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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

#41

Post by tim333 »

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.

Using algae to make ethanol seems a much easier way to go and uses little energy eg. algenolbiofuels.com

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

#42

Post by ori_b »

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…

The problem is that algae is biomass. Thanks to conservation of mass, whatever amount of biomass you bring down from space needs to come from somewhere, and space is famously devoid of mass, let alone anything for algae to consume. That means that the problem of algae farms in space becomes one putting algae food into orbit.

I'm not sure how effective launching literally tons of material into space will be.

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

#43

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

peg_leg wrote: post #30

I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.

> Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant.

No it isn't. What the algae does is exactly it: harness all that "energy around us", which is scattered around and hard to get, in a more efficient manner.

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

#44

Post by johnchristopher »

hobbes300 wrote: post #34
charlieflowers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 struggled with the question of how to transport that energy to where we'd like to use it Lasers

Thus spoke our prophet:

Let me tell you one of my pet peeves: space solar power. Okay, the stupidest thing ever. If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I got a rocket company and a solar company. I should be really on it, ya know. But it's like, super obviously, not going to work because, ya know, if you have solar panels - first of all, it has to be better than having solar panels on Earth, so then you say, okay, solar panel is on-orbit, you get twice the solar energy - assuming that it is out of Earth's shadow - but you've gotta do a double conversion. You've gotta convert it from photon to electron to photon, back to electron. You've got to make this double conversion, so, okay, what's your conversion efficiency? Hmm. All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50%. [The solar cells are better.] It does not matter, put that cell on Earth then. See, that's the point I'm making. Take any given solar cell, is it better to have it on Earth, or is it better to have it on orbit? What do you get from being in orbit? You get twice as much sun - best case - but you've got to do a conversion. You've got to convert it the energy to photons - well, you have incoming photons that go to electrons, but you - you've gotta do two conversions that you don't have to do on Earth, which is you've got to turn those electrons into photons and turn those photons back into electrons on the ground, and that double conversion is going to get you back to where you started, basically. So why are you bothering sending them to bloody space. "I wish I could just stab that bloody thing through the heart." BTW - electron to photon converters are not free and nor is sending stuff to space. Then it obviously super doesn't work. Case closed. You'd think. You'd think case closed, but no. I guarantee it's gunna come up another ten times. I mean, for the love of God.

From: http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-panel-bta-2012-...

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

#45

Post by njharman »

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.

> As green as it gets

The massively polluted by oil derivative combustion atmospheres of L.A., Mexico City and Beijing beg to differ.

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

#46

Post by willismichael »

charlieflowers wrote: post #24
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.

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 t…

...and then in the sequel they show up millions of years later when the war is over, only to find that sentient creatures have evolved and have almost entirely used up the oil reserves :)

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

#47

Post by xexers »

mseebach wrote: post #36
peg_leg wrote: post #30

I'm still against it. Burning caloric mass for energy when so much energy is around us is just plain ignorant. We need to move to solar and wind power.

The energy content in algae comes from the sun, so this is solar energy, just being captured in the form of liquid hydrocarbons instead of electricity.

I understand that... but aren't you still going to have smoggy cities with biofuels? Even if they are net carbon neutral, they suck up carbon while being produced and then are burned in cars driving in the city, thus creating smog in the city... smog which has all kinds of health problems.

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

#48

Post by jl6 »

One of the main problems humanity would have in recovering from a collapse of civilization would be the absence of fossil fuel reserves that we used to bootstrap civilization the first time round. Could this process be run in a low-tech manner to synthesise the oil necessary to get us back up running again?

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

#49

Post by pstuart »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #35
Pxtl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's actually a cool idea. A nuclear plant that generates petroleum products! There might be power left over to feed into the grid, too. I'm sure environmentalists would have a field day with this concept.

We just need cheaper and safer nukes (LFTR!)

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/federal-lab-say...

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

#50

Post by icebraining »

brazzy wrote: post #10
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)

Yes - if you don't have an electric car. Or if you're somewhere in Siberia at -40 degrees C where a) batteries stop working and b) you're 500km away from a power line.

If you don't have an electric car, it's probably cheaper to buy one than to pay for the gas made by this method, no?
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