Future power : pond scum to biodiesel; renewable fuels from algae

http://www.thecherrycreeknews.com/content/view/997/2/ ^ | Tuesday, 23 January 2007

[curiosity]

Interesting, but I have one big question: won't this cut into our supply of fertilizer? You have to put some biological waste back into the soil or else you deplete it of its nutrients. What happens if we burn all our waste in our cars? Doesn't seem very sustainable to me.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

If you had the proper permits, anyone with lets say 5 or more achers of land , could they build a pond with a small dam and use a small hydroelectric generator ?

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

"Algae are the fastest growing organisms on the planet, and can produce 100 times more oil per acre than conventional soil-tilled crops"

Farmers can only work with the the top 6 inches of soil. How deep are the tanks for that 1 acre of alge? 10, 12 feet? How about using one of the tanks they now use to store oil? You can fit a lot more alge in 1 acre because you can work vertically.

[Frohickey]

If they can create energy sources from pond scum, can you just imagine what we could power with Democrats?

That depends on which has a higher energy content... pond scum or Democrats.

I think that Democrats used as fuel would be a non-starter. Democrats are negative energy content.

[Fierce Allegiance]

Sounds like someone finally found a use for Rhode Island.

It says pond scum, not @$$holes.

[Bigh4u2]

"If you had the proper permits, anyone with lets say 5 or more achers of land , could they build a pond with a small dam and use a small hydroelectric generator ?"

Probably. But you would need running water. A pond is stagnant and your paddle wheel would just sit there thinking about the mighty Colorado river!

:0)

[Bigh4u2]

"It says pond scum, not @$$holes."

Yep.

Now, if they were talking 'methane' that would be a different story!

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Not unless the generator is located on the other side of a small dam were there is some running water.
The only problem I see in this, is when the water dries up.

[WestTexasWend]

It's still widely used (and actually in short supply) in Africa and less developed countries, but there's not much demand for manure as fertilizer in the US anymore. It brings in too many weed seeds, and chemical fertilizers are easier to put down and provide more uniform in coverage.

If it were feasible to use it as gasoline replacement it could lead to shortages, but they're using it to power an ethanol plant, and the TX panhandle's produces plenty for that...and then some.

[Bigh4u2]

The poster had stated could they 'build' a pond.

You don't need running water to 'build' a pond because if you hit the 'water table' the pond would eventually fill up, although not completely.

Now if the pond were built at the end of a running stream, then yes, a water paddle with a generator would work.

"The only problem I see in this, is when the water dries up."

Yep. Unless you build it on a mountain stream that is feed from either a glacier or permanent (semi?) snow cap.

[samtheman]

Is there ongoing research on liquifying democrats?

Put a Traitor in Your Tank!

Now we're cooking with gasbags!

[JAKraig]

"Algae are the fastest growing organisms on the planet, and can produce 100 times more oil per acre than conventional soil-tilled crops"
Farmers can only work with the the top 6 inches of soil. How deep are the tanks for that 1 acre of alge? 10, 12 feet? How about using one of the tanks they now use to store oil? You can fit a lot more alge in 1 acre because you can work vertically


Actually these ponds are very shallow, typically about 12 inches deep. One of the most interesting facts that nobody talks about is that not only would the algae absorb carbon dioxide but it would give off as a product of growth, oxygen. Talk about clean.

[JAKraig]

"Algae are the fastest growing organisms on the planet, and can produce 100 times more oil per acre than conventional soil-tilled crops"
Farmers can only work with the the top 6 inches of soil. How deep are the tanks for that 1 acre of alge? 10, 12 feet? How about using one of the tanks they now use to store oil? You can fit a lot more alge in 1 acre because you can work vertically


Actually these ponds are very shallow, typically about 12 inches deep. One of the most interesting facts that nobody talks about is that not only would the algae absorb carbon dioxide but it would give off as a product of growth, oxygen. Talk about clean.

[coloradan]

The same amount of sunlight per acre hits the top 1" of soil as hits a tank 100 feet deep full of algae. If {corn, soybeans, sugar cane, sugar beets, oil palms, etc} successfully converted 10% of the incident solar energy to useable fuel energy, how could the same area of algea ponds possibly do 100x better? There's only a factor of 10 left to reach 100% efficiency. One of two things is mistaken, either my recollection of 10% solar input: energy output with respect to food crops, or that algae is 100x energetically better than food crops are.

[Kevmo]

Congress generates a lot of hot air from pond scum, so if we could just harness that hot air....

[Kevmo]

If they get to 20% efficiency, that would be 100% more than before.

[gcruse]

Pond scum?

What you hear is the sound of a shark jumping. The fuel diversity fad has reached critical mass. Willie Nelson is tipping over.

[Red Badger]

Doctor's appointment with my wife..........

[coloradan]

The claim I quoted above was that algae produced "100x" more oil per acre than food crops, not "100%" more, which I agree would be 2x more. If I'm right that food crops are ~10% efficient, then it would mean algae is 1000% efficient, or 990% more than food crops are. Except that's physically impossible, so something must be wrong - me, or the claim.

[TKDietz]

What are you trying to say? Where are you getting this 1% efficiency nonsense? You're talking about solar cells and comparing electricity equivalent solar energy with fuel produced from crops. You're comparing seed crops with limited growing seasons to simple algae that can be grown year around. Whether we're talking about something like soybeans or rapeseed or sunflowers or whatever, these are plants that have to be spaced out and that have an awful lot of biomass that does not contain oil. The oil is in the seeds. Some of these algae strains they are working with are a good 50% oil and can be grown year around and be continually harvested. You aren't making valid comparisons and you aren't really making any sense.

All these people are saying is that they believe they'll get 100 times as much oil from an acre than current fuel crops. That's not very specific anyway, because our main biodiesel crop, soybeans, will only yield something like 40 or 50 gallons of biodiesel per acre, but there are other crops like rapeseed that we use for biodiesel that will yield a good bit over 100 gallons per acre, and oil palms grown in some parts of the world will yield better than 650 gallons per acre. I don't know what plants they are referring to when they say they'll be able to get 100 times more oil than "conventional soil-tilled crops."

Researchers gung ho about biodiesel from algae believe they'll be able to get many thousands of gallons per acre. I've even heard estimates as optimistic as 50,000 gallons per acre, but most seem to think it will be closer to 10,000 or less. They've already gotten some pretty fantastic yields but it's been too expensive and too hit or miss so far. They haven't been able to get consistent yields on large scale yet. Open ponds haven't worked out well because they are too easily contaminated with wild algae and other things that mess up their algae crops. They've also had problems with temperature sensitivity. They haven't settled on what particular types of algae they'll end up using, or whether they'll use a salt water or fresh or brackish water variety. We really won't know if any of this will work for large scale biodiesel production until it actually happens.

Could the produce several thousand gallons of biodiesel per acre from biodiesel? It actually looks promising. Could they do it at a low enough cost to compete with petro-diesel? That seems like the bigger problem, but maybe someday they'll succeed. There are about 43,560 square feet in an acre, just a hair under 4047 square meters. That's an awful lot of room to play with. Algae is a simple plant that is extremely efficient at photosynthesis. It eats up carbon dioxide and sunlight. It doesn't have a lot of excess parts not dedicated to photosynthesis. It grows quickly and like I said can be continuously harvested, year around if conditions are right. Oil content can be very high and extracting oil from algae has to be easier and take less energy than extracting it from hard seeds they have to crush up after stripping them from the rest of the plant material. Algae can be grown several inches thick, thicker if they have a way of agitating or otherwise moving it such that that farther below the surface will get enough light. Some of it grows fine in the shade. There seems to be a lot of potential.