I've been watching what in theory has the potential to have huge ramifications on our fuel demands -- specifically, diesel fuel -- for a few years now. Growing algae?

Yup, goofy as it sounded a few years ago, I recognized the potential, and benefits over current attempts at producing "grown fuels"( beans, corn, etc.). Most obvious is that you aren't competeing with your food source for fuel (how dense that is). Algae grows fast, requires a fraction of the physical area to produce viable quantities, and yields clean, high energy fuel.

It's 'bout two genetic advances, and half-dozen technilogical advances from having impact, but it's getting closer.

If you have an interest, here's a place to start.

[color:#33CC00]really green energy[/color]

I listened to a presentation on current projects, and techniques yesterday. It's a ways off, but in my view, will be a viable energy late in my lifetime, and certainly in my kid's time here on earth.

Current cost of pond scum as fuel would be 'bout $20.00/gal, with a goal being $2.00/gal (unsubsidized). When that day is in sight, have your investment capital ready to go.

> big grin<

The food vs. fuel argument is a myth, but there is no denying that corn, beans, etc. have a very low bio-density compared to algae. A corn plant takes up a lot of room and the feedstock yield per acre is a fraction of algae's.

Biofuels from algae isn't without its problems. The conversion rate to a usable fuel is slow and expensive in spite of the yield per acre and suitable plant locations are limited. Technology might solve the former, but not the latter.

The key to bio-fuels is a single manufacturing/processing plant that can handle multiple feedstocks. Corn and soy are used because they're plentiful, relatively inexpensive, and have a fast conversion rate. Eventually that same plant will be able to use switch grass, wood waste, algae, and even carbon dioxide generated during processing. At the same time, processing plants can be designed to use feedstocks that are available locally. That will keep plant sizes down and help avoid the centralization that has so plagued fossil fuels.

i enjoy following this kinda stuff too, but i dunno.

when the long-term viability of the soil is taken into account, i have my doubts, but then i've become use to being in the minority on some things, and in the majority on others.

until fossil fuel goes sky-high, alternatives won't be very plentiful, i would imagine.

A slightly different take on this is making fuel from genetically modified kelp...

Kelp grows at a fantastic rate and doesn't need costly tanks ect but could be "farmed" in shallow coastal waters..

Or remember all that blue-green algae that Chinese had to dispose of just prior to the last Olymics? They had troops out cleaning up some of the Olympic watersport venues and they removed thousands of tons of the stuff and that was just from one naturally occuring "bloom"

So to the potenial is there...

Should be a much better approach than using fuel to grow corn and then converting it to alcohol. We could go a long way toward helping our energy issues if we all simply went diesel. By-products might also be a new source of livestock feed.

Looks like california wants batteries instead of algae


http://www.heartland.org/environmen..._Repeal_Greenhouse_Gas_Restrictions.html

If people ever looked into what it takes to make a battery.
( and then ship it all over the world )
Every couple years,
They would NEVER consider a hybred or electric car.

The future is in Bio fuel

( I make my own bio gas daily... now if I could botttle it, I'd be flyin free! )

Switching to diesel 'overnight' would pose lots of problems. Ballpark, a barrel of crude oil produces 20-gal. of gasoline and 10-gal. of fuel oil. Refineries can tweak the percentage a little, but a fast changeover would require a drastic increase in crude oil output.

You have the feed issue kinda backwards. Bio-diesel utilizes most of the protein and fat components that are beneficial to livestock. In contrast, corn ethanol only utilizes the sugars. The by-product, various forms of distillers' grains, is high in fiber, protein, and fat, and a great feed - so great it often has to be cut. Corn ethanol plants crank out tons and tons of animal feed to the extent it's considered a co-product, not a by-product. The feed is so rich, depending on the local market, many plants centrifuge off the corn oil and sell it to bio-diesel manufacturers.

Your statement assumes that yield potential is infinite, farmable acres are infinite, and population is finite. Not something I'd want to defend.



