading. Very interesting stuff..
Parent
Re:Tsk! Tsk! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tsk! Tsk! (Score:3, Informative)
Producing biodiesel is inefficient; instead of relying on the diatoms' natural energy storage mechanisms (petroleum), you take sugar from other sources, ferment it into alcohol, and react the alcohol (and NaOH) with the lipids from the algae to produce readily combustible fatty acid esters. It's not very efficient no matter what method you use - you're losin
Reality crashes the party (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that this process is not "environmentally friendly". Even if it could consume the entire exhaust of a coal-fired powerplant, it is still an open-cycle system runn
Re:Tsk! Tsk! (Score:3, Funny)
Just like solar? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just like solar? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a side benefit, it releases no net CO2 (burning - photosynthesis = 0). Just pray that the cost of oil continues to rise. At roughly $3.50 per gallon diesel, biodiesel will be more economical. Economies of scale will take over and old-diesel will be history.
Parent
Re:Just like solar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Biodiesel is solar. It uses solar energy to convert CO2 and water into vegetable oils. It requires sunlight just like photovoltaic solar cells. Its key advantage over photovoltaics and batteries is that it stores the energy in a way which will work with our existing infrastructure (internal combustion engines).
Conversion losses (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that biodiesel has enormous inefficiencies compared to PV and batteries.
Canola is a popular oilseed crop for biodiesel. I did a quick look, and found that the yield of canola is around 1.26 tonnes/ha and is around 40% oil by weight [google.com]. This means that a hectare of canola will give about 0.50 tons of oil; if the weight of oil and the
it still emits CO2 (Score:3, Insightful)
So this is not an end-all solution to global warming, it only can halve the CO2 emissions, and we probably will need more.
Re:Just like solar? (Score:3, Insightful)
No net CO2, but the buck has to stop somewhere.
If Ye Olde Polluting Company (YOPC) decides to use their extra carbon emissions to make biodiesel when they would normally have been forced to cut carbon emissions altogether because of environmental laws, then some CO2 has still been added to the system. If YOPC decides to build a new factory when it wouldn't have done so otherwise because of the cost savings and lack of environmental
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many brilliant projects have failed to meet that last hurdle.
It will be economically viable, one day (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It will be economically viable, one day (Score:3, Informative)
I've calculated, though, that if I homebrewed it, I'd be paying $1.30 a gallon (bulk veggie oil is ~$1/gal, the amount of methanol required would be about $.30/gal...) plus I'll have more glycerine than I'll know what to do with. *grin*
obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
2)???
poor the contents of the aquarium into gas tank
4)PROFIT!
Re:obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Those poor contents... on the road to combustion. How sad.
Algea - Diesel?? (Score:2)
Are they just going to toss it into a TDP plant (think turkey guts article from a while back) or some other technology specific to algea?
Re:Algea - Diesel?? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Algea - Diesel?? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Algea - Diesel?? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
That's nice but... (Score:4, Interesting)
3-meter-high glass tubes fashioned as a triangle--to grow algae
How much biodiesel do you expect to get out of a 3-meter-high glass tube? Sounds to me like you'd need one hell of a lot of those just to fill one biodiesel 18-wheeler.
I definitely applaud this step in the right direction, but it seems there would be much easier and more efficient ways to reduce emissions, without having to use the guise of obtaining a pinch of "biodiesel."
--
Fairfax Underground: Message board and public record search for Fairfax County, VA [fairfaxunderground.com]
Re:That's nice but... (Score:5, Informative)
Sunlight's energy content is about 1 kilowatt per square meter.
Assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, and assuming the tube has an average cross section to the sunlight of 3 m^2, that gives us a theoretical maximum of:
12 hrs * 3 m^2 * 1 kw/m^2 = 36 kw hr per tube per day.
Or just under one gallon per tube. And that's assuming 100% efficiency. Biological processes usually have very high energy efficiencies (>80% IIRC), but some of that energy will be needed to maintain the algae's internal life functions (growth, repair, etc), so I'll use 50% as a rough estimate.
At 50%, you'll need two tubes per gallon. Standard tanker trucks carry 5000 gallons, so you'll need 10000 tubes to fill a truck per day. Assume a 2.25 m^2 footprint (to make the math easy), that's a 22500 m^2 tube farm, or an area 150 m on a side. A little more than five and a half acres, or exactly 2.25 hectares.
Parent
Re:That's nice but... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:That's nice but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't that make you want to check the calculations?
Is biodiesel the answer? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm very unsure of the second choice's long-term viability as well as its efficacy in reducing pollution levels. After all, it is still burning the fuel and releasing those emissions back into the atmosphere. Forests act as carbon sinks. They absorb excess carbon from the atmosphere and release oxygen so we can breathe. However, when a tree dies, all that absorbed carbon is rereleased into the environment. Burning an oil derived from a carbon sink (like the algae described in the article) only takes excess pollutants from one place and puts it somewhere else. In this case it puts it directly back into the atmosphere as the result of combustion.
