Alt Fuel