Fuel from Algae

Work on public transportation instead of developing bioenergies...Sounds great.  But what will replace petroleum for plastics, drugs, aviation fuel,etc. Even if we could supply all our energy demands with solar, wind and geothermal, it would still benefit mankind to develop this technology if nothing but to reduce carbon in the atmoshpere.

Kudzu can also be made into a tea and used as a cure
for alcoholism. Kudzu may be starchy but can it be processed in a way to produced oil. It could be used 
for a host of other applications. 

Do you think it would be possible to convert an old paper mill into a wood-chip algae oil processing plant?  We've got one in Canton, NC that has all of the supply lines for the wood chips, but uses an arsschloss of coal power to operate the plant.  Real dirty.  Poisoned a river.   Seems like a fit to me.

We've got an superhole of kudzu, too. 

Lee,I couldn't agree with you more. Our future is an all electric economy without greenhouse gases and global warming.  100% of algae biofuels, other than fuels for aircraft, can go directly into generating electricity with the carbon exhaust recycled back into making more biofuel. By going to electric mag-lev high speed trains, we can eliminate half of the aircraft needed for transport. Biofuel for aircraft burn cleaner than the present jet fuels. So far from what I have witnessed, Valcent Products has the best proven method of making algae biofuel with their closed loop system that even recycles water to make more algae along with the carbon from electric generation. If the Solazyme process really works, it could produce biofuel in the bilges of ships to power the ships.  Oil tankers could be converted to making Solazyme biofuels and never have to leave the harbor.

No more wars, no outsourcing our dollars for fossil fuels, more jobs locally, no use of agricultural lands, all food left on the table, all electric transportation and utilities, no pollution.  World wide affluence and people in control of their future.  Simple! What are we waiting for???

"One reason it's worth pursuing fuel derived from algae and other renewable sources is because there is currently no substitute for liquid fuel used in jet transport."

= Strictly speaking this is not so. In the 50's GE designed a jet engine for the military that ran on nuclear power. The engine was successful, but the project was canceled because of the concerns about hazards should the plane crash.

My math says otherwise.  An acre is about 4,000^2 meters, PV efficiency is about 11% when getting optimum sunlight of about 1,000 watts/m^2 for about 3 hrs per day means a square meter of PVs will only put out about 330 watts per day.  An electric car takes about 12Kwhs to go a mile... 

4,000 meters/acre * 365 days a year * 330 watts / day / 12 Kwhs / mile = about 40K miles per acre per year.


A bare minimum for an open-air algae pond can put out over 3,000 gal of fuel per year. 

Algae will always have higher energy production capability than PV because the algae is not just absorbing sunlight, but also converting substances with energy to higher energy levels such as sewage.  That also leads to other considerations. Algae has the potential of cleaning up some of our messes for us without the use of chemicals such as replacing water treatment plants or converting yard waste.  It can do all of this while at the same time reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmo since not all the algae is discarded instead of being burned as fuel.  

IMO algae is greatly superior to PV in urban and suburban areas, but agree these stories should convert their numbers to a common scale for comparison.

Carbon *negative* solution?
In truth, that could be just what will be required.

How about increasing the proposed daily solar capture and conversion to "convenient" energy forms beyond "current" needs and pump the excess collection (in suitable versions) *back* into all those tens of thousands of oil and gas wells and coal mines that we have been harvesting fossil fuels from?  Say, put 10% of the algae oil harvest back into the ground, in a recoverable way.

In essence, "repaying" / re-sequestering the carbon based stored ancient sunlight we have been using to fuel our modern industrial era.

In effect, creating a vast "strategic petroleum reserve", in many places around the earth.

This would have the advantage of being able to, at worse, flare it off to regain CO2, should Global Cooling ever become the fear / reality du jour.

I don't think it wise to sequester CO2 in "permanent" ways that are going to make it difficult to *boost* CO2 / GHG, should that side of the coin ever befall mankind.

You fail to consider that fossil fuels and electricity are each better at certain things.


When it comes to producing heat, nothing beats fossil fuel other than nuclear power.

When it comes to most everything else, electricity is ideal.

That's why 75% of gasoline's energy potential is released as heat when used in your car. Hence why you need a massive cooling system running all the time. Internal explosions, by nature, primarily produce heat. The fact you catch some of that kinetic energy with the crankshaft is nothing compared to the heat radiating from the engine.

