Oilgae is an appealing product. Here's hoping it pans out. Its yield, compared to ethanol, is fabulous.

It's encouraging for the short run, at least. I worry that history will repeat itself with respect to energy efficiency and alternative fuels in the next few years. In the late 1970's, research into those two topics was proceeding at a good pace, but the drop in oil prices in the mid '80s (and the ascendancy of the Republican Party) meant that politicians could put off funding that research indefinitely. And now, here we are, behind the 8-ball.

I kind of hope the price of oil stays high enough to create the demand for more efficient buildings, land development, cars, and mass transportation - but not so high that the economy goes into a standstill. Really, what we need is to move from an auto-oriented society to an auto-optional one - where it's not too hard to own and drive a car, but you don't need one for every single thing. "Oilgae" is just a small part of making that possible.

Interesting benefit: it looks like you could build algae farms almost anywhere with a decent supply of water. This suggests a way to prop up Rust Belt cities like Detroit and Buffalo - turn the old factory grounds into "oilgae" production centers. Solve unemployment, the trade deficit, and global warming all at once?

And Cleveland could build a  few "Sludgae" refineries.

Seriously, great idea, great news. We should be figuring out ways to shift production for applications of these new green technologies to Detroit and the auto belt. A huge talent pool of highly skilled workers and industrial engineers, excellent university research centers, close to enormous population centers.

I'd like to see Detroit re-tool to make high-speed trains for us and the world.

benjamin81,

What we need is a whopping big oil tax with the proceeds being used to reduce payroll taxes.  A win, win.  The consumption of energy declines, the price being paid to producers, especially foreign oil producers, declines, and yet the domestic price stays high enough to stimulate innovation (if the tax is not imposed on fuel with a zero carbon footprint).  Meanwhile, the cost of labor goes down, employment goes up.

We just need a political genius to sell it to a skeptical public.  Know anyone?

Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Oops, he's gone.

Joe Biden. Oops, he never got any traction.

John McCain. Oops... never mind.

Sounds intriguing.  "Early stages"--can someone put some numbers or a rough timetable out there for this slow learner?

What I've read elsewhere is that this process needs organic inputs. non-potable in this case may mean sewage, which is good. Furthermore, farm waste (manure) could be used, creating a profit center for animal farmers that would encourage them not to pollute streams and cause algea blooms in the ocean. Even nitrogen-rich farm runoff might be utilized, and clean(er) water released. What I don't know, and could still be an issue, is the water *consumed* by the process?

There are other biotech firms working on ways to turn waste to oil using bacteria, with similar outputs, long-chain hydrocarbons without offending sulphur and other impurities. This stuff can be fed directly into the refinery system. Unfortunately, it will take decades (centuries?) to replace our current oil consumption this way, even at $200/bbl.

Another bonus: Food prices won't spike.  I mean, who eats algae anyway?

"What I've read elsewhere is that this process needs organic inputs. non-potable in this case may mean sewage, which is good."

Yes, dbhuff, but the temptation would be too strong for a worker to just pee in sewage input.  Ewww.

Don't touch my kelp. Sushi's expensive enough as it is.

Great, cancel those oil as-manufacturing tax breaks and invest in these opportunities. Set up a world class alternative energies college in some urban wasteland, exclusively funded by the State.

dbhuff, though the Sapphire Energy press release is pretty sketchy--no surprise there--they seem to suggest that there is no requirement for organic inputs.

Not an exact quote, but more than once they state something to the effect that their process generates hydrocarbons with no inputs other than water, sunlight and CO2.  

One could speculate that unless their bioengineered photosynthetic microorganism can also fix nitrogen that there'd be SOME requirement for nitrogenous fertilizer--sewage being a viable source--but proportionally to the output, these N2 inputs would presumably be small.

16CO2 + 18H2O --> 25O2 + 2C8 H18(octane)

tep, what was your "Oops" post above all about?  Wrong thread or something?  Help me out, I'm a little slow.

