[wbill]

This actually might not be a bad idea. All it's doing is speeding the natural process up. Better living through modern chemistry.

But use this unproven technology to replace the entire process wholesale? Not really likely. What an idiot.

[taxcontrol]

The technology is not unproven. It can and does produce diesel fuel. What is still in question is the enough money to be made to justify the capital cost.

A simple change in how the government reauthorizes CRP (crop reduction program) payments can create a whole new agriculture / oil market. Land that is currently considered non-farmable and not currently qualifying for CRP payments, may be converted to grow algae and no other crops and still qualify for CRP. A minimum of 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel must be sold to the market to qualify.

Run this program for 10 years with an automatic “kill” of the program at the end of that time.

[tiki]

They have spent over 2 years planning and building an algae farm around here and it still isn’t finished. The technology isn’t all that good and I havn’t seen anything about cost effectiveness.

[mkboyce]

Two words for the Obama-bot green-tards:

ENERGY DENSITY

It’s taken millions of years and countless quadrillions upon quadrillions of ancient algae cells to form the thick, dense, highly concentrated substance we know as crude oil. Just how expensive and on what massive a scale could this natural process be feasibily replicated in a factory that would come close to satisfying the motoring, flying, plastic-using public???

Barry? Barry? Barry?

[GonzoGOP]

But use this unproven technology to replace the entire process wholesale?

Not unproven. There have been a number of experiments and it works quite well. You just bubble high CO2 rich air (think exhaust from a natural gas power plant) through a Algae solution and then squeeze something similar to vegetable oil out of the gunk. A diesel can burn it as is or you can refine it into gasoline.

The problem is not technical, but economic. You just can't manufacture gasoline as cheaply as you can pump it out of the ground in Texas and Canada. That isn't going to change any time soon.

On the up side it does put an end to all the peak oil crap. We can manufacture gasoline and diesel if we run out of the stuff in the ground. So while we may run out of cheap oil, we will never run out of oil.