May be a while yet, but if they can get just the planes out of using petroleum diesel the price will come down as they keep the diesel prices up during the summer by locking in prices there willing to pay.



Coming Soon, Avfuel From Algae?



Experiments by scientists at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are moving forward quickly and could be producing jet fuel from algae at competitive prices by next year, the UK Guardian reported this week. "The claim ... has taken industry insiders by surprise," according to the news story. DARPA researchers have already produced oil from algae in ponds at a cost of about $2 per gallon, and could be mass-producing as much as 50 million gallons a year in 2011. DARPA is funding the research to find an algae-based alternative to the petroleum-derived JP-8 fuel used by the Air Force. If an inexpensive fuel alternative is possible, it will be considered for Army vehicles as well.



DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker told America.gov last year that algae offer the advantage of growing easily in a lot of different places. All algae needs to grow rapidly is light, carbon dioxide and water -- even salty water or wastewater will do.

 

I did a lot of research on the Department of Energy's earlier attempts to grow fuel from algae; they called it their "Aquatic Species Program", and spent from '78 to '96 studying the validity.

I think that it's the most promising concept there is to replace petroleum with biofuels. Every large plant throws off enough waste heat and CO2 to make algae reactors practical, and algae can be grown in desert climates that otherwise aren't good for anything.

But there are a LOT of alternative oil programs that are viable, just none that are reliably cheaper than petroleum. When the economy crashed a few years ago and oil prices dived, a whole lot of biofuel coops and startups around the country that could make a profit on $4 a gallon fuel couldn't make a profit on $3 a gallon fuel and closed their doors. Coal gasification and synthetic fuel production, oil shale refining, biomass liquification and algae growth all become really viable around $4-5 a gallon. The technology is there to make sure that we never run out of oil, but it's just not advanced enough to be viable until we start to run out of petroleum.

Algae technology could get a major boost from a CO2 cap-and-trade bill; if a plant constructs a pond warmed and aerated with waste exhaust and full of algae, they could cut the hell out of their CO2 emissions. Ironically, when that algae dies, they still net a higher quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere than if the petroleum stayed in the ground, but they manage to sneak the CO2 around the sniffer by converting it into biomass.

 

Begle how do you know so much about everything?

 

I used to be a really good student before I went insane. I completely dominated an AP "Environmental Science" class sophomore year of high school, while getting paid to do the homework for over half of the class as well. ASU gave me 2 semesters worth of credit for that AP class beat-down.

But I am also a pathological liar and am capable of conjuring up total bullcrap with ardent confidence, and then actually convincing myself that it's true and zealously defending it to my death.

So I know a lot, but at least half of what I know is something that I've completely fabricated and convinced myself that it's true.

You see, I've delved long enough in rationality to realize that no words can ever be anything except equivocal and that language is a tautological Satanic construct that keeps humanity imprisoned in a world of our own masturbatory intellects. So anything I can say, I can convince myself its true. I am totally fascinated with this thing people call "credibility".

 

 

I stick to studying myself and getting the facts from several different sources and make my own up my own mind, the one thing I have learned believe nothing anyone says till you can prove it to be true.

But the best way to keep oil prices low is to make alternative oil programs so even if they can't get them as cheap it does put a ceiling on the price, as when your price gets to here we will stop using your oil, but they are getting the prices down.

And using ponds you can only use the top surface area to produce Algae, where they using continuously flowing production of bio diesel to get the price down.

The study was presented recently at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

One of the problems with current methods for producing biodiesel from algae oil is the processing cost, and the New York researchers say their innovative process is at least 40 percent cheaper than that of others now being used. Supply will not be a problem: There is a limitless amount of algae growing in oceans, lakes, and rivers, throughout the world.

Another benefit from the "continuously flowing fixed-bed" method to create algae biodiesel, they add, is that there is no wastewater produced to cause pollution.

"This is the first economical way to produce biodiesel from algae oil," according to lead researcher Ben Wen, Ph.D., vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y. "It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a much smaller factory, there are no water disposal costs, and the process is considerably faster."

A key advantage of this new process, he says, is that it uses a proprietary solid catalyst developed at his company instead of liquid catalysts used by other scientists today. First, the solid catalyst can be used over and over. Second, it allows the continuously flowing production of biodiesel, compared to the method using a liquid catalyst. That process is slower because workers need to take at least a half hour after producing each batch to create more biodiesel. They need to purify the biodiesel by neutralizing the base catalyst by adding acid. No such action is needed to treat the solid catalyst, Wen explains.

He estimates algae has an "oil-per-acre production rate 100-300 times the amount of soybeans, and offers the highest yield feedstock for biodiesel and the most promising source for mass biodiesel production to replace transportation fuel in the United States." He says that his firm is now conducting a pilot program for the process with a production capacity of nearly 1 million gallons of algae biodiesel per year. Depending on the size of the machinery and the plant, he said it is possible that a company could produce up to 50 million gallons of algae biodiesel annually.

Wen also says that the solid catalyst continuous flow method can be adapted to mobile units so that smaller companies wouldn't have to construct plants and the military could use the process in the field.

 

dam herb thats quite a mouthful of knowledge you said right there yourself

 

From what I've seen, the break even point for a lot of that technology is when oil is ~$90/barrel or higher. Once it gets back up to $130/barrel and stays there I'm sure we'll see a lot more biodiesel refineries in operation. I'm hoping biodiesel takes off.

 

When it was over $100 a barrel a lot of little operations started cropping up, and they all closed down when the oil prices fell back down.

At the time there was some talk of price-controlling petroleum fuel to keep it at the level where the alternative energy start-ups could stay in business, but that didn't go anywhere. It would have been against my usual nature to support something like that, but if nation-wide fuel cost was pegged at $3 a gallon with all of the difference going to a tax paying off national debt, I don't know if it would've been that bad of an idea... As it is, loosing the first batch of alternative fuel start-ups and venture capital could've put us a decade or two behind for when fuel prices shoot up next time and stay up.

 

Well guys like begle said the algae is a legitimate way to make fuel and is by far the best way to make biofuel. The biodiesel from wvo is good, I was doing a project to try and get my school to start making their own. That didnt get enough insight. I do like the biofuel ideas and algae is a very interesting way to do it and again the best way to do it.