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.
I'd be very surprised to learn that most naturally occurring petroleum was NOT the result of composted ocean algae.
” 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?”
I know this is complicated for a government scientist.
The “potato” point was a metaphor. If agriculture were like biofuels it would take two potatoes of energy to get one potato to eat and everyone would starve to death.
“Well... what can we expect from someone who can’t tell the difference between legitimate science and wild speculation...”
What can we expect from a big-government scientist who cannot tell the difference between something economically viable, and something powered by government funding.
It would be a sweet irony to find this out. Every time that smarty pants science thinks it has painted God’s providence into a corner, whoops it finds it has just decorated the room.
Well, think about it...
All the tarballs washing up on the Gulf Coast, all the rich offshore and deep-water oil deposits. The fact that many or most of the existing oilfields were once seabeds (The Midwest, The Middle East etc)
Also, who knows what kind of caverns or porosity exists in the depths, allowing crude to migrate from miles at sea to hidden formations right under our feet?
The earth holds many mysteries that it has not been practical to fathom.
Anyhow, it’s certainly worth looking for practical forms of energy, and the private market can enable this best. Prices might rise until the risk of seeking energy elsewhere seems to be worth it, and then a new abundance will calm prices back down. The money paid for energy at the high price times can be seen as an investment in bringing the low price times. It works more smoothly if government isn’t in there being a waste.
“the carbon released by burning the resultant oil is offset by carbon used in the algae production process”
I firmly believe that Mother Nature is continuously making oil as I write this comment. The process goes on. We need to use the oil we have in the ground. CO2 released makes plants/algae grow and release O2 for animals to breathe, then be compressed by the earth to make more oil.
d. CO2 released makes plants/algae grow and release O2 for animals to breathe, then be compressed by the earth to make more oil.
Not possible. Crude oil comes from squished dinosaurs. My science teacher said so, so it must be true!
We already have a problem with too much algae caused by nitrogen runoff from agriculture. This could actually be cost effective with few negatives.
Death Valley Industries... could happen....
My understanding is a lot comes from HUMAN animal manure.
Another reason I do not eat tilapia. Tastes like $hit.
Maybe we’ll reach a point where we’re taking so MUCH carbon out of the air we’ll be invoking manmade global cooling. Then we’ll all have to burn coal and drive big SUVs to put it back!
I think we might already be there Larri.
A lot of tilapia is raised in the US using chemical fertilizer to stimulate algae growth.
“Algae has to grow and, though I’m no botonist or scientist, it would seem to me we could not keep up with demand for the oil.”
Big problems doing that. One needs sunlight, of course, and lots and lots of square footage. So the CA/NV desert seems good. OTOH, one needs lots and lots of water. So envision somehow getting that much water to the CA desert (divert the Colorado River?), covering the desert with hundreds of thousands (millions?)of acres of ponds, then collecting the goop, and trucking it out for refinement, refining it in a process that obviously takes a lot of energy to run in and of itself, and then refining it. That would be the minimum required to make a dent in our fossil fuel consumption.
Then somehow cleaning up the water and getting it back through the imperial valley so our food grown there doesn’t die, then to LA so George Clooney has something to drink; and do all of this without violating some environmental impact statement, tribal burying ground, or endangered species. It’s a far bigger project than Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the California aqueduct together—and we could not build any one of those projects today.
How did the Irish peasants survive on potatoes for generations?
Stick to RF; food production is not your strong suit.
“Stick to RF; food production is not your strong suit.”
It was a metaphor, and quite an obvious one at that.
I know it’s too complicated for some people to understand that I was really talking about biofuels using more energy than it produces by saying if it were potatoes, it would take two potatoes to get one.
Tomorrow I’ll teach you another word: maybe it’ll be “irony”, if I think it won’t be lost on you.
I thought it was Anthropogenic.
And when I hear all available to me - it suggests that there may a WHOLE of opposing data that is conveniently out of reach.
(Too many ads on tv about X% of the doctors 'surveyed' said...)
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