Why do you even bother posting when you obviously know nothing about the topic ?

Electric engines are more efficient. That's why trains have been using electric engines for decades. When on rails the rolling resistance is much lower, which means you can carry very large loads without losing as much fuel economy. This lets you carry around a giant diesel generator and huge tank of diesel. Overall you can get better efficiency this way, BUT probably more importantly is the electric engine lasts much longer and in most cases doesn't require a transmission since it have produce variable amount of force based on a variable amount of electricity.

Another novel way to use diesel generators is to encase them in water, this producing all the 'free' hot water you need since it's a waste product of internal combustion. This is a nice setup for home power since most homes put considerably energy in keeping tanks of hot water ready at all times.

Electric engines are great for transport because they are based on a simple REVOLVING magnet. This is the perfect thing to turn a car wheel.

Internal combustion must go through many moving parts to effectively turn the wheels of your car. A wheel hub electric engine directly turns 2-4 wheels and effectively cuts out the hundreds or thousands of moving parts in your engine.

Fossil fuel can only compete with electricity when it's being used for heat or in the case of turbines which are quite efficient. If you use the internal combustion engine you're doomed to massive inefficiency.

Which, by the way, is the main reason we've reached the decline in oil production. Had we moved to electric cars with even gas powered generators we may have bought ourselves decades more time. The ICE, internal combustion engine can only achieve around 25-35% efficiency.

A boiler on the other hand can hit about 90% efficiency. Though, on a practical scale you will lose some of this through heat exchangers and such.

So.. fossil fuels work great in boilers for home heating and domestic hot water and even coal and natural gas power plants can boast around twice the efficiency of an automobile.

That makes electric transport easily the superior solution AND that's OBVIOUSLY why the rail industry has been using diesel power plants coupled with electric engines for decades. It's much more cost effective from a fuel and perhaps even more so a maintenance perspective.

Electric cars will bring a new era of automotive reliability if only because they have 10 times less moving parts.

Plus electricity can be generated by many methods. So, if we have a breakthrough in nuclear, wind, solar or even coal power you're electric car will not become obsolete, it will become cheaper to drive.

Like it or not, electric transport is clearly the way of the future. Just go watch the you tube videos of that electric car BLOWING away high end sports cars such as the Corvette, Dodge Viper and I think a Ferrari or Lamborghini.

Electric engines have much less lag so their out of the gate times are much much faster, and this is just the amateur stuff.  

There is absolutely no good reason we didn't switch over to electric cars decades ago. We've had the technology probably since the 60s.

All we had to do is make a lightweight, high efficiency generator and perhaps spend more money in battery technology.

You can read up on the internet. One guy has a home made plug in electric car powered by a law mower engine to boost his range. When the batteries die he can still do 50 on JUST the electricity generator by a lawn mower engine.

That shows that the engines don't have to be huge to generate the amount of power.

In your case, electric heat is very inefficient especially compared to fossil fuel heat. Only idiots heat their house with electric in my opinion. The only nice part is the cheap purchase cost, which is why many uninformed how owners have electric heat. Since it so cheap to install
you COULD have a zone in every room, such as electric baseboard heat as you probably have.

This allows a nice way to adjust each room to your exact needs, but per BTU you're probably paying the most you possibly can to heat your home other than running the oven with the door open.

Electric heat pumps are finally getting more efficient and with skyrocketing diesel prices and the low dollar hurting American buying power electric is finally comparable to oil for heating.

However, natural gas prices have not spiked much and it's probably the best choice to heat a home if you have it. Geothermal is also very very cheap if you can get reduced electric costs in your state for the geothermal. However, install costs are huge and natural is not. Geothermal has a lot more potential however it's just not very popular. Wood and coal heat are still very VERY cheap. This is because in a boiler fossil fuels are very efficient.

Electric may some day catch up when it comes to heat, but I would doubt it could ever beat fossil fuel in general. The natural of fossil fuel is to burn so home heating is a very ideal way to use it. Transport is not, primarily because no one ever bothered to create an efficient way to make fossil fuels turn a wheel or even generator. I always though turbines had much more potential base on their impressive efficiency ratings.

Steam engine burning fossil fuels are actually more efficient than internal combustion. We aren't talking price there either, just the potential fuel energy minus the wasted energy. Internal combustion is a horrible design.