Algae Biofuels

[Korietsu]

Was looking around the net and picked up this interesting news at wired.com

A San Diego start-up says it is using algae to make oil that can be refined into gasoline and other fuels that are both renewable and carbon-neutral, and it plans to produce 10,000 barrels a day within five years.

That's a fraction of the 20 million or so barrels of petroleum the United States consumes each day, but Sapphire Energy says "green crude" production could ramp up to a level sufficient to ease our dependence on foreign oil, if not end it altogether.

Company CEO Jason Pyle says the algal oil is chemically identical to light sweet crude and compatible with America's $1.5 trillion petroleum infrastructure, making it a direct replacement for oil. Although the algal fuels refined from it emit as much carbon dioxide as conventional fuels, the company says the emissions are offset by the photosynthetic process that uses sunlight, water and C02 to create algal crude.

"At the very worst, it's carbon neutral," Pyle says, calling the fuels a "benchmark for an entire new industry" and "a paradigm change."

Energy experts and air quality regulators say they'll withhold judgment on those claims until they've seen a production-to-combustion analysis of the fuel's emissions. But they say Sapphire could be on to something.

Making fuel from algae is nothing new, and everyone from the smallest start-up to the biggest oil companies is trying to find the best way to do it. But most of the effort has been on replacing diesel fuel or kerosene. Sapphire wants to replace petroleum.

"We designed it to be a completely fungible product with crude oil," Pyle says. He says the company has refined its algal crude into 91-octane gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene chemically identical to conventional fuels. He wouldn't disclose how the process works or what it costs but said it is competitive with deep-water oil drilling and extracting petroleum from tar sands.

Sapphire also avoids the food-for-fuel debate that has plagued crop-based biofuels because it uses algae and works on non-arable land with non-potable water. Pyle wouldn't say where Sapphire plans to build the demonstration plant it will have running later this year, but it reportedly is working in Oklahoma and may locate its facilities in the south and southwest. It hopes to have a full-scale plant up and running within five years, producing 10,000 barrels of green crude a day. The company has lined up more than $50 million in funding from investors like ARCH Venture Partners.

Ramping up to that level of production without killing the algae can be tricky, one expert said, and the environmental impact of green crude remain to be seen. Even if it is carbon neutral, the algal fuels will emit pollutants that contribute to smog and ozone, says Don Anair of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"You're still going to get combustion emissions. You aren't eliminating those with algal fuels," he says, echoing a point the California Air Resources Board made. Still, Anair is cautiously optimistic.

"The fact that there is a lot of interest in finding a better way to fuel our transportation system is encouraging," he says. "This is one avenue to pursue that has very good potential."

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/making-renewabl.html

After reading the article, having a carbon footprint neutral fossil fuel would be absolutely fantastic. Anyone heard of this before in the petroleum engineering world?

[Senoska]

Skimmed the article but I think it's rather misleading (from what I seen.). There is a method of extracting oil from normally unusable byproducts by using algae, dunno if that's what they're talking about or not but it works sort of like a filter and saving the oil from being thrown out. Reguardless, this is bad news. Gasoline needs to go (blah blah global warming rant here)

[archibaldcrane]

Reguardless, this is bad news. Gasoline needs to go (blah blah global warming rant here)

How is this not a replacement for gasoline? If it's actually carbon-neutral, then the global warming concerns aren't there, so...wut?

[Korietsu]

I agree gas needs to go for a hydrogen based fuel, however, if the algae works as the article says and is carbon neutral it could be a great solution for filling my fucking tank of a car up (60$+ ) and keeping the environment clean.

[EdgeMoragan]

holy shit didn't this precise thing happen in one of the oldass metal gear games?

[Wintermute]

holy shit didn't this precise thing happen in one of the oldass metal gear games?

I hope so. I could really use a Nuclear-Equipped Walking Death-Machine.

On topic:
Be nice to see how this goes. Might not be an alternative Fuel source, but finding more environmentaly friendly ways of making fuels we use now can't hurt.

[Sesar]

It's more referring to extracting the "vegetable oil" from the algae and using it as a fuel, or fuel component.

Brazil has been doing this for years, turning sugar cane stalks into ethanol and vegetable oil to make biofuel with.

It's really surprising that more places havent caught on to this since biodiesel is so easy to make. Five gallons of vegetable oil, a few cups of ethanol and a spoonful of lye will produce about 5 gallons of diesel fuel that will run in any diesel engine. With the exception of more exact measurements and a PH tester, it doesn't get any more complicated than that.

[Kyreth]

I've seen the production work they're doing in an article (darned if I can find it again, though)...looked really neat.

They're growing algae and turning it into fuel. These aren't "filters", and heck algae is one of those things you can literally grow in a tube, given sunlight.

