That's Some Sweet Progress

Im not a fan of ethanol at all but looks promising

As long as they don't make a mistake with the gene code

When my summer allergies get bad I feel like that some days.

At least it won't cost us quite as much. Anything that lowers the net loss of mandated ethanol, is good.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2011/01/the-great-ethanol-debate/index.htm

Lots of companies show similar results. This isn't really news. The general feeling seems to be "fair results come from existing bacteria which are had to keep viable, and great results seem to come from synthetic genetically engineered bacteria which work wonderfully but scare the beejeebuz out of people." I can't tell from the articles which one this is.

Why people are not happy with "fair results" is anybody's guess. That engineering bug bear..."efficiency". As if you pay yeast to work for you... grin.

Biogen here in Ottawa is using "single celled organisms" to turn sawdust and corn cobs into fuel. Leave the corn itself to be made into bread for the proletariate, which was perilously overlooked first time around. Anything which uses corn itself to make fuel for motor cars is a one day ticket to destroying the economy. Lots of way better and more plentiful biomass which can be used instead. Unfortunately, it is not ecomically viable at this time to turn cellulose into fuel...better economic results come from turning corn and wheat into fuel. If this is the breakthrough, things are promising. Otherwise, if we keep plucking the low hanging fruit here, there will be pitchforks in the street. The algae mentioned in the article are just biomass...they have to eat something, and that "something" is stuff we should be feeding to people, or at the very least...animals.

Up until cellulose can be utilized for creating bio fuel, gasahol is perilously close to being, in fact, a net user of fossil fuel. The primary advantage to any form of biofuel is simply to reduce global warming. It does this by reducing the amount of fossil fuel being burned. Much more along this line is fodder for another post, and it can get acrimonious. So I won't feed that fire.

So this is another piece to a very big jig saw puzzle. Clearly with fracking and such, the cost of fossil fuels is poised to take another dive, and research in the direction of biofuel will continue to be checked as a result. This research product is another small step on the way to fuel self sufficiency.

Thank you so much for posting it. Get the news out there!

I think the concept of using algae to make fuel, is great.; but I think we would be better served by focusing on things like biodiesel, and other plant based oils, rather than alcohol from sugar.

Hopefully all of the states that are legalizing marijuana, aren't neglecting the multiple uses for the leaves and woody parts of the plant.

If we can get the price low enough, I think home heating would be a great niche for alcohol.

As you know the achille's heal of ethanol is enzymatic production of sucrose from cellulosic materials, these need to be digested into simple sugars by enzymes....now the focus of research has been to engineer an enzyme that does this more efficiently, ie; faster ,cheaper......That is what we see from companies that are forefront in the news....This is a different approach in that the cyanobacteria(microorganisms that are related to bacteria, but are capable of photosynthesis) produce sucrose as a waste byproduct, they require only water, CO2 and sunlight....This process bypasses the digestive requirement necessary for cellulosic waste and creates an even purer end product.....This can then be converted to ethanol via yeast(a typical fungus used in fermentation)....It takes about 14 lbs of sugar to make a gallon of ethanol, and the government gives a $.51 per gallon subsidy to the producer....add to that about 3kwh of electricity to make a gallon, and that comes to about $.50 per gal ethanol....

not to mention that in order to "cook" the mash they currently burn a lot of Nat gas to make ethanol.......which is a foolish way to produce fuel by burning up one resource to generate another

I thought the subsidies had expired.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/business/energy-environment/after-three-decades-federal-tax-credit-for-ethanol-expires.html?_r=0

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/01/ethanol-subsidies-expiring-but-the-costly-mandate-remains

I'm not sure if we're still paying tax dollars to the oil companies to make the blend.

Well yes, so has funding for the government....when the dust settles, we'll know what happened....A lot of legislation seems to be still up in the air...

three steps forward, two steps backwards.

This will happen. These are the small but important steps.

Fracking is creating a natural gas price plunge. That is one of the steps back.

There was a great project a couple of decades ago which used water weeds (not algae) to clean up fresh water streams and rivers. The weed grew like...um...weeds, and the result was pure drinkable water, well oxygenated streams full of fish where before there were polluted waterways. A surprisingly small patch of water was needed! The problem was to rake out the water weeds and dispose of them, feed them to the cows. What could be the downside?

Apparently they took every pollutant out of the water, and sequestered them in their cells. The stuff could not be used as the cattle feed they originally thought it could be used for. The University is (I believe) Peterborough here in Ontario worked up digesters to turn it into alcohol. The principle was sound. The result was a lot of bio-gas heat which was used to run the plant, the rest was flared off. It was experimental, the goal was to dispose of the water weeds, not make fuel,so all they produced was a mildly toxic ash. I cannot honestly see why the left over bio-gas cannot be used as fuel.

This technology is mature, and I have no freakin' idea why it is not used more often. There have been posts on just such digesters on these pages.

It is not an engineering problem I think. Oh sure, solve that achilles heel problem. That is fairly simple. Do it economically.... a little harder. Many have claimed to have done that as a quick search to the right will prove quicker than I can. How much oil went into that plastic bag the algae is sitting in, and how do you keep it from destroying itself in the sun light? Is there a plan to dispose of the plastic? Where did it come from in the first place?

