JUN 23

I seem to remember someone (Cage) suggesting this very thing in Friday's article on coal and carbon sequestration.
Here's hoping he'll suggest something really awesome this week

But seriously though, it sounds like they plan to grow the algae in the sun, and then burn it for energy, which sounds to me like a long winded, and (probably) inefficient way of indirect solar power.
Or are the combined inefficiencies of growing and burning algae for energy, still better than the direct efficiency of current solar panels?

It seems to be that once you manage to cut the coal out of the system, it's a pretty elegant closed-loop cycle.

CO2 from the atmosphere gets absorbed by algae, which is then burnt for fuel, releasing CO2, which is used to grow new algae.

The overall system efficiency isn't what's important, since there's not really much human inputs there. The important thing is how much you can make, and how well you can store it to accommodate for the base load; and algae could prove to be a superior medium for harvesting solar power compared to PV.

http://thefoodmonsterblog.blogspot.com
Broken Logic indeed. Sort of like using electricity to power a fan to make wind to spin a wind turbine to create electricity to power the fan. It can only work if you generate more energy than you use.

The only sort of justification I can see for using algae for creating fuel is for something like jet fuel, which is needed to lift those huge things in the air. Battery/electric flight I don't think can work due to the weight of batteries and duration issues.

Otherwise for running cars and many other needs, lets get our energy directly from the sun. The sun has "run" the whole planet now for a long time, after all.

There is no broken logic. The coal plant is attempt to cogenerate fuel to capture the waste from its processes that would otherwise disperse into the greater ecosystem. In this way, raw material for the algae process becomes free, supplied by the waste material from the coal plant. Also, the energy required to power said plant is also reduced.

Hank, depends on what you want reduced. I'd like to reduce oil imports, you want to reduce oil consumption and coal consumption. I'd say we have some overlap that coincides for this.

But seriously though, it sounds like they plan to grow the algae in the sun, and then burn it for energy, which sounds to me like a long winded, and (probably) inefficient way of indirect solar power.

No, because the fuel from the algae would then be burned in things that can't use electricity directly, such as vehicles on the road. For the forseable future, vehicles will still need a source of power other than electricity and solar. Solar can not keep a regular car charged (not enough power/square foot) and electricity can not yet charge cars fast enough (8 hour charging time). So, we are still stuck with some fuel for a while longer.

Also, lets say they were stupid enough to burn the algae directly for electricity. It's conceivable that it is cheaper to do it this way than to set up a solar power plant, given the costs of solar PV and solar thermal.

I like it. Even though this process relies on a coal plant, it'll still help test out and improve algae fuel technologies. We'll also likely use coal plants for the next 50 years, so anything that improves their efficiency is desirable.

is the technology for sale?

Right now, in the world, were in a interim of power generation. Now, while it would be nice to just dump old types of power generation for new, it can't be done. There would be too much damage to humanity as a whole. So you have to have transition tech. Things like this that ween you off one tech to another. Now while it's still a polutable fuel source it is better and less damaging then other 'food based' ethanol production.(corn, rice)

Can anyone tell me?

how much % of the CO2 is captured by the algae?

Depends how much algae there is, but the CO2 they capture is still going to be lost when they are burned as biofuel.

They could potentially capture all the CO2, but we wont know until they actually build the thing.

And there's the issue that the algae wont be able to use the CO2 at night (when there's no light for photosynthesis) and if they're just going to let the CO2 go in to the atmosphere, or somehow store it until morning.

And while I can't say what O;2 the algae capture, I have heard that the algae are only 6% efficient at converting sunlight in to (stored) energy [compared to about 30% efficiency from solar panels].

From another article at http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18138/

Algae makes oil naturally. Raw algae can be processed to make biocrude, the renewable equivalent of petroleum, and refined to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemical feedstocks for plastics and drugs. Indeed, it can be processed at existing oil refineries to make just about anything that can be made from crude oil. This is the approach being taken by startups Solix Biofuels, based in Fort Collins, CO, and LiveFuels, based in Menlo Park, CA.

The new concepts are using algae to create actual oil and then processed just like traditional oil As well there is an experimental system out right now which sequesters auto CO2 emissions which can be used as the CO2 source for a home based reactor to create your own gasoline. Either way, if you simply sequestered all the CO2 at each generation point, you can keep putting it back in the system rather than the environment.