The road ahead is long, but eventually we need to wean ourselves off of oil. As a pollutant it is second to none. As a political lever, it is a threat to the sovereignty of any nation that is dependent on its import. As a resource, it is limited and will one day run to levels insufficient to support our current usage.
BTW, the text captchas are getting harder and harder to read
Re:Is biodiesel the answer? (Score:5, Informative)
But, in saying this, growing crops for fuel is just not sustainable, for one thing it requires a lot of land, for another it sucks up all of the soil nutrients and so you can't continue to grow crops in the same location indefinitely.
But there are a couple of things that are being done about this problem. For instance, the biotech industry doesn't want to use corn/wheat directly, they focusing on using the waste streams [thewatt.com] of agricultural products (such as corn stover) to extract sugars using advanced enzyme systems. We can also make ethanol from by products of making paper [thewatt.com] using the same techniques.
Parent
Re:Is biodiesel the answer? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, in saying this, growing crops for FOOD is just not sustainable, for one thing it requires a lot of land, for another it sucks up all of the soil nutrients and so you can't continue to grow crops in the same location indefinitely.
Re:Is biodiesel the answer? (Score:5, Informative)
Thermal depolymerization and this algae farming *might* be practical, but conventional crops to ethanol is a waste of time (or, at least, is not worth subsidising on environmental grounds).
Parent
Re:Is biodiesel the answer? (Score:2)
Long term viability? How do you think algae grows? By taking carbon dioxide out of the air (or out of a factory's waste stream). Combusting the algae removes oxygen from the air and releases carbon dioxide. The amount of oxygen required to combust the algae is the same that the algae put into the atmosphere during its growth. The amount of carbon dioxide released is the same as the algae removed from the atmosphere during its growth. The net change is zero. The energy input is the sun, and like almost
step 2 (Score:3, Informative)
Step 2: refine into biodiesel
Step 3: Profit!
I always thought step 2 was the hard part, because it requires methanol (biodiesel is basically a methanol-fatty acid ester), and methanol is tough to make. It gets made by cracking petroleum catalytically at very high temperatures and pressures, which takes a lot of energy. Where are these people getting their methanol?
Similar technology - Methane Farming... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article linked above : We (in INDIA) have the world's largest livestock population of 250 million, which produces close to 125 million tonnes of cowdung. Using this we can produce enough methane gas to entirely replace LPG and kerosene in cooking, and substitute petrol in transportation. Methane gas can also generate enough electricity to meet all requirements, at least in rural areas. The by-product can serve as excellent organic manure, substituting chemical fertilisers which require LNG as feedstock.
Re:Similar technology - Methane Farming... (Score:2)
Just don't burn the diesel (Score:2)
Re:Just don't burn the diesel (Score:2)
If the choice is between burning biodiesel or burning petroleum-derived diesel; the biodiesel is much cleaner. In any case, there's all manner of funky new anti-pollution gear for diesels coming on line soon; one of the more important types are particulate filters [bosch.com].
But, in any case, you sound like a global warming denialist, so having a rational discussion on pollution with you is pretty much impossible anyway...
Re:Just don't burn the diesel (Score:3, Informative)
But what about the perfect lock-step match between temperatures and atmospheric CO2 you ask? Easy. People talk about the tundra permafrost melting and releasing CO2 and su
Wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
However, you are right in terms of your observations of present diesel vehicle emissions. Until relatively recently, diesel particulate emissions were pretty much unregulated. That's changing rapidly. New diesels are a hell of a lot cleaner than the old ones.
Re:Wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, what is coming is what is called catalytic diesel particulate traps. These are traps that catalytically oxidize the particulates. By 2007 most countries will require them. It also requires use of low sulfur fuel so that catalyst is not poisoned, which is also part of the 2007 conversion.
I imagine that biodeisel is low sulfer, so these catalytic filters could be used on biodiesel.
Nova ran a show on this technology (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nova ran a show on this technology (Score:2)
Viable? Just wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, but that's not so much of an issue. It can reasonably be assumed that the process will become more efficient as time passes and throughput increases, and oil will, of course, become more expensive. As these two trends progress, it can't help but become cost effective. It's only a question of *how* cost effective and when.
Well, that and how long it is before I replace my aging 240sx with a TDI Jetta. I'm fairly certain those can be cheaply adapted to run biodiesel, yes?
Re:Viable? Just wait. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Viable? Just wait. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you always ran bio no change is needed
Makes more sense than hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)
For biodiesel, all the steps except generation are already solved and the infrastructure in place, and the generation problems do not seem large. (Even without the existing infrastructure, I suspect biodiesel wins economically.)
Generation from algae is particularly promising, as it doesn't require arable land, and can use salt water.
Article [wikipedia.org] on biodiesel.
At last... (Score:3, Funny)
Biodiesel algae - a 'power plant' a mother could love.
And soon, no doubt . . . Soylent Green - putting people to work...