It is a political problem. Political in the good way...I mean. The engineering being done in this field suffers from both myopia and lack of both plausible and sensible goals. The digester tech is mature NOW. The infrastructure (how do you get the stuff TO the digesters) needs work. Will pipelines be viable, or should you turn that energy into electricity to charge electric cars? Stick to gasoline? Really? Call that a goal? Will many small bio-fuel plants be better than big central plants? What will this do the ground water in the area? Will there need to be a way to dispose of the inevitable waste? Will it be toxic?

I don't see much out of the box thinking when bio-fuels start getting mentioned. Those questions above are questions which were raised when a recycling facility was put south of Ottawa...you KNOW the same questions and many more will come up when a massive bio-fuel plant will spread out over farm land in YOUR backyard. There is your REAL achilles heel.

I am at a loss as to why they seem to prefer a polluted waterway over polluted plant waste?

So what if the plant comes out of the water toxic, it took the toxic from the water and condensed it into a form that you can transport for disposal.

Is this type of plant / facility still in operation?

Drew K

Can anyone explain why we are not just using sugar cane or sugar beets to produce the alcohol? I hear it works well in South America. A long time ago I heard something about international trade preventing Americans from growing too much sugar cane?

Drew K

....if all the acreage in the US that could be planted with corn was used for fuel rather than food we wouldn't come close to meeting our current demand for fuel for cars......you can only stretch things so far so I'm all for making use of things we currently burn or send to the landfill but thy have limitations, we just cant "grow" enough fuel to meet our demands, not even close.

that is hogwash. love to see a reference.

you dare challenge the validity of my statement!!, then why don't you look uphttp://www.eia.gov/404r.cfm?v=http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/how-much-ethanol-produced-imported-and-consumed-us and educate yourself. you can research and see that in 2004 the good old US of A produced about 10 Billion gallons of ethanol. about the same time on a whole we consumed )burned up) 134 BILLION. gallons of gasoline.I'm trusting you're a smart enough guy to do the math, 10 does not= 134, not to mention ethanol has roughly 2/3 the energy density of gasoline.....which means it doesn't perform the same amount of work per gallon...less gas mileage.

You said that if we planted all available US land with crops to produce biofuels, we could not produce enough to satisfy demand. Gotta call BS on that one. Unverified conjecture. We could ramp production and/or reduce demand, and in 20 years, we could be there. 100%. Not saying we should, or we will, only that we could. Arable land is not the deciding factor. Money is. Biodiesel is probably a better idea, IMHO.

Second, you are proposing that the only rational approach would be to replace 100% of the petroleum fuel we consume. (not purchase from outside our boaders) I find that to be irrational. (agree to disagree?) 5% might be optimal. Hard to know right now. Science may provide cost effective solutions.

The benefits (geopolitical, environmental,economic) of alternative fuels should be monetized in order to provide solid comparitive analysis. When you monetize, you put your value system to the test. (literally) Many people fall on both sides of the fence, so trying to come onto an engineering/science website and make absolute statements about this issue is kind of like Ted Cruz thinking he can stop Obamacare by blathering on about how it is ruining the country. It's possible he is right, but he is a Congressman, and no one really wants them atround any more. They appear to be pretty worthless at governing.

I guess you avoid water, as it has fewer calories than beer. I like water. I love beer. Some Bourbon is great, some awful. I forgot my point. Oh yes, energy is energy.

I'm done talking about politics for a week or so. I stand on my statement, we can NOT grow our way to energy independence, ethanol will not get us there. the figures for acres planted, bushels harvested, the amount of corn for , animal feed, ethanol, human consumption etc are all easily obtainable. if you enjoy a good match of arguing, I'll pass on your offer.

This requires minimal water, zero soil, and very little processing.

Well first of all sugarcane is a seasonal crop....It must be processed immediately, and I believe it requires a lot of water.....It used to grow everywhere here in Florida, and probably does best in semi-swampland, high humidity, sunny locations, like banana's....

We need that land for food production

The US government is still providing price supports for sugar,keeping the retail price much higher than free competition would allow.A subsidy that once upon a time was justified has now turned into a self-sustaining waste of tax money.Soft drink companies switched to high fructose corn syrup to reduce cost,and studies have proven it to be unhealthy.Of course, for every negative study made by independent labs there will be two positive ones by the sucrose industry.

Big business in now at the helm of big government.

Any time a company gets close to competing with gasoline as a fuel, the price of gasoline drops for a while until they go belly up, and then goes right back to normal gouging.There has never been an oil shortage.The USA has more oil than the middle east in untapped reservoirs.The "thumper" trucks did the studies 50 years ago, and gathered so much information that it could not be processed with the computers of the era, so they "cherry picked" the most promising areas for drilling,leaving the rest for future analysis.Modern computers have analysed all of the previous data, and they now know where and how much oil we have.They will not drill it and flood the market,causing the price to drop.Like De Beers,with diamonds,they have enough in reserve for the next thousand years,but they only release a limited amount to keep the price up. Let the middle east be sucked dry of all their oil,then they will be back to riding camels.Remember, it is he who finishes with the most oil that wins the game.

And the oil companies are playing their hand very well.

This of course, is IMHO, I could be wrong.

I fear you are not far wrong.

the sugar in soft drinks is unhealthy in general, and whether it is sucrose/fructose or high fructose from corn or beets or sugar cane is irrelevant. They are essentially the same.

http://advances.nutrition.org/content/3/5/739.full

Gravity is a myth.

The world sucks.