Posted on 09/30/2009 6:37:49 PM PDT by larry hagedon
There are thousands of varieties of green algae, and it grows in fresh water, sewage water, brackish water, salt and brine water, hot springs and arctic cold water.
A lot of green algae grows so fast if can double its weight daily.
The South Koreans were planting 85 thousand acres of a large type seaweed, which is considered green algae too, off their coasts. I have not heard any news about that project for a while.
There are varieties of green algae which consist of 50 percent raw crude oil by dry weight. This can be refined into petroleum type gasoline in regular petroleum refineries.
The algae cake with the oil removed has a high protein value and can be eaten. might not taste too good, but animals eat it and it can be made into protein powder and added to many human food recipes. As production ramps up, there will be millions of tons of it produced and used to feed starving nations. World side food production can expand tremendously. We can also double our current corn production totals anytime we have markets to sell it.
One of the technical problems in green algae utilization was that the best oil producing algaes are not the fastest growing algaes, so a lotta plant breeding is going on to produce better varieties, just as with corn and beans.
I’m a petroleum engineer. I thought this belonged in breaking. What the hell do I know?
Good post. Thanks.
I am about as solidly Conservative as anyone, but subsidies are a part of life today. Every level of government uses them to promote just about any project you can imagine, and thousands you and I never even thought of. It would take a lot to stop them.
Yes, if we could stop all of them I would vote for that.
One thing to remember is that for the DOD, the stakes are very high. They will be spending very heavily to develop military bio fuels, before China and Russia do, and it is a bitterly fought race right now.
Actually, we are making both food and fuel from our corn and beans. This is much better than only using them for food. If we have to stop making corn and beans based ethanol, bio diesel, pharmaceuticals and industrial chemical products, American agriculture will have to cut back millions of acres of corn planting.
For years soy beans were crushed to make high protein soy meal for livestock feeding. They wanted the soy oil out of the feed, as it was bad for the animals to eat that much.
We made soy oil into cooking oils, pharmaceuticals and odds and ends, but millions of gallons were being stored, looking for a use and a market. Then we started making bio diesel. It took years to use up the backlog of stored soy oil, but now we make any surplus into bio diesel and we have a happy balance, marketing all of the products of soy bean processing.
Corn is much more complex and is processed into any of thousands of food, feed, chemicals, plastic, pharmaceutical products, and fuels too, as markets demand them. More corn based products are being developed daily.
America has the capacity to double current corn production, as we develop the markets to sell the stuff.
Judging from local South East Iowa bio tech employment, not many jobs will need to be subsidized. There are several thousands of bio tech employees within 50 miles of my home, many are well trained technicians trained in our local community college.
There is lots of competition for the jobs and they seem to be well paid and stable employment.
Here is a link;
http://www.iowabiocenter.com/
There is no way all of teh pilot plants started will end up being the winning technologies, there is a continueing winnowing of technologies, and management skills too.
That said, many of those pilot plants are now being expanded into demonstration plants and full sized production plants.
Other bio feedstocks that will succeed are; garbage, in fact landfills will be outlawed, sewage, animal manures, much of the nutrient rich runoff from agricultural fields will grow green algae instead of feeding the ocean dead zones. Storm and demolition debris, office and factory wastes, waste plastics, leaves and lawn clippings and road kill will all be processed into various chemicals and fuels.
Water is another co product that will be separated from bio feedstocks, purified and sold.
That was nice to read, thanks.
“One thing to remember is that for the DOD, the stakes are very high. They will be spending very heavily to develop military bio fuels, before China and Russia do, and it is a bitterly fought race right now.”
For security reasons, I do think a level of investment is appropriate. But it shouldn’t be sold as a way to make jobs or help the climate. We do have valid concerns in our national security and I think the best ones can be funded to a very limited amount. RESULTS being key.
I agree, though, subsidizes are a ‘way of life’, but I figure one of these days they’ll be more limited and accountable.
