Algae based biofuels. You've probably heard the term tossed around, and have maybe even said it in a sentence or two yourself. But have you ever really understood what it means, what the implications are, and on a basic level, how it works and if it has even the slightest chance to be a viable large scale player in supplying for our fuel needs? For many of you, I'm imagining the answer is no. Even I, a green business consultant, was quite fuzzy about it all. Until today.
Today I came across a video put out by the folks at Valcent, which makes absolutely clear, and absolutely exciting, the what, how, and how much of algae based biofuels, and in particular how their method, via High Density Vertical Bioreactors, they will do it much better. Say what?
In plain English, with their Vertigro system, they change the plane of producing algael biofuels from horizontal to vertical, keeping the liquid medium it's growing in constantly moving. And this matters why?
You've probably seen what happens to a still body of water like a pond or a pool: Thick, stagnant algae, that once it reaches a certain density, blocks out sunlight from continuing to produce algae at maximum potential.
What happens when you take it vertical? More potential surface area (think rows of sun exposed surfaces vs. just one) and therefore more carbon sequestration. Algae, according to the Valcent video, is the fastest growing plant in the world, and in the process of this, absorbs a great deal of CO2.
It also produces lipids, or the equivalent of vegetable oil. Depending on the species, 50% of it's body weight is these lipids. And they can select for certain algae strains that are particularly suited for making jet fuel or diesel, which most long haul trucks use. Both are huge contributors to environmental pollutants with their current petroleum based fuels.
How does algae stack up to the current 800 pound gorilla in the US, corn based ethanol? According to the Valcent video, an acre of corn can produce 18 gallons of oil/year. Really? That sounds terribly inefficient to me. Palm oil produces 700-800 gallons/acre. Respectable amount, but its cultivation has been a frequent issue due to unsustainable cultivation practices (Read: chopping down the rain forest)
Algae, even in a regular, horizontal, open pond system, can produce up to 20,000 gallons of oil per year. This is including such factors as water evaporation, growth inhibiting more growth below, and the accidental introduction of foreign algae strains from the air. With algae biofuel production, they can take what remains after extracting the oil, and put it to use as feed stock for animals, as a component of fertilizer, and even to produce even more biofuel. So everything that runs through their systems finds use.
The video finishes with a startling claim: If they were to put to use 1/10th of the land area of New Mexico, they could meet all the energy demands for the entire United States. That, versus resource depleting, conflict generating, pocketbook sapping petroleum based fuels I would take any day!
See the video for yourself here.
Readers: What's your take on this? Truth? Exaggeration? Viable? Pipe dream? Oil industry comment trolls stay away please. Or show us your stats! :-)
Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. His overarching talent is "bottom lining" complex ideas, in a way that is understandable and accessible to a variety of audiences, internal and external to a company.
If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times - solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)
Uncle B, your comment should be carved in stone and installed as the tombstone of the American Republic.
Bravo!
i've said the same kind of thing many times, uncle b. put 700 billion dollars against any of these investments and imagine the America we would have:
1. health research
2. education
3. funding every scientist's project
it makes me shudder to think.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be at The Hague.
Solar is good but takes time and lots of money.
Ethanol can be produced in 180 days using non food crops such as cattails.
Our cars can use ethanol now not years down the road.
First off, uncle B, the iraq war has nothing to do with oil. do you know what the most oil Iraq ever produced? 500,000bpd. do you know how much the US uses? 21,000,000bpd. the war isnt about oil, if it was they would have invaded venezuela. the war is about bringing democracy to the middle east. did you neglect the fact that all those people now have the vote? remember the 15th and 19th amendments? its kinda like that except WAY bigger. and no more people being killed just because saddam hussein wants them dead. now onto algae, its the best chance at not falling when oil finally becomes too expensive. i dont think it will run out, but instead it will just get too expensive to be extracted. it makes since that the solution to one of the most complex problems of all time is one of the simplest plants on earth
The algae to oil story is probably the best bet we have. I expect that 20,000 gallons per acre per year is not realistic, but if even 2000 gallons per year works then it is a huge win.
jeremy, I admire your idealism. I too think the war in iraq is about more than oil - it's about the egos of the neo-cons and an obsession with Israel. But let me ask you this - do you really think that we would have invaded Kuwait to drive Iraq out if not for oil? Oil is a HUGE piece of why we're there.