Yes to the first statement, with advances in technology to overcome that not yet perfected (or even known).

The issue of production in different climates was the thrust of the presentation (via TX Ag dept) that I listened to yesterday. Plant genetics specific to different regions is what they are tackling right now - similar to genetic differences for corn, cotton, beans, etc.

So yes, as of todays date suitable locations are limited, but certainly not forever.

The use of algae by-products as feed or fertilizer is also part of the research, and as with current bio-fuel sources, may be as valuable as the fuel produced.

Nobody is suggesting converting 100% to diesel, but reducing the demand for diesel, allows less competetion for carbon-based fuel. That's a win, win for the consumer.

My statement is only directed at the here and now - food vs. fuel is a myth.

There are lot's of 'ifs' in your post - that's not a slam, just an accurate portrayal of algae's role in bio-fuels.

Then there's the problem of having to burn twice as much alcohol to make the same amount of power so the gain is minimal.

Hydrogen is and always will be the cleanest options, but manufacture, processing, and containment in an accident are the biggest concerns.

More like 20% with E10 or E85 and current engines, but both those blends come from the government dartboard with no basis in reality. Most modern engines will provide very similar mileage using E20-E40.

However, engines designed to use alcohol (variable compression) get the same mileage. No matter what fuel replaces foreign oil, engine manufacturers are going to have to keep up. Gasoline engines can't burn hydrogen either.

every time the gaspump price ups a penny, i think someone has driven another nail into the individual automobile, and encouraged mass-transit.

it ain't fun to think about stuff like this unless one is an investor in makers of mass-transit.

Gloomy Gus,

Problems create opportunity, which I figure is the point of Mako's OP. We can all argue the merits of this fuel or that, but the key is that we keep moving the ball and accept that we will make mistakes. What has to change is standing around like morons for the last 45-years while the oil sheiks rape us.

nah, i'm not so gloomy, as long as i can run a poulan, swing a maul, and pound sweetgum with a 10lb. calf-s head, using an iron wedge.

ol Jimmah was right, the energy crisis is the moral equivalent of war.

meanwhile, as you attest, we screw around, fund mindless sh*t, and life goes on, with only gasoline at the pumps costing a "little" more.

i'm passionate about the subject, as i suspect you are also. but, all this this "bionic" stuff can only be a gap or bridge filler, righ?

i mean, without nuclear, either fission or fusion, the winters are going to be cold and the summers are going to be hot?? yes, we should keep trying. that's about all we've ever done, and about all that's left to do.

One would think that, with the 1.5 Billion pounds of human poop produced every day, that conversion into a viable energy source wouldn't be all that tough. Plus, I'd like to see honey wagons that say "Chevron" on the side.

I'm just sayin'

Gasoline averages about 114,000 btu/gallon while ethanol is about 76,100 btu/gallon. There's 33% less energy available in a gallon of ethanol compared to a gallon of gasoline. Given the same level of tuning for each fuel, a vehicle will get 20 to 30 percent better mileage burning gasoline than burning ethanol. It's just physics.

The internal combustion engine can burn pure hydrogen. Not saying it's practical, but you can read about it here. The pure-hydrogen-fueled vehicle was converted from gasoline fuel to operate on 100% hydrogen.

that stuff is pretty much un-centralized, except in the mega-cities, more or less.

it does represent the base-case of humans converting biomass into biomass.

Absolutely - bio-fuels are a gap-filler just like gasoline has been for the last 100-years. With the gap widening again, the question is how fast can a replacement fill the new gap and for how long.

Gasoline has left us with an extremely valuable infrastructure. Junking that infrastructure and then rebuilding a replacement isn't feasible on a nation-wide scale. The logical fuels are those that flow and pump like gasoline/diesel and can be burned in gasoline/diesel-type engines.

What we're looking at isn't replacing gasoline, it's augmenting it. How many cornfields or algae swamps it would take to replace all of our fuel needs is a goofy question. If half of our gasoline consumption can be offset with bio-fuels the vast majority of gasoline-related world problems are also offset. If the solution is shared by ethanol and bio-diesel from multiple feedstocks I'm all for it.

