Posted on 12/25/2013 3:51:31 AM PST by neverdem
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are pioneering a process that produces oil from algae in just one hour. Wet algae goes in, heat and pressure is applied, and crude oil comes out. From the PNNL itself:
“It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher,” said [Douglas Elliott, the laboratory fellow who led the PNNL team's research]. “In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.”
The process can only handle 1.5 liters of algal slurry at a time, but researchers are confident that in can be scaled up. Plenty of other teams and companies are working on generating energy from algae, but this new process marks a significant step forward in the field for a few reasons. First, it can be run continuously, rather than batch-by-batch, making it easier to mass produce. Second, the algae input doesn’t need to be dried out—an expensive process—but can go in as a wet slurry. The process also produces water and important nutrients necessary for growing algae which can then be reused.
Making our own oil from algae would be great—the process is green, insofar as the carbon released by burning the resultant oil is offset by carbon used in the algae production process. And it’s sustainable, in that we can keep growing more algae to produce more oil. But, like every other green energy source, its future depends on whether or not it can be commercially produced at cost-effective levels. This method isn’t ‘there’ yet, but researchers are making impressive strides.
Note that the PNNL is operated by the Department of Energy. Reports like this one are a reminder that governments are best-served allocating money towards the research and development of nascent green technologies rather than by subsidizing them and trying to pick winners in the marketplace.
How you gonna SCARE people into funding BASIC research?
Ya gotta have WARMING!!!
CARBON!!!
aids...
See what I mean?
Mono-nucleidic Growth in Projected Fossil Remnants ain't gonna garner NO grant money!
I am not a naysayer on principle, but I “is an injuneer” and there are hurdles for algae oil. I think those hurdles could be surmounted, but if so, it will NOT be from government involvement. It will be from private enterprise doing what private enterprise does best.
The worst hurdle: the water needed. Algae need water to live and those water molecules contribute atoms to the final product. The math has been done and America wouldn’t be able to come up with enough fresh water in its current state to make a dent in the oil situation. This could be solved if someone comes up with an algae that will grow in salt water, which can be had from the ocean. This is a bioengineering issue. In order to keep from sliming the oceans with the stuff, I’d want this algae to require something else in its environment that has to be manually added to the growing water and is not present in natural seawater.
Tain't no count lest the GUMMINT funds it!
Because, ya know, it’s GOD.
The space program is the only possible exception. There were a bunch of things that were claimed to be from the space program, but I know of few if any widely used technologies that were not mainly from good old terrestrial free enterprise. Even the internet really didn’t get to the scope it has now until the private firms started jumping in for the sake of, argh, the money.
I never heard of the Watson research center before, but I know about it now, thanks to Google.
It is an applied research, not a basic research, facility. IBM funds it because it has a reasonable expectation that the results of this applied research will translate into improved products and profits later on down the road.
Many companies fund applied research. Very few fund any kind of basic research, and those that do, earmark it for very specific types of research.
Research funding—basic and applied—also comes from private endowments, which also typically earmark funds for very specific areas of research.
As a scientist, however, I am not limited by the desires of those providing the funding. For a government grant, I only need to write up a grant application and show that I have a solid plan of study which is scientifically sound. If I want funding from a private or corporate source, I have to explain in my grant application how my research advances their goals. Either way, I am free to choose the type of research I want to do.
Basic research is conducted for the purpose of determining fundamental physical mechanisms, thereby expanding the knowledge base.
Applied research uses the fundamental knowledge learned in basic research to develop useful drugs, processes, or products.
Well... I could also count in military efforts. Because of all the whizbang missiles and such, we do have better civilian electronics. War and defense are legitimate constitutional duties. The mail is as well, but I don’t think the USPS really strained technology to the point it had to be evolved. I don’t know about space exploration, but there is something to be said for the seemliness of having it coordinated on a national and international level, lest every Tom, Dick, and Harry fill the stratosphere with space junk.
Of COURSE!
Al Gore did the math!!
Do not misinterpret my use of scientific language. As a scientist, I almost never state anything definitively. When I use a word like "suggests", I mean that all evidence available to me supports that statement.
