We're glad to help
Posted on 12/18/2007 10:42:43 AM PST by isaiah55version11_0
SHELL is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae. Algae are a climate-friendly way to make fuel from carbon dioxide. They produce an oil that can readily be converted to diesel, and can be fed CO2 directly from smokestacks. Unlike biofuels such as corn, they don't use up soil or water that could otherwise be used to grow food, which can pump up food prices. The US government abandoned research on algal biofuel in the 1990s because of the low cost of crude oil. But as oil and food prices began to rise, small algal fuel producers sprang up. Shell plans to begin construction on a pilot plant in Hawaii immediately, which it expects will produce 15 times as much oil for a given area as other biofuel crops, thanks to the efficiency of algal photosynthesis.
(Excerpt) Read more at environment.newscientist.com ...
Where are the clean burning diesel car engines from the Detroit auto makers?
Global warming made Al G
Bigger than when he was VP
Now Shell has hit it
No need for carbon credits
We’ll get green with the new algae
So much for AlGore's carbon tax credit scam. HA HA
Here is the problem with this statement. The article states this technology was abandoned in the 60's because it was too expensive compared to traditional drilling. The only reason why algae is "profitable" is because congress and the environmental lobby has artificially increased the price of oil production and gas refining. If we would drill more of a relatively free natural resource, oil would be a commodity it should be and Hawaii beaches won't be turned green with algae.
You’re right.
Solar cells would be simpler in the long term with vehicles going electric. In the short term the algae diesel can drive transportation.
That's not what's above. They say that they can get 15 times more oil out of a given acre of land using algae than, with say, soybeans, canola, rapeseed (used to produce canola oil), or some other oil-producing crop.
Rapeseed, for example, produces about 127 gallons of vegetable oil per acre - they're saying something like that they can get around 2,000 gallons per acre with algae.
Your analysis is very simplistic. The current cost of fuel is driven more by increased demand, than by congress. You also neglect technological progress, which has most likely lowered the cost of biodiesel-farming relative to drilling.
Plankton.
Ah, I see. My apologies.
Even better, it recycles carbon dioxide that has ALREADY been formed and is destined to become part of the atmosphere. For that reason, it would generally destroy the base on which “carbon credits” trading would depend, by eliminating, before it is released to the atmosphere, any “new” carbon dioxide.
Watch out for that plankton, you will find a piranhna in it occasionally.
Yes. 15 times what is currently produced still wouldn't put much of a dent in oil consumption and wouldn't likely even keep up with the rate at which oil consumption increases.
It will need to be produced on a much larger scale than that.
The nice thing about marine algae, it that it can be grown in salt water which doesn't use up fresh water resources which are relatively scarce in some areas. It also doesn't face the same problems of land use because it can be grown in the ocean.
And although the algae is grown from CO2, when algae diesel is compressed in a diesel engine with super heated 02, the byproduct is C02. So if you really want to reduce C02, shouldn't you just grow algae and leave it alone?
When we burn oil, we release CO2 that was removed from the carbon cycle long ago. That increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
When you burn a biofuel, you release CO2 that was already currently in the carbon cycle, and would be released as the plants decomposed or were used anyway, unless sequestered somehow.
The real benefit of using biofuels in from not using fossil fuels instead which would add more CO2 into the carbon cycle.
However, using C02 to grow algae doesn't sequester CO2 unless the algae, or it's remains are sequestered.
Ocean?
As the appetite for oil grows, it won’t matter where it came from if we reach the tipping point; oh, how many times in my youth, on some overheated assignation, did I long for that sweet tipping point...
I'm no engineer, but that sounds like a great idea to me. Let's take it one further. I wonder about what it would take to crack the C02 back to its component gases, release the O2 back to the air, and reclaim the carbon for fuel? I'm sure the enviro nutcases would find a reason to stop it ("We're poisoning the environment with too much oxygen!").
Any smart FReepers got an idea on the above? I know, of course, the first part of the answer is "Huge, huge amounts of energy".
Most algae need salt water which for now is an unlimited resource. They float and can handle waves. If we invent nanobots or something to manage wild algae "weeds" we can grow all our petroleum using a few percent of Earth's ocean surface.
Leftists refer to algae as slime since they are well aware it is a serious threat to their plans for utopia.
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