You'd be talking about a small part of our desert territory in Nevada and Arizona, deserts are the optimal area for this sort of farming. We should be able to stop importing oil in a year or two.
Posted on 04/04/2009 4:15:52 PM PDT by decimon
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Biofuels technologies appear capable of someday producing 200,000 barrels of jet fuel a day—enough to supply the needs of the U.S. Air Force—from algae grown on less than 800,000 acres. [10-11 gallons per day or 3650-4000 gallons per year] “It’s not crazy to imagine that by the year 2050 we (the United States) could become an oil exporter again,” Briggs said. 80 million acres would replace the current oil demand of the United States. 3% of total land in the United States. Other estimates are 1-2% or less as the processes are improved. Light pipes allow for deeper algae ponds and over ten times more efficient land usage.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nextbigfuture.com ...
Coal bug ping
I should have indicated that the excerpt does not address the title.
You'd be talking about a small part of our desert territory in Nevada and Arizona, deserts are the optimal area for this sort of farming. We should be able to stop importing oil in a year or two.
Now, if they could grow the algae in seawater........
They need a microbe that eats oil slicks and shit$s gold..
Sea weed is an endangered specie and all that plus you might bring up a Dolphin and you can't kill those microbes!
1250 square miles in total. Not that much in terms of farm land.
The numbers seem off by a factor of 10. You could produce nearly that much liquid fuel growing switchgrass on that much land mass.
The whole point of algea is to decrease land mass needed for growth.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to run down the numbers.
Does anyone honestly believe that the American socialists, communists and democrats will let this country become energy independent? Not on your life! Where would be the crisis to not waste in that?
Nevada is 110,540 square miles. The federal govt owns 86% of it. Any bets as to what land they would take for this project?
Grow it on the girls in Reno?
Converting coal to methane is sort of like converting gold to lead.
Yeah but where you gonna get the grass to feed the girls from Reno.
Harry's stash?
This makes no sense at all. Methane is natural gas. You can burn it in an internal combustion engine and send it through pipes. Both properties make it much more valuable than coal.
If you don't believe me, look up the price per BTU of both.
Why do they drill for gas instead, then? Because it’s more economical.
Nope, gas is much more expensive than coal.
There are numerous reasons that gas is drilled for. Why has industry chosen the more expensive fuel?
1. It is much cleaner to use natural gas, after you burn coal, you have a lot of dirty residue to deal with.
2. Gas does things than coal doesn’t such as running through an automatic valve to heat your water and burning in an open flame to cook your food without filling your house with carcinogens.
3. NG is much easier to get where you want, put in a pipe and you’re good. Coal is dirty and heavy, the only reasonable way to get it where you want it is to transport it by train, cheaper than NG but not convenient. And speaking of convenience, coal can’t be reasonably extracted in a populated area, you could have a gas well a quarter mile from your house and never know it. A strip mine makes quite the clatter.
Granted in our political environment, we won’t see coal gasification plants but NG has gotten expensive enough to warrent consideration. We should be investing billions in coal to liquid but that is another discussion.
Coal is the least desirable fuel for many reasons but has one advantage that can’t be denied, we’ve have lots of it. Finding more flexible ways to use it is a good thing.
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