Algae May Be an Energy Answer

The New American ^ | August 18, 2008 | Ed Hiserodt

[Force of Truth]

You are correct about what will give us energy dependence, but this is only correct when you live in the world of reality. You see, reality is no longer important in America. You see, in America government is God, so whatever the pinhead progressive elitists call reality that is what Americans accept. If Paris Hilton thinks we should all drive paperweights on wheels that run on human farts then that is what the Reality For America is today. Good luck with that truth and sanity thing you seem to be into, Jim.

[count-your-change]

And at $10-$20 per gallon of algae oil I can see that petroleum is doomed. But with volume the price might drop to......? Only three times the cost of petroleum? Twice petroleum? Wonderful hype, terrible economics.

[LomanBill]

[No, my great hope is that we Americans will be allowed to use our own natural resources(drill for oil).]

 

I'm all for Americans utilizing their own Natural Resources - BUT...

 

 

 

 

Who is the #1 Producer of American Oil?  BP PLC, aka British Petroleum.  

 

Somehow, I suspect the writers of the American Declaration of Independence would not be happy that the British are now the #1 producer of American Oil. 

 

Tyranny of the Appetite.

 

 

 

[LomanBill]

>>The enviro-whacko libs would go ballistic.

BTW, Carry_Okie has some very interesting, and surprising, insights regarding who funds the environmentalists.

Check out his post here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/999451/posts?page=67#67

[muffaletaman]

unless one thinks that a thousand square miles of land will be devoted to algae growing in the near future.

I've been in the oil & gas industry my entire career, and specialized in drilling / exploration / technology.

While the amount of recoverable oil at various economic levels is still huge - at least a centuries worth even now - I still believe that the long term solution is genetic / molecular engineering and growing oil in modified plants.

THIS technology is like where computers were in the 60's - we are JUST getting started in undertanding this - let alone use it to engineer things like bio-oil... for example...

Similar to algae, some seaweeds grow 3' a day. And algae itself, of high lipid content is indeed a viable solution, especially with engineering.

Creating an algae with grape-like sacs that are full of vegetable oil, with a 2-4 week maturity cycle, will do the deal.

And as far as land is concerned? NO big deal at all. Why would one think a thousand square miles - 640,000 acres - is a big issue?

10,000 gallons / acre / (42 gallons/bbl oil) = 238 bbls oil per year PER ACRE - at $60/bbl = $14.3K per acre. Not many "legal" drops make this kind of money. For example, an acre of tobacco makes about $4K per acre to the farmer. Opium poppies pay about $4K to $8K per acre at the farm.

In a specialized niche, small pick-ur-own fruit operations on the US east coast can net $20K/acre...

www.fruitgrowersnews.com/pages/arts.php?ns=270

In the US, 60+M acres are used to grow hay, with 20+M to grow alfalfa. They don't make much money doing this.

If we take this alfalfa acreage = 20M acres... AND lets say we only get 10K gallons per acre per year and not the 20K some people claim... This equals 238 bbls per acre per year... which equals on 20M acres, 4.76B bbls/year... Which equals 13M bbls per day.

Which is ALL the oil we import per day...

FROM CIA WORLD FACTBOOK US OIL CONSUMPTION 2004 - 20.8M BBL/DAY US OIL IMPORTS 2004 - 13.15M BBL/DAY

Converting alfalfa to algae, and the US becomes 100% energy independent.

Even if this is only 20% or 30% "true/achievable" it is worth doing.

20M acres = a square 560 miles on each side.

We can do this in Texas all by ourselves, without even needing the rest of the country.

BUT lets say we break this into 20 regions scattered across the country to disperse production and infrastructure risk. You have 20 areas that are 125 miles on a side.

This is simply NOT an impossible task, given the free enterprise reward of getting 238 bbls / acre of oil at "market price".

If the world price fell ALL THE WAY to $35 a bbl with this "algae-oil" economy, that is still $8300 an acre per year income.

On a square mile section, with 10% held out for roads, gathering equipment, etc. - the is STILL $4.75M per year per square mile growing algae.

I will take THAT deal any day!!!

Now all I need to do is invent and patent an algae-grape-rapeseedoil hybrid...

[count-your-change]

We have a source of radiation, the sun, to grow plants and one doesn't need radiation proof skivvies to harvest the crop.
“The Fuel That Glows For The Car That Goes” is catchy though.

[jonrick46]

This is a good summary of the algae oil technology

[larry hagedon]

I too have been reading all the research articles I can find on Green Algae. It is for real. This article is a bit behind on the technology; for instance PetroSun is not just planning a 1,100 acre growing system, they are in production.