You could use magnifying glasses... which start fires on ant piles... sheets of 1” glasses wrapped around the algae tank.
You are correct that article I read dealt with clinical studies. But I also recall some news recently of basic researchers being caught in falsifying research.
But I will have to stick to my guns and say that it would be better for science if the government was out of the business of selecting what research gets funded and what does not. Government could give tax breaks to industry to fund basic research at universities.
Government funded basic research gave us Anthropomorphic Global Warming and I would rather not have another round of that kind of science.
No. AGW is a result of politicians (of a specific ideological persuasion) seeing the environment as a vehicle to impose their idea of a socialist utopia, when all other methods of trying to impose socialism have failed. For the most part, politicians fund the science that scientists tell them needs funding. In the case of AGW, politicians are more likely to direct funding towards any "global warming" research, so scientists respond by saying everything they do is related to AGW. Don't be fooled by that. Many published studies include the words "because of global warming", but have nothing whatsoever to do with AGW research.
This happens, like any criminal activity. Often it is the result of someone being a little too eager for attention, for publications, for tenure, and seeing an "easy" way of getting it--kind of like high-tech bank robbers.
Check out the Office of Research Integrity. Yes, there is a government agency dedicated to stamping out fraud in research. This is a subject near and dear to my heart--a couple of years ago, I removed myself from a research project because the project was quickly heading in a fraudulent direction and I want nothing to do with that.
Seriously?
So all those stories of people sustaining themselves on what they grow/raise themselves are just stories? The agricultural revolution that allowed humans to transition from hunter/gatherer societies to modern civilization never really happened? If it takes more energy to produce food than we actually get from the food, why haven't we all starved to death--well, how do we exist in the first place?
Well... what can we expect from someone who can't tell the difference between legitimate science and wild speculation...
Will the government now outlaw home-grown algae?
-PJ
You mean the Potomac, the Mississippi, the Colombia and the St Lawrence couldn't provide enough fresh water?
This could be solved if someone comes up with an algae that will grow in salt water
Well, that is what makes the North Atlantic green.
There are both saltwater and freshwater forms of algae. When I read this, I didn’t even consider whether salt or fresh water would be used; my only thought is that a nearby water supply would be necessary. We probably won’t have a series of algae refineries in the Mojave...
If there is a need to bioengineer algae to make them more efficient or give them properties that make them better suited for biofuel production, *some* of us don’t think that is much of a hurdle. Unlike mechanical engineering, bioengineering is actually fairly easy. ;-)
Even if the scientist doing the research doesn’t believe in AGW this kind of taint on just the writing of a grant application harms the body politic. Once the grant is approved the scientist will have if nothing else perceived pressure to write his findings to support the AGW theory. Some simple blurb in the research paper saying his findings may support AGW theory is glommed on to by the press or activist and amplified 100 fold to support their cause.
No. AGW is a result of politicians (of a specific ideological persuasion) seeing the environment as a vehicle to impose their idea of a socialist utopia, when all other methods of trying to impose socialism have failed. For the most part, politicians fund the science that scientists tell them needs funding.
And the scientists that are on the committees that approve grants are political appointees. The scientist that tell the politicians what science needs to be funded are political animals. If you don’t take politics out of science you will have politicized science.
Adolf Hitler decided that science produced by Jews was politically incorrect and their science was discarded in Germany and those Jewish scientists lost their positions. Similar pressure is brought to pressure on AGW “deniers”.
I doubt that politics can be completely removed from science but removing the power of the purse from politicians would be of great benefit in my humble opinion.
I’d certainly be cheered if saltwater algae were in the running here. Like I said, the math was done and those great rivers would be consumed with algae feeding if it was freshwater algae. There is a stoichiometric tie between the water feed and the hydrocarbon fuel output — it’s physical chemistry not just efficiency. Those hydrogens have to come from somewhere. (The carbons come from the food, and then cellular processes harness sun energy to hook them up with hydrogen and liberate oxygen.)
Watson also does a lot of pure science: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/scientificresearch/
I mean, the carbons come from the air. CO2. Which should cheer the warmist alarmists.
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