Sure, it's not a perfect system, but even making solar panels often times has huge negative externalities based on the production technologies and often short life spans.

This is a help, but it's not carbon neutral. The coal release co2, which is absorbed by algea, then turned into fuel, and then released. Get more "mileage" from it at least. But still continues to add to the co2 problem. It's a help with oil dependence but not co2.

The oil production possibility using algae is very exciting . Algae needs heat and coal-fired power plants produce too much waste heat and I'm wondering if that is what some part of this project entails - using that spare heat in a power plant or is it about feeding the fuel itself to the algae in order to produce oil ? Which, I presume, it would do so more efficiently than other methods.


Back in Ireland they have started to look at seaweed as a way of producing biofuel - a researcher in the University in Galway is in the papers today and if Ireland has no oil, one thing it doesn't lack is seaweed.
http://www.biobasednews.com/node/16369

Great site by the way - a real gem of the internet - keep it up !

I did a research paper on the use of algae for biodiesel and ethanol production. One of the problems with algae isn't an issue of efficiency, it's too much growth - too much algae is produced. There are many, many options for using algae for oil production: using new solar panels and new red light LEDs as grow lighting systems to allow indoor algae farms, etc. But the use of algae as a scrubber system on coal fired plants is a phenomenal application. In the USA coal is readily abundant and can enable us to take a large step towards energy independence, and using the pollution to feed algae to create biofuel is excellent.

How can too much growth be a problem? All you have to do is keep syphoning off the excess algae to use as fuel.

But the indoor algae does sound like it could increase efficiency.

The biggest problem with the growing of algae for biofuel is the capital cost. Algae can produce at best around 3 gallons of fuel per sq metre per year in an enclosed bioreactor (the most efficeint) due to the amount of energy available in sunlight (this is for the sunniest parts of the US) and the cost to manufacture the bioreactor is around a $100 per sq meter. Then there is the cost to run the bioreactor and the cost to convert the fuel to something useful like biodiesel. Then there is the size. For an average coal fired power plant you would require a biorecator around 250 hectares (650 acres) in size. For the capital cost is makes more sense to use a bioreactor to create commercially valuable products such as omega3 fatty acids. Currently the only commercially viable algae farms are producing food supplements.

The best thing we can do is get the government off their drug trip and grow a crop that works. Don't let them lie to you about there not being enough farm land. We have over 100 million total farm acres in the USA and only use about half. The half that's not being planted is more than enough to grow ALL our fuel. Not only that but the government is still paying farmers not to plant. Watch the video titled "HEMP FUEL Can Supply All Our Energy Needs" and read the article titled "Marijuana Facts The Government Does Not Want You To Know" on the website referenced at the bottom of this post.

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The initial large scale experiments done had an over abundance of algae being produced. It was an unforeseen problem that created harvesting issues. Honestly, I think now that they're aware of just how fast this stuff grows it will just take some readjustment and some different tech.

Regarding the cost post, new production estimates place rates at 100,000 gallons of biofuel per acre. The capital costs will, of course, initially be high because it is a new field. However, the benefit of algae is it can grow anywhere, in any type of water. In fact, some types of algae do better in polluted water...

The major upside to this is that it doesn't require fertile farm land, doesn't need potable water like crops do, requires NO fertilizer, and can even be used to consume pollution.

I am currently on a algae biofuel research team at ASU, and wanted to just say a little bit about this set up and how the process would actually work.

First, I wanted to make clear that algae are grown to harvest their lipids. That is the biodiesel, and that's what is burned, not the actual algae themselves.

Algae bioreactors don't need to be attached to a fossil fuel plant for their carbon source. Currently CO2 bubbling is what is commonly used to introduce the C and mix the culture, the more homogeneous the better. The set up in the article is an open environment raceway pond, as compared to a chemostat, which is a closed environment. Chemostats are more promising in producing worth while crops because they control temp, [CO2], mixing, add all nutrients, and keep everything else out. Invasive species and diseases kill off many open environment crops. With this sensitive environment, we can induce the growth to maximize the lipid content.