Yeah, after war, when you tally the costs, it's often "With all THAT money, we could have ... solved the problem a million times over". Why do wars get started anyway? Because the decision making process to start a war is different from that for starting a non-war project of the same magnitude. And make no mistake, the war on terror was a choice. By the US. It could as well have been handled as the crime of the century. Making a war out of it was a decision.
Democracy is unable to say no to war on rational grounds. But it is perfectly able to say no to $500 billion solar-farm projects "because it costs too much".
The discussion that ensuses after a politician moves to start a war is very different.
The question asked by the politican proposing to spend $500b on the power plant is different from the question by the politician proposing [to spend $3000b on] war.
Solar farms:
Do you think we should spend 500 billion on to make the world's biggest solar power plant?
War in Iraq:
We are now at war! We have a dangerous enemy. I am your leader! Do not question me, we must show unity in this time of crisis! We are threathened.
Solar farms are proposed, wars are declared. Costs of war never enter into the decision for war. That's why they're always such a demented deal...
Pah. Ruined a perfectly good thesis. I need to heed the "it's perfect when there's nothing left to take away" a little more.
Apologies for continuing the Iraq war rant, but I've heard a few people now state that the war couldn't have been about oil because Iraq didn't produce very much oil, or that oil production there isn't back to normal anyway. These areguments are a bit naive really. A war over oil is not simply about invading somewhere and taking their oil. It's about securing suply from a region, and that region is far and away the largest oil producing nation in the world, and it's no coincidence that it's been at the centre of conflict ever since much of the world became dependent on oil. There are also economic reasons for it being a war about oil, I understand that Saddam Hussein was about to start trading oil in Euros rather than dollars, as had already happened in some other countries - this would have detramentally affected an already weak dollar.
To be honest, it's all an irrelevance now, the war has been an unmitigated disaster whatever its reason.It has made the world a far more dangerous place, has decimated an already impoverished country and as everyone here has pointed out, diverted attention and funds from the far more pressing issue of securing a sustainable energy supply.
It's admirable that people are still working so hard to develop technologies that will ultimately achieve that aim, but sadly, until there is a US government in place that puts the REAL security of its people (secure energy, secure health, secure education) above the neo-con agenda of power-through-fear, then it's a losing battle.
Sorry, should read "largest oil producing region" not nation.
The videos were awesome! Thanks for posting this. I hope scientists can find away to use algae to produce biofuel, we depend way too much on foreign oil!
Such a great discussion going! Thanks for making my job as a blogger so satisfying. Here's to a viable, high capacity solution (among the many needed) to meet our current and growing fuel and energy needs. I think this is one of them.
Jeremy, you're an idiot. The US did not invade Iraq to spread democracy, it doesn't give a rat's ass about democracy and you would know this if you cared to study current events in any depth. The US has a long history of propping up despotic governments (such as the Sauds) and being directly and knowingly responsible for the destruction of legitimate democracies. The US invaded Iraq because Saddam wanted to switch from the petro-dollar to the petro-euro, and this is the same reason it's about to invade Iran.
For those that aren't aware, there has just recently been a huge technological breakthrough in Algae Fuel made by the research company Origin Oil.
We won't have a need for ponds, that could be contaminated, to grow algae.
They have a new Cascading Production process that can produce at least 3 batches a day of algae.
And they have a new Quantum Fracturing process that requires little energy to open up the algae to get the oil out.
Also, a biproduct is the algae biomass that can be used as animal feed.
There are many benefits.
You will see a video from a TV news about this on YOUTUBE.COM just type in "turning algae into oil" and you will see
Just watched the Orgin Oil Video. This could be awesome. But can we do it in enough volume to displace oil?
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