The Brickmuppet's crack team of science geezers celebrate the construction of the first Algaeal oil plant...in Alabama.

Oil production from algae is highly promising for several reasons but gets not nearly the attention of other biofuel processes, in large part because it is incompatible with current farming methods. The Iowa corn Mafia is not going to plant algae next year.

 In my admittedly undergraduate opinion, this would seem to be  a feature rather than a bug. Algae will inherently not displace food production, nor will it use up "waste" portions of crops that are normally recycled into the soil, preserving soil quality.

  For some years I've been a member of a Yahoo group dedicated to this sort of thing....which from watching the news one would think is about the level of support its been getting worldwide. However there are several companies actively pursuing this as can be seen at this biodiesel wiki.


Algae can in theory, be grown off of sewage and in generally un-suitable areas for other crops. Algae has a high oil content....in some species over 50% making refining rather straightforward. Algae grows fast multiple crops can be pulled in in months, but the mechanics of how to avoid diminishing returns require fairly complex geometries in the incubators that are still being learned. Few companies have approached theoretical levels of oil production but the potential is rather stunning.

Compared to other biofuel crops (excepting, curiously, sugarcane)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:24 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 From what I've seen of the algeal farm plans, the capital equipment budget must be sky-high.  I mean, it sounds worse than forced-growth greenhouse fruit production, which doesn't have to deal with all of those closed-system aquaculture headaches.  Are the tradeoff of land costs & fertilizer/chemical usage & potential yields really steep enough to make up for all of those sunk construction & equipment costs & maintenance headaches?

Posted by: Mitch H. at Wed Jun 27 08:19:15 2007 (iTVQj)

2  A lot of those plans you're talking about are pretty pie in the sky. Many are aimed at getting Government fundage.

This may be what you're talking about and there are lots of others out there:

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/solix_bioreactor2.jpg

 You need CO2+Water+Food+Light and a strainer. The geometries of it can get complex but much of what is being seriously looked at as opposed to the "farm of tomorrow" concept art is fairly low key.

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/solix_bioreactor2.jpg

There are some hurdles to be sure, but the potential seems big.

Posted by: Brickmuppet at Wed Jun 27 20:18:36 2007 (V5zw/)

3 oops: second pic is a duplicate..here...
http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/061026/061026_algae_hmed_7a.hmedium.jpg

Posted by: Brickmuppet at Wed Jun 27 21:50:37 2007 (V5zw/)

4 That second image is clipped such that I can't figure out which image at that site you're pointing towards.  As I understand the basic algeal farm problem, you need to keep the system closed to avoid contamination by more efficient strains of algae - the strains that *don't* waste enormous chunks of energy secreting the unnecessary oils you're gunning for in the first place.  That requires "farm of tomorrow" greenhousing of some sort to keep the system sealed, if you don't want your algae crops constantly crashing due to the algae equivalent of weeds.  That means closed-system aquaculture, Closed-system aquaculture is *hard* - messy, maintenance-intensive, etc.

BTW, that algaeculture wiki notes that people have pretty much given up on using open-pond aquaculture for oil algae, for much the same reasons I laid out - low-oil algaes have an overwhelming competitive advantage in open-pond conditions.

Posted by: Mitch H. at Thu Jun 28 14:58:46 2007 (iTVQj)

5 the strains that *don't* waste enormous chunks of energy secreting the unnecessary oils you're gunning for in the first place. That requires "farm of tomorrow" greenhousing of some sort to keep the system sealed, if you don't want your algae crops constantly crashing due to the algae equivalent of weeds. That means closed-system aquaculture, Closed-system aquaculture is *hard* - messy, maintenance-intensive, etc.
Yes, but there are degrees.

Hydroponic systems are aggravating but eminently doable. There seem to be no hurdles other than technique. The smaller scale systems like the one in the second photo (which, BTW was just a quick Google image search) are being looked at as feeding off industrial exhaust and add-ons to existing infrastructure.

If the payoff becomes really big, then huge FOT projects will likely come to pass over time, but small scale demonstrators are best while industry is still learning the ropes.

This is not a sure thing, but it seems very promising to me.

Posted by: Ken at Thu Jun 28 19:24:17 2007 (V5zw/)

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One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babes storms out of lab 4 and right off the smoke free wagon....Why so glum you ask?

Well, according to James Fraser's blog , the senate has nixed Senastor Pete Dominici's National Renewable energy portfolio, which would have increased nuclear power and clean coal, in addition to wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and biomass....

Fraser seems fairly sanguine about this but the "Clean Coal" tech, despite its oxymoronic name, is quite valuable in that it sets prizes and research grants for  developing exhaust scrubbers and CO2 sequestration techniques that are vital for coal burning even if we suddenly got no electricity from coal. ( coal is  a vital feedstock for several processes....including steel production) . The nuclear option is the only long term effective solution to our energy needs, and it can make some of the marginal biofuel processes viable or vastly more productive. The other initiatives that weren't nixed all have some potential in limited geographical areas, but aside from wind and, possibly, geothermal have fairly serious environmental impacts of their own, and are simply feel good ticket punching for greens...right up until said greens sue to keep them from being built. A few might be developed into nontrivial energy sources, particularly for small scale applications, but the aggregate of all of the favored technologies will make a very small dent in our total energy needs.


By nixing nuclear power, this congress has proven that energy policy, the environment and pollution are not serious considerations to them.

feh...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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