Mako lives in Texas and Texas residents would be nuts to start building bio-fuel plants - they have oil - drill baby. The deep south - maybe algae/biomass based ethanol and bio-diesel. The corn belt - corn, wood waste, and switchgrass ethanol. Throw in a combination of feedstocks and fossil fuels for the western states.

As long as we don't lose momentum, like we have in the past, we really aren't that far away from fuel independence right now.

yep. and conservation is found creeping in the backdoor, yet again.

use less, and adjust by wearing warmer, thicker clothes, driving less, buying more on each individual trip to town, etc.

in other words, the paradignm goes forward, with conservation a piece of the solution to the puzzle.

lot's of folks are beginning to ask if we shouldn't shift paradigms and re-think the oil paradigm??

i don't know, and don't own any stock in chevron, stihl, gm, or poulan, at least as far as i know.

the "debate" is whether we can continue the current paradigm with efficiencies, or should we invest a "new way?" i don't know.

the 10 lb calfs-head is no where near being worn out, and the sweetgum continues to proliferate, so there you go.

As long as oil is cheap alternative energy sources for transportation can't win in the free market, and thus, the needed technologies and infrastructure are not developed. Being oil alternatives take decades to develop into viable transportation systems, the free market alone leads to an abrupt, severe, and sustained transportation energy shortages the likes of which we have not seen in this nation accept maybe during WW2. Sorry to say, but in this case a proper role of government is to stretch out the transportation energy shortage so that it's not as abrupt, not as severe, and not as sustained. This was the idea behind H. Ross Perot�s 50 cent per gallon fuel tax when he ran for President in 1992. Make gasoline more expensive now so that alternative fuels could better compete in the market and become viable alternatives before oil starts to run out.

Then along came the idea that CO2 causes global warming, and from that, the idea of taxing all energy sources based on their carbon footprint with some of that tax money going to support alternative energy. This is supposedly the reason behind Obama's push for carbon cap and trade legislation, but he also wants to get his hands on more tax money.

Now if government restricted its cap and trade taxing to oil derived transportation fuels and used that tax money for alternative energy development and/or deficit reduction, I think many folks would support that. Fat chance of that happening, right?

it depends, in part, on whether the elected reps are pro-oil, or who have come to help lead us out of this morass?

given, that we are at the beginning of the end of the age of oil - paraphrased - what should we be doing next?

building more car plants, or building more infrastructure to support mass-transit?? it's a crying shame politics and self-interest gets in the way of critical thinking related to the future of humankind.

the coming end to the age of oil?? what could that possibly mean?

Any hope that genetically modified anything would ever be allowed to be grown in the ocean is nothing but a dream.

In a single engine the BTU rating and mileage of the separate neat fuels isn't relevant to fuel blends. Due to ethanol's higher octane rating it improves the thermal efficiency of gasoline and offsets the lower BTU content. Yep, there definitely are diminishing returns as more ethanol is blended in the fuel, but E20-E40 seems to be the line (depending on the engine).

As a neat fuel or high-percentage blend, the fuel efficiency of ethanol can be increased by increasing the compression ratio. Numerous studies have proven ethanol mileage can be on a par with gasoline. The trouble is that without a variable compression engine gasoline is excluded.



I took a quick look at the link - from what I read they used a gasoline engine converted to exclusive use of hydrogen/CNG blends. My point was engines that can burn mutiple fuels and blends interchangeably - driver's choice. To my knowledge, there isn't an engine that can use gasoline/ethanol and/or hydrogen/CNG based on the whims of the driver.

