Fill Your Tank With Algae Soon?

It looks like it takes a lot of energy to do what nature did over the course of a million years in a few minutes. I didn't notice anywhere in the article the amount of energy to produce it versus the amount of energy produced.

It's still pretty cool. If feasible it would be nice if this could be scaled to make in the backyard and have it recycle heat and CO2 from my chimney.

I looked for the same numbers ...BTU's in vs. BTU"s out, never saw anything as well as how much to produce a "barrel" vs.s market price, but still fascinating stuff.

Have you contacted Saphire out of NM. They have a large facility over there that is working on production now.

I thought Saphire Energy was in Arizona? Oh well maybe it is in NM, good on them for that. If solar heating seems like a problem, use wind mill and a friction stone to heat air and run it all like a giant popcorn cooker. OR generate electrice when the wind blows, process only when wind is up, and use microwave cookers.

The best place to set these up now are with coal plants to recapture waste heat and CO2.

I hate to sound like a party pooper, but aren't they making oil?

And isn't oil the enemy?

It sounds like a great replacement for fossil fuel, but as long as it has to be burned, and creates CO2, the greenies will hate it.

CO2 isn't found in as high amounts in algae as in fossil fuels. That's why the pro environmental and health experts are in favor where as the anti environment and health non experts are against.

I guess I'm confused. The article says they are making crude oil, but in minutes instead of millions of years.

If the health experts and pro environmentalists are happy with making crude oil, really fast, I'm sure not going to argue with them. They're the smart ones.

Let's do it! No need for electric cars.

It is renewable (you can make more), and it is relatively benign as to overall CO2 footprint if that matters to you. Algae absorbs and converts CO2 to biomass, including oils, proteins, and carbohydrates. That makes up about 98% of the algal biomass after water is accounted for. Convert this to oil, then finish burning it in a car, boat, plane, tractor, etc. This releases CO2 back to the air. Net gain or loss of CO2 is very nearly 0, but not = 0 since some energy is spent (using fossil fuel, etc.) in growing, harvesting, and/or transporting the algae. Eventually this part of the loop would also be closed. IF solar energy can be utilized to power the conversion to oil, then the net energy output if higher than is equivalent algae stocks are burned off in the conversion.

Yeah I know, and I'd like to see it go large scale, if it can be done economically and without massive government subsidies.

My response to Bakerjohn, was more in addressing his comment about the environmentalists and health experts being all for this idea.

I thought that was a dubious claim, since I've never heard of environmentalists being in favor of burning anything for fuel, much less a crude oil that is made from speeding up the natural process.

Wish someone would find a way to make some fuel out of Giant Salvinia. It can double in mass in about 4 to 10 days under favorable weather conditions, should be relatively easy to harvest, and requires no inputs.

It's become a huge environmental problem on a number of southern lakes.

http://today.agrilife.org/2013/11/22/agrilife-project-weevils-damaging-invasive-giant-salvinia-at-caddo-lake/

It figures that the weevils have already figured out how to reduce this plant's coverage in Caddo Lake. Just about the same time someone suggests it could be a resource. Next will come the research project spending billions on how to control the weevil, so we can grow more Giant Salvinia. (giggle).

Hey if it doubles every 4 to 10 days, it does sound like a reasonable plant to look into for production. Does it use up a lot of water to produce, or can it be grown with minimal water input as algae? (the trick is to re-use the water over and over). Is this plant otherwise edible by livestock, or processable into something edible, or is it too toxic?

It would be awesome if it was edible.

Hard to tell what will happen with the weevils. Ever read the story about how carp got all over the US?

Looks like more uncertainties than anything else, and I can't find a thing on energy in vs energy out. I would think that if they were getting a lot more energy value from the final product than what went into making it, they would be bragging about it.

http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-22314.pdf