Where are the numbers? (Score:5, Informative)
What I have see are numbers that make the whole proposition somewhat marginal without advances in genetics of algae.
To get an idea of what you are going to get out an optimal system (using Calchemy's Unicalc [calchemy.com]):
.8gm_oil/cm^3; .6gm_prepressed_oil/gm_algae; .7gm_oil/gm_prepressed_oil?$/(acre*month)
50$/barrel_oil; 50gm_algae/(m^2*day);
= 1016.17 $/(acre*month)
Please check for any errors, but it appears that under optimal conditions, meaning a sunny desert with warm nights year round and algae production consistently at the height achieved by ASP during their 20 year study, using a species modified to produce optimal oil and a consistently high price for oil, one can get $1000 per acre per month.
We have $1000/month to make this realistic and to pay the rest of the expenses of the operation per acre.
A covering will eat into that $1000 in two ways:
1) Amortization (which has to be fast)
2) Solar flux reduction
Let's take out the solar flux from the covering first and say we lose 30% leaving us with $700 for the rest of the operation. Let's further say that we need half of that for expenses other than structure amortization, leaving us with $350. If we assume commercial lending rates of around 12% and zero amortization -- just debt service, we can afford $35,000 to cover an acre so with amortization it drops to sometning more like $10,000 to cover an acre.
Covering these ponds sounds problematic under optimal conditions, let alone constructing bioreactors -- and we haven't even gone to climates with less total solar flux.
Recalculating for volumetric production of oil:
50gm_dry_algae/(m^2*day); .8gm_oil/cm^3; .6gm_prepressed_oil/gm_dry_algae; .7gm_oil/gm_prepressed_oil?gal/(yard^2*month)
= 0.17636 gal/(yard^2*month)
What this says is that the best you can expect, under optimal species and growth conditions, of any algae-oil system that relies on the sun for its energy, is for each square yard of solar-exposed pond to produce just over a fifth of a gallon of pressed lipid oil each month -- which you must then process into biodiesel through the normal methods. If you find other energy sources you can feed to algae, you might beat this but algae are optimized to consume solar energy so you have to be very skeptical of any claims that exceed this productivity level and really find out where the energy is coming from and how the algae are metabolizing it.
Let me try to break down the parameters of the calculation:
50gm_dry_algae/(m^2*day)
This is the target productivity figure given by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's review of the last 25 years of algae biodiesel work. It basically says for a given area, how much dry algae you should be able to get out of an _optimal_ system per day -- optimal climate, species, solar flux at pond surface, etc. If you can economically create these conditions in your "back yard" then you can get that level of productivity. Find the NREL's review at:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf [nrel.gov]
.8gm_oil/cm^3;
This is the density, or specific gravity of diesel. Diesel isn't quite as dense as water. This probably should have been the density of lipid oil but I didn't have that figure handy.
.6gm_prepressed_oil/gm_dry_algae;
The _highest_ oil content, of oil-producing algae reported by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's review, was 60%. This presumes algae grown under their high rate goal of 50gm_dry_algae/(m^2*day) but this growth rate has yet to be achieved with this high, 60% oil content (to the best of my current reading of the NREL report).
.7gm_oil/gm_prepressed_oil
This is a fairly optimistic 70% fig
methane (Score:4, Interesting)
Neat but who cares if it won't make a dent... (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as oil supplies go, we are totally, royally and majorly fscked.
This is SO OLD! (Score:3, Insightful)
josh tickell (don;t laugh, it's his real name)talked about this in his book From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank [biodieselamerica.org]. thats 8 years ago!
he drove around in a painted mini-winnebago promoting bio/veggie burning waste oil for fuel.
the notion is that algea are about 90% water, and on the order of 5% oils. growing the algea on large shallow ponds is cheap and easy. reduction of the algea into oils is pretty easy with centrfuges. then making it into bio while simple, is very energy intensive, heat it up to react, use nasty chemicals made with lots of energy etc.
the end result was it was very energy intensive to make bioD, to make it economically viable. was, still is.
you are best off reading more at biodieselamerica.org [biodieselamerica.org]
before you start wining about diesel 'soot,' soot is caused by excessive SULPHER in the fuel. bioD has no sulpher, so huge reductions in emissions. USLD will allegedly be here in a couple of years.
some of us ARE getting 45+ mpg in regular non-hybrid cars using regular diesel, bio, WVO/SVO plant oils. 25+ in 3/4 p/u. what do you drive? are you still driving mommy's SUV?
figures how an out of work rocket scientist instead of a truely green pioneer gets the press and the seed money.
that's america for you.
Hahaha (Score:3, Interesting)
I have heard this exact same claim made of of
And now I get to add biodiesel to the list.
(I guess biodiesel is really just an organic solar panel anyway)
You know what, in every instance it's a myth, every one of those produces significantly more energy over its lifespan than it takes to manufacture - with the possible exception of a solar panel in the arc