Sure it can, except we really don't have a free market. The true cost of imported Middle Eastern oil refined to gasoline is over $10 per gallon, not counting our young men getting shot up. The price supports and subsidies aimed at (and usually missing and hitting an oil company) the renewable fuels industry pale at what's gathered by the oil industry.

the future kinda/sorta points to electricity. of course, there are competing viewpoints.

and those pesky batteries. what a pain, without sufficient technological breakthroughs. nuclear power will likely heat the water ways, and batteries are expensive to ship, about like oil from the middle east in the supertankers.

russian stoves, heat the house in the morning and again at night...now, there's a practical solution.

As you know, octane rating has nothing to do with energy content, but only with the ability of the fuel to resist spontaneous combustion when mixed with air and compressed in a hot engine. Direct fuel injection, which is now becoming commonplace, has all but eliminated the octane advantage of ethanol over regular grade gasoline. Once again a technology advancement overcomes another shortcoming of the IC engine (and there are many). What we are left with is the physics that a gallon of gasoline contains 33% more energy than a gallon of ethanol. That fundamental difference can�t be overcome by technological tricks.

Bingo. It's also fact, not just physics. Ethanol don't cut it.

There will never be a viable alternative fuel source. As soon as any alternative fuel gets an advantage on refined fuels, all the ragheads will do is run the price down to rediculous levels, making refined fuels much cheaper, and running alternative fuel producers out of business. Anyone remember the 70"s????????

yep, i do. in the long-run we gotta go nuclear, whatever that means, or how best to define it.

we've gone from wood, to coal, water-power, oil, etc. the next step is once again very important. will it be a status-quo solution, or a brand new version?

and will there be several competing fuels, or just one main fuel. i like wood, dried properly, and split for the wood heater using wedges and splitting mauls. but that places me clearly in the minority.

for the masses, good winter clothes and mass transit ring a bell.

That's assuming that the reserves being reported by the various Arab countries are accurate. They raised their reported reserves so that they could also raise the amount allowed to be exported under OPEC rules, and have never decreased the amounts of reserves reported, even with large depletion rates and no new "elephant" or giant discoveries. It is questionable if the Arabs have as much oil reserves as they claim. I thought that it was quite telling that they could never boost worldwide production over 86mbpd even when it was $147/bbl in '08.

I believe pure electric and on-board generator electric vehicles (Chevy Volt) are the next generation of passenger transportation. Lithium-ion batteries contain no rare or heavy metals and have been steadily improving in performance. As demand increases so will innovation in batteries, motors, and controls. While batteries may never have the energy density of gasoline, electric vehicles are inherently more efficient at converting energy to locomotion, and thus, gain ground in that area.

One important advantage is that any fuel can be used to produce electricity as can solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and nuclear. The current grid has enough excess capacity in off-peak hours that nearly every single family home could charge one electric vehicle at night in most parts of the nation.

yep. the arguments revolve around how to continue to "commute" into the big mega-cities for work, driving individual cars, versus or compared to another way of getting to our jobs in the mega-cities.

beyond that, should mega-cities be allowed to survive? seriously.

allowing workers to work from home, or nearby office spaces might not require 300 hp. SUV's as a commuter vehicle.

bicyles, or "electric-vehicles" might be positive alternatives. when we're speaking about the end of the age of oil, what are we speaking of, exactly? the end of the mega-cities are included, or not??

Large urban areas are the most efficient living environment on a per capita basis. Short of drastically declining population, large cites are in our future.

Telecommuting seems like a positive development, but most jobs that can be done from home can also be done from India or some other low wage country.

Most public transportation fails on the basis of inconvenience, inflexibility, or exposure to the public (flu, cold, crime, etc). Experimental systems that allow riders to call an individual car from a queue and take it directly to their destination with no intervening stops demonstrates what's needed to replace private automobiles. Such transportation grids are economically viable only in urban areas, so suburban dwellers are left out, which limits the political clout needed to build them.

Perhaps there are some futurists who have thought all this through and can provide various scenarios of what the world will be like in 50 years. The most common scenario has been the one used in movie plots like Mad Max and Road Warrior, but perhaps the future, at least the near future, is not a bleak as the gold merchants promote.