Here are some links referring to container grown algae. I make no recommendations as to any of them. There are many more companies not listed here.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w160203853226261/
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/08/algae-covered-buildings-to-boost-biofuel-production/
http://www.greencrudeproduction.com/solution.html
http://www.celsias.com/article/oil-algae-new-one-step-process/
http://earth2tech.com/2008/03/27/15-algae-startups-bringing-pond-scum-to-fuel-tanks/
http://www.coastalbiomarine.com/products.htm
http://bulktransporter.com/management/tank-truck/hybrid_algae_testing_0207/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20319/page1/
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/PrintStory/New-energy-frontier
Several major airlines have test flown bio fuels. They have indicated they will order them as production ramps up.
The DOD is contracting for bio fuel right now, including aviation fuel, see links below.
http://www.biomassmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3039
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2006/12/06/dod-gives-eerc-5-million-for-bio-jet-fuel/
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/09/07/daily13.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/syntroleum_to_s.html
http://www.biofuelreview.com/content/view/1986/
http://www.cleantech.com/news/455/u-s-dod-funds-biofuel-development-for-m
http://www.greenmomentum.com/wb3/wb/gm/gm_content?id_content=3783
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/18863
I dont know where this belongs either, breaking news or where. The Assyrians used bio technology to produce gas to heat their baths thousands of years ago, so bio tech is not new.
Your opinion, but thousands of entrepreneurs world wide are betting billions of dollars you are wrong.
For the record, I am as strongly against the wacked out theory of man made climate change as anyone.
Please note that “Green Crude” is absolutely biological in origin, and thus products made from it certainly qualify as green. Butanol (which I mentioned) can be made from either crude oil or biological sources using the ABE (Acetone- Butanol- Ethanol) fermentation process invented nearly a hundred years ago by Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel. Today there are many variations and improvements on the process that increase the butanol yield.
But hydrogen, ethanol, and other such direct substitutes are simply not up to the task, for the reasons I listed earlier.
All that will be shaken out as the Age of Bio Technology matures. Sure, lots of products, processes and companies will fail to compete. Time will tell which ones succeed.
Several ethanol plants have gone broke due to poor management, wildly gyrating oil prices or speculation on corn futures, Now a large company is buying some of them up and converting them to bio butanol.
The DOD just ordered 600,000 gallons of jet fuel from several companies using several feed stocks. It will be used for testing and writing military bio fuel specs.
Green algae will be grown all over the world, from Iowa for animal manure clean up to Papua New Guinea where Cosmo oil from Japan is investing 800 million dollars US, to the Canadian oil sands for oil spill clean up.
Many different algae varieties, including lots of GM types, will be used in various climates and processes used around the world.
Which fuels and processes succeed and which fail will be determined in the future, based on future technologies ans markets, not on history. We do not know yet that hydrogen and ethanol will succeed or will fail.
True, only time will tell. However, chemistry, and the potential energy of various molecules, provides several clues about what that future might hold.
Hydrocarbon molecules offer BY FAR the best combination of energy density, practicality, and safety as a storage medium for hydrogen. And compared gallon for gallon to, for instance, liquefied H2 in dewar container at its critical temp and pressure (-400F, about 200 PSI), the $5 Walmart red plastic container holding $2 to $5 worth of gasoline actually contains more than 50% MORE HYDROGEN than the pure H2, and almost FOUR TIMES the potential chemical energy!
Still, H2 might make some sense IF it were freely available
- but it simply cannot be found in that state, on this planet, in more than trace amounts, although we literally have OCEANS of the oxide covering more than half the Earth.
Ethanol comes closer to a realistic substitute, but again, it loses on energy density and cost. And as I stated before, NOT for aviation.
One of the factors ushering in the Age of Bo Technology is that thru bio technology we have so many choices.
We have huge numbers of choices in bio feed stocks and we have lists of numerous products we can make from them, with new ones being developed daily.
All of this will be sifted thru and the most appropriate feedstocks will be selected to make the products most in demand.
Hydrogen and Ethanol will have their niches, as will thousand of other products.
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