My father worked in the energy industry, and told me "once oil stays over $100/barrel, people will start seriously working on biofueling.". Right on the money. Makes me wonder how closely some of the OPEC countries are looking at this- if there's one thing the Saudis have, it's plenty of sunlight and room for algae rigs.- they're closed systems rather than ponds or pools.

[Alleya]

It's more referring to extracting the "vegetable oil" from the algae and using it as a fuel, or fuel component.

Brazil has been doing this for years, turning sugar cane stalks into ethanol and vegetable oil to make biofuel with.

It's really surprising that more places havent caught on to this since biodiesel is so easy to make. Five gallons of vegetable oil, a few cups of ethanol and a spoonful of lye will produce about 5 gallons of diesel fuel that will run in any diesel engine. With the exception of more exact measurements and a PH tester, it doesn't get any more complicated than that.

Huhwah? Read the article. They claim to be using algae to make something chemically identical to petroleum, I dunno where you're coming up with vegetable oil.

[Khamsin]

I wonder if they mean chemically indistinguishable in every aspect, or merely in the way in which it would be used for combustion?

In other words, are they saying "You can't tell this apart from petroleum" or "You can put it in your engine and it won't know the difference"?

[Korietsu]

I wonder if they mean chemically indistinguishable in every aspect, or merely in the way in which it would be used for combustion?

In other words, are they saying "You can't tell this apart from petroleum" or "You can put it in your engine and it won't know the difference"?

Both. They say the chemical comp is identical to any hydrocarbon fuel like gasoline or diesel etc, thus making the engine go ZOMG FEED ME MORE OF THAT AWESOME GAS.

[Aerin]

Ya I remember reading about this not too long ago.

CNN - Algae: 'The ultimate in renewable energy'

[Sesar]

It's more referring to extracting the "vegetable oil" from the algae and using it as a fuel, or fuel component.

Brazil has been doing this for years, turning sugar cane stalks into ethanol and vegetable oil to make biofuel with.

It's really surprising that more places havent caught on to this since biodiesel is so easy to make. Five gallons of vegetable oil, a few cups of ethanol and a spoonful of lye will produce about 5 gallons of diesel fuel that will run in any diesel engine. With the exception of more exact measurements and a PH tester, it doesn't get any more complicated than that.

Huhwah? Read the article. They claim to be using algae to make something chemically identical to petroleum, I dunno where you're coming up with vegetable oil.

The only difference between petroleum based oil and plant based oil are the mineral components, like sulfur. Vegetable oil still contains carbon and hydrogen which are the only 2 components needed to make fuel. While the process of distilling plant-based oil might differ from petroleum based refining, the end result is still the same.

[skurlover]

One thing you have to be careful with biofuels is the extreme "jelling" that biodiesel does in the cold weather. Normal diesel jells but the bio version of it is even worse.

By cold weather, I mean 0F like you will see in the midwest and north during the winter. Bio diesel shut down a whole fleet of school buses last winter.

[Gwynplaine]

Pretty cool. My guess would be though, that the second it became profitable, environmentalists would find an excuse to say it's harmful to the environment and begin creating laws against it.

[archibaldcrane]

One thing you have to be careful with biofuels is the extreme "jelling" that biodiesel does in the cold weather.

This is true, but it seems like this Algae-based "biofuel" isn't a diesel, nor an ethanol-type - if it can be used in the same manner as gasoline in currently existing gasoline engines and is pretty much identical, I wonder if it gets the same MPG as gasoline (ethanol has less energy per gallon and gets fewer MPG compared to the same amount of gasoline) or if it suffers from the biodiesel jelling problem (biodiesel isn't used exactly the same as diesel, a standard diesel engine needs some modification to run biodiesel, similar to how an unleaded engine needs mods to run E85 ethanol).

[Khamsin]

It shouldn't have that problem because it's chemically indistinguishable from regular gasoline you get at the local gas station. Have a petrochemical engineer run some tests on the algae fuel and some stuff you just siphoned from your gas tank and they won't be able to tell which is which.

[guartz]

if we couldn't tell the difference, why... we could be using biofuels now!

The government is just covering this up and making gas scares to control us!







































































































or my name isn't guartz!

[ozz]

It shouldn't have that problem because it's chemically indistinguishable from regular gasoline you get at the local gas station. Have a petrochemical engineer run some tests on the algae fuel and some stuff you just siphoned from your gas tank and they won't be able to tell which is which.

it's indistinguishable from the crude oil our plants process now,not gasoline. still needs to be refined into gasoline to run in cars. so, have a petrochemical engineer run some tests on the algae fuel and some stuff you just siphoned from a barrel of saudi arabia's finest and they won't be able to tell which is which

[Tajin]

Well played guartz, my guess would be that is harder to get enough Algae enough to make a barrel of fuel.