-Aaron

The ultimate would be if these "Oilgae" can be cultivated in salt water.  The H2O inputs will be big; water is the source of the "hydro" in "hydrocarbon."  If you didn't need fresh water--even dirty fresh water which is likely itself to become a commodity (Legal scholars here in Australia are already writing academic articles about who owns sewage)--you'd be way ahead.  Maybe you could even avoid the land-use issues by using sea surface for your oilgae farms.  Of course then you'd have even more worries about oil spills.  

Before everyone gets overly excited, recognize that for this technology to replace petroleum, a hell of a lot of land surface would have to be given over to oilgae ponds.  The worldwide average for incident solar energy is 4.8 kilowatt hours/ms/day, which is equivalent to the energy in 0.13 gallons of gasoline.  

The US alone consumes over 300 million gallons of gasoline each day.  Assuming 100% efficiency in the solar-to-petroleum energy conversion you'd need 23,000 sq kilometers of algae ponds to meet US gasoline demand.  But lets be realistic, these guys at Sapphire are lucky if they're capturing 20% of incident solar energy in usable gasoline.  That means you'd need an area of greater than 100,000 km2 to meet US demand--that's an area the size of Tennessee.  

Also, a question the press release does not address is whether this process requires enriched CO2 inputs.  You could envisage bubbling power plant outputs through an Oilgae pond, but how do you distribute CO2 emissions over an area the size of Tennessee?

Oops.  My land surface area calculations were off by a factor of ten. So it ain't so bad after all.  You'd need an area a TENTH the size of TN.  

I can see it now: every sunny city in the world surrounded by lakes of green sludge, fed by a continuous stream of toilet water.

And this sort of thing is the only viable path for environmentalism.   Forced limits on consumption are worthy of discussion, but I don't see caps being the answer.  Whether at the individual, the corporate, or the national level, the advantage goes to the entity who either cheats or opts out.  The only solution is to find clean ways to feed the machine.  The beauty of this technology (oilgae) is that if it actually works it would obviate the need for massive changes in existing transportation technology.

Er... scam?

What kind of algae are we talking about?  Free-floating.

Free-floating is easy to cultivate, but in terms of mass per volume, it's terrible. That scummy water isn't much more massive than regular water.  Additionally, algae tends to be self-limiting, so you need to filter the water almost constantly to keep it growing consistently.

I'm sure you can filter out a good deal of free-floating algae each day, but that's a fairly involved process (for some species you'd need a filter size of about 1 micron) and would require a good deal of energy.  Let's not get into the whole issue of trying to keep the algae production limited to species that are most useful for energy production.

And we're supposed to change the harvested lipids into octane by what process now?

People need to understand one thing about petroleum and it's derivatives: we are basically burning the remains of several million years of living organisms.  We have abundant energy only because of this.  Trying to cultivate the required amount of energy from existing biomass requires a much larger investment of time and effort - not to mention solar input.

So yeah... scam.

Grammar alert:

"Its" not "It's."

I'm working on three or four hours of sleep, I am sure there are other errors.

Additionally, I should have mentioned coal along with petroleum.

aeromonas: I did misspeak, the organic inputs are needed for the other processes I was discussing. Although I'm sure something is needed for the algae too. The boiengineered approach needs extensive organic waste that would break down to CO2 and CH4 normally.

As for the area required, it is roughly the same as solar cells needed to replace current electrical demand.

And as for CO2 input, how about this?

www.guardian.co.uk/.../carbonemissions.climatechange

We could ship the scrubbers to these ponds and purge them there, turning coal to gasoline, sort of...

Scam?  

Seems like a conviction without a trial, bcbaird.  You outline some technical difficulties with making petrol from algae, but you don't know any better than I do whether or not such problems are insurmountable.

The underlying physics, chemistry and biology suggests that it is at least POSSIBLE to do what these guys say they'll be able to do.  There IS enough solar energy available that if you could effect an efficient conversion, you could make a reasonable amount of petroleum.  Photosynthetic microorganisms DO convert solar energy to reduced carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds...

Now I'm enough of a realist that I'll reserve my most heartfelt congratulations for the moment when the technology comes online on a large, commercially viable scale.  Nevertheless, your can't-be-done skepticism seems over the top.

Here's an awesome lede, from a story that's part of Forbes new online package about energy efficiency