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Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

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Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#21

Post by philwelch »

dagw wrote: post #6
seren wrote: post #2

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. I wonder what it the energy ROI of the whole process. It is not mentioned in the article, so it is not sure it is positive.

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

Forget the energy content; there are already tons of uses for petroleum that don't require burning it for fuel.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#22

Post by charlieflowers »

dagw wrote: post #6
seren wrote: post #2

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. I wonder what it the energy ROI of the whole process. It is not mentioned in the article, so it is not sure it is positive.

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

Wonder if this could be done in space? A few months ago I read about the idea of solar energy being captured in space, and I struggled with the question of how to transport that energy to where we'd like to use it.

If the algae could grow in space, and this process could occur in space, then we could wastefully convert solar to oil in space, and spacecraft could use that oil in space.

Lot of if's and speculation there, but it's an interesting line of thought.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#23

Post by VLM »

charlieflowers wrote: post #22
dagw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

Wonder if this could be done in space? A few months ago I read about the idea of solar energy being captured in space, and I struggled with the question of how to transport that energy to where we'd like to use it. If the algae could grow in space, and this process could occur in space, then we could wastefully convert solar to oil in space, and spacecraft could use that oil in space. Lot of if's and speculation ther…

I think you'll find radiation to be an interesting additional challenge to add to the mix. That and the relative lack of local oxygen. I get what you're saying though, its a heck of a lot more rational to design and airdrop an algae plant on Mars than to expect oil wells to produce on Mars.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#24

Post by charlieflowers »

pjc50 wrote: post #4
seren wrote: post #2

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. I wonder what it the energy ROI of the whole process. It is not mentioned in the article, so it is not sure it is positive.

The algae->oil part of the process necessarily loses energy, so it all comes down to the process of turning sun into algae. Which is not itself very efficient, but may be cheaply scalable. I think if you just care about renweable EROI and not about storage in convenient petrol form then wind and solar are still the winners.

Science fiction story just popped into my head:

The story starts with people terraforming a planet and turning it into a giant algae-growing factory, for the purpose of creating oil from it. Whole plots with interesting characters occur. Then, suddenly, towards the end, those people abandon the whole project to go fight a war in their own galaxy. Then, the story ends with the shocking twist ... somehow you find out the abandoned algae factory is Earth. :)

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#25

Post by VLM »

Pxtl wrote: post #20
dagw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

Nuclear. You want to generate a lot of heat and you don't have geothermal energy handy, you go nuclear. You could make the whole facility mechanical - the heat from the reactor is used to heat the algae and use steam-driven pumps to create the pressure. Eliminate the electrical middleman.

You need a fair amount of hydrogen gas to run a hydrocracker, which is basically what this is. Industrially you get the hydrogen from natgas. Yeah yeah you can get methane from the output of a hydrocracker and hydrogen from methan but depending on the process its net overall hydrogen negative (think about it, how are you going to split a long chain hydrocarbon that has two H ends into two little ones thus a net of 4 H ends without a continuous input of hydrogen?)

So yeah you're mostly right but never going to get away from maybe 5% to 10% capacity driving steam turbines to electrolyze water and run the (insecure, of course) SCADA and hotel load for the humans running the plant etc.

A likely plant would look like two nuke generating plants backing each other up and 18 nukes cooking algae into diesel, roughly.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#26

Post by jccooper »

dagw wrote: post #13
AndrewDucker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it better than turning that geothermal energy into electricity and transmitting it to a battery in an electric car? Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying there isn't a need for oil. Just wondering what the efficiencies are for each route, and whether this process means that we don't even need electric cars any more (doubtful, but I thought I'd ask)

Sure, that's better in the few scenarios when it is reasonable to do so. But electric engine technology is still very limited, and we're a long way from replacing all internal combustion engines with electrical. I doubt we'll seeing transatlantic passenger flights in electric airplanes any time soon. The other huge advantage with oil is that it is a very efficient, stable and easy to transport store of energy. Transp…

I'm petty sure I'm being pedantic, but to be clear: Electric engines (motors) are great. Highly efficient, simple, powerful, scalable both ways, and reliable. If you've got electricity available and want things to move, they're the way to go.

It's the batteries that are sub par, in many ways.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#27

Post by salient »

dagw wrote: post #6
seren wrote: post #2

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. I wonder what it the energy ROI of the whole process. It is not mentioned in the article, so it is not sure it is positive.

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

So just get rid of the internal combustion engine...Surely that energy could be used in a more efficient way - such as filling up batteries for electric cars, and then power 10x more electric cars than oil-based cars.

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#28

Post by techdragon »

awjr wrote: post #9
pjc50 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The algae->oil part of the process necessarily loses energy, so it all comes down to the process of turning sun into algae. Which is not itself very efficient, but may be cheaply scalable. I think if you just care about renweable EROI and not about storage in convenient petrol form then wind and solar are still the winners.

Somebody needs to come up with a better way of converting solar energy into a transportable liquid. I'm guessing this is as good as it gets for now.

Phonons. Phonon pipelines, phonon tanks... Investors please form an orderly line for me to fleece you go millions.

Srsly though. Liquids are extremely good at this kind of density storage trade off, it's the reason petroleum won over electric cars in 1900 ( look it up, electric cars aren't new, we just decided about a. Hundred years ago we liked oil more.)

Re: Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

#29

Post by kevingadd »

kaybe wrote: post #7
lucaspiller wrote: post #5

Assuming you get the energy for the process to make it from renewable sources, how 'green' would the useful energy in terms of fuel be at the end?

As green as it gets, since the CO2 that is released from burning the fuel has been taken out of the atmosphere by the algae a short time before that. The only issue is to take care of the byproducts and algae production process, which can create local pollution issues - cheaper not to do it, but nothing that hasn't been done before in sufficient scale.

And it sounds like this particular process is less reliant on dangerous chemical catalysts and produces less byproducts, so it's a plus in that regard.
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