Many of the probems this author mentions have now been solved.

They are now putting green algae to fuel processing systems on board large ships, to reduce fueling costs and to extend cruising range. They are or soon wil be straining wild algae from the water as they cruise.

It is no longer a secret that the Department of Defense is very heavily invested in green algae, tho many of the details are top secret. The DOD is the largest US consumer of transportation fuel.

Gasoline and diesel fuels, delivered to hot battle fields, is known to cost the DOD around 100 dollars a gallon. They will be, and probably already are, making bio-fuels from green algae on board ships near those war zones for much less than that. As oil shipping winds down, those huge tankers will be converted to green algae to fuel factories.

Several companies are now using green algae to make bio ethanol, methane, bio butanol, bio crude oil, bio gasolne, bio diesel, home heating bio gas and bio fuel oil, ship bunker fuel and bio aviation fuel, propeller and jet.

Many of these companies are now producing various bio fuels from green algae for under a dollar a gallon, some for less than 50 cents a gallon, and new breakthrus in technology are a daily event.

There are hundreds of new green algae production plants now under construction and on the drawing boards world wide.

I dont believe in man made global warming, but I am for cleaning up coal plant emissions, and running the stack smoke thru green algae growing ponds or production tubes do that. Algae is a natural to mate up with Ethanol distillaries to clean up the waste water and eat up the CO2 they produce.

They are using green algae to clean up the emissions from all kinds of industrial and sewage pollution and to make any kind of fuel they want while doing it. The massive tar sands project in Canada uses green algae ponds to clean up the spilled oil and runoff. Green algae also works great in petroleum refineries and sewage treatment plants.

It takes a lot of water to refine petroleum and they have to clean it up before dumping it. Green algae does that.

Green algae fuel production is here to stay.

larry hagedon
AmericanFlexFuelExperience@yahoogroups.com

[jonrick46]

I would be interested in your insight as to what problems in information you found in the article.

[LomanBill]

[Algae is a natural to mate up with Ethanol distillaries to clean up the waste water and eat up the CO2 they produce.]

 

Excellent.  That should make some nervous SD pick-and-shovel (ethanol infrastructure) owning farmers happy ;-)

 

Thanks for the post Larry.

 

=Bill

[BlazingArizona]

3) Seize overseas oil fields and incorporate them as US territories (Mexico and Venezuela would be easiest, SA, not so much).

If we can accomplish your points (1) and (2), then 3 would be counterproductive. Why take the political hit for seizing something that (1) and (2) makes worthless?

[LomanBill]

[I've been in the oil & gas industry my entire career, and specialized in drilling / exploration / technology.

While the amount of recoverable oil at various economic levels is still huge - at least a centuries worth even now - I still believe that the long term solution is genetic / molecular engineering and growing oil in modified plants.

{snip}

If the world price fell ALL THE WAY to $35 a bbl with this "algae-oil" economy, that is still $8300 an acre per year income.

On a square mile section, with 10% held out for roads, gathering equipment, etc. - the is STILL $4.75M per year per square mile growing algae.

I will take THAT deal any day!!!  ]

Outstanding post from an Oil industry insider.

Always amazed at the diversity and dept of the expertise here on FR.

Thanks for the Post!

[ Now all I need to do is invent and patent an algae-grape-rapeseedoil hybrid...]

Can we grow it in our gardens? ;-)

=Bill

 

 

[count-your-change]

Having been in any industry, and the oil and gas industry in particular, you know income is only half the story. The other half is production costs. A $14,000 or $140,000 income per acre is meaningless if the costs of obtaining that income is equal to or larger than the income itself.
Farmers can earn a profit on low income crops when their costs of production are low too so comparing hay or poppies to algae really doesn't work if algae oil production costs are unknown.
No one discusses the cost of production of algae oil because it is going to be so high in comparison to production of oil from other sources that it isn't a serious competitor.
Like the 300 mile/gallon carburetor the “algae will replace imported oil” process just needs a little tweaking to work, tweaking like vastly reducing production costs.
Then there is opportunity costs, the same amount of money going into oil shale and/or coal would produce more oil at less costs and the country has plenty of both. Short and long term.
Algae is like opera, it's even worse than it sounds.

[LomanBill]

[Farmers can earn a profit on low income crops when their costs of production are low too so comparing hay or poppies to algae really doesn't work if algae oil production costs are unknown.]

 

Larry, you seem to have addressed some of the issues raised by CYC?

[Wonder Warthog]

"And at $10-$20 per gallon of algae oil I can see that petroleum is doomed. But with volume the price might drop to......? Only three times the cost of petroleum? Twice petroleum? Wonderful hype, terrible economics."

And what would petroleum cost if it were produced in the current small quantities that algae oil is??? The price-shrinking effect of "economies of scale" are incredible.

[GBA]

There are many very interesting technologies, oil producing algae for one, but many others including PV films, new batteries, etc., in the works that could be ready for prime time in 10 years or less. We have had the industrial revolution, the information age and next will be a revolution in energy. Imagine a world with cheap, abundant clean energy! We won't have to imagine it; we will live it.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Nope, just very interested in the potential. My personal familiarity with algae is trying to kill the stuff in a swimming pool, and while that sounds silly, there are some very interesting trivia surrounding it.

In my city, there are a lot of phosphates in the recycled water, which while harmless to humans is fertilizer to algae(*), meaning that the use of chlorine and algaecide are much greater than typical. But add to that my close proximity to a large, algae-ridden, man made lake, which generates enormous, if invisible clouds of spores, and most swimming pools in the area are green or brown.

To *stop* algae from growing is a full time job. It is the flip side to actually want it to grow.

(*) This was why the use of phosphates in laundry detergent was banned in the 1960s, as its runoff was causing algae blooms in fresh water that would de-oxygenate it and kill fish. Its use continued long after in dishwasher detergent (because it was exempted, dishwashers not being as popular then). Phosphates are also used in PVC pipe sealant, which adds a lot to both fresh water and sewage.

I will add to phosphates, that when you bubble CO2 and NOx gases through warm algae water, you get such tremendous algae growth that you can almost watch it.

I’ve tried to imagine what I would think to be the “ideal” algae farm for the southwestern US, and this is pretty much how I’ve imagined it.

First imagine a plowed farm field, with rows connected together accordion style, making one continuous path. In each row is a continuous shallow tub, just a few inches deep. At the bottom of each tub are “bubble strips” of plastic tube with little holes to bubble CO2 and NOx gases into the water. (The US Olympic swimming team uses such bubble strips to bubble oxygen gas into their pools to kill algae, as oxygen is far less irritating to the eyes and skin than is chlorine.)

The water flowing in a continuous path through the accordion tub is low quality water, whatever is available, likely recycled effluent. The water flows in one end, then out the other to be reused after being filtered.

Along the side of the top of the tub are runners and a conveyor belt trough. A small harvester goes the length of the tub and back, scooping up the algae and dumping it on the conveyor belt for processing.

One bit of high technology used would be that the tubs would be covered with “self-cleaning clear glass”. This is a new product made because of nanotechnology. A coating is sprayed on the glass that prevents grime or even water from sticking to it. The purpose of this low maintenance barrier is to keep foreign algae out of the tanks, yet to let in sunlight.

Otherwise, depending on the outdoor temperature, there might be a holding tank for the water that either slightly heats or cools it, when the temperature outside is either too cool or two warm.

Other than that, electronic monitoring of water temperature and salts, as well as trace amounts of growth enhancing fertilizer, and this should give maximum output with minimum cost.

[count-your-change]

Then reasonably one would apply those economies of scale to technology we have experience with like coal and/or oil shale that shows much more promise than algae oil. Even sewage to methane gas/oil has the benefit of turning a waste stream into several usable products and there is no shortage of feed stock.
Can you think of one advantage algae oil has that does not exist at lower cost in the use something else?

[Reeses]

Using algae for fuel forms a CO2 closed loop so unlimited amounts can be used. Coal and shale are one way and come with large amounts of extra CO2 emissions. We’re fine for now but if the world continues to catch up with America’s standard of living we’ll need closed loop or zero-emission technologies.

[theymakemesick]

The article has alot of wrong information in it

For example?

For example: Iowa, with an average insolation (the rate at which the sun’s radiation strikes a surface) of 170 watts per square meter,...

The global average is 1000 watts/meter^2

And: This green crude does not have the drawbacks of biodiesel, which needs special care in its storage, transport, and use (being no more than high-grade plant or vegetable oil

Biodiesel is made by putting biological oils (plant and animal) through a de-esterfication process, basically removing liquid plastic from it, it's a chemical reaction that requires using lye and ethanol. It is much more than "high-grade plant or vegetable oil".

I don't know if the author is ill-informed or deliberately misleading his audience because of an agenda, but he is definitely publishing incorrect information.

Cheers