So yeah, this is feasible. There are a lot of free published papers available online, google scholar is one of the main sources I use to look up my research for work, pubmed is great, and also, libraries have massive amounts, too. One extremely comprehensive article is "Microalgal triacylglycerols as feedstocks for biofuel
production: perspectives and advances" by Hu, and was published in 2000. I know the title is a bit intimidating, but what you need to know is that triacylglycerols, otherwise known as TAGs, are the type of lipids needed to produce biodiesel.

I sincerely believe that this approach has a lot of potential. One main issue that is that we would need to have a source of C, light and starting energy to get everything growing that is naturally renewable, as it is sort of silly to use energy to pump the CO2 and light the system, etc. But take it from me, great progress is being made! At the very least, mixing biodiesel with diesel in our current engines will help us ween off of our fossil fuel dependencies.

I highly recommend reading about this sort of stuff from someone legitimate, like a scientist or a mathematician. A huge problem with American culture is how the general public is being mislead about so many things. Read to form your opinions, and make sure that they make sense. Spewing ridiculous strings of scientific words together that you heard via the half to uneducated grapevine is no way to get your info. Basically, read and think for yourself!

If I remember rightly there is bewery in Colorado that uses algae to absorb it's CO2 over-production and has them available to convert into sellable oil. So it would seem that this could apply to any CO2 generation as a by-line and would only be limited to the absorbtion of the initial installation cost, offset by the oil sales.

You're overlooking other things here that this process needs and also saves.
First, coal plants in the US have to place systems on them to scrub the exhaust to remove pollutants; these systems can directly take the Co2 out of the exhaust stream pretty easy, except one factor. The energy required to remove the heat from the exhaust.
The other output from a coal plant is the heat. We can use that heat to "cook" the algae to remove the oil (or at least heated input to the process) that heat is nearly free from the power plant waste stream.
As far as how much Co2 efficiency we get from the algae? Who cares, it's wasted to atmosphere now, using it is 100% better than waste. Any excess Co2 can get feed to greenhouses for plant growth.
Another missing link here is sewer waste from communities. We can use that nutrient matter for growth median for the algae growing system.
It’s all more efficient than soy/corn or switch grass anyhow so if we miss the mark by 5, 10 or even 20% it's still 200,300 or maybe 500% more efficient than our direction now. Let’s use it until we fine tune it. So far, it's wasted to atmosphere. Heck we are used to waste now, isn’t that how we used up our hydrocarbon base?

Ciao!

There are two options:

1) It probably is possible to grow algae without a coal plant. The productivity per acre would probably be a bit lower, but would remain much, much higher than crop based biofuel. And the real "limiting factor" in growing algae isn't so much carbon dioxide as it is, getting enough sunlight to each cell. Usually the cells nearest the light source "hog" the light and those behind the matt lose out.)

2) The coal firing plants could become "switchgrass and stover" firing plants that run on the same biomass that is currently being talked about for cellulose ethanol. And one could also take the non-oil biomass and keep feeding it back into the power plant.

Why not burn the algae directly in the power plant? Then there is no algae over production. Start with coal, grow algae, extract the oil, burn the rest, reducing the coal required, until no coal is required (the energy is from sunlight at 1KW / hour / square foot).

What wasn't mentioned is the fertilizer for algae - sewage.

On a small scale, this could provide CO2 neutral power, fuel, and sewage treatment for the third world (including rural areas of China and India).

Growing algae whilst at the same time capturing carbon has to be a technology well worth pursuing but it can't be a 'closed loop' as the C02 has to be "fixed" if is is really sequestrated.

Indefinite storage of the carbon molecules fixed by the algae is dependent upon how the resultant biomass is utilised. For example, the production of metal carbonates for the construction industry would allow for this.

Here at PREL http://www.prel-online.co.uk/ we are looking at ways of growing an algae biomass fuel for our gasification based power stations - in other words, grow it and combust for renewable electricity instead of 'parking' the carbon for a while. The production of a bio diesel type vehicle fuel cannot be as sensible in environmental terms as creating green power.

Got lots of algae in a rainwater catchment. Anyone burning algae pellets in a small stirling engine/generator for domestic use? Better than PV?

I would like to talk to someone about growing algae .I have 10 acres of high land that need an agriculture crop that could be made profitable.
I am very serious .Please would someone like Caroline or John Dickie mail me. Thank you

Carolyn,

If you still read this please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Specifically I am looking for someone with algae cultivation knowledge for consulting on a waste-water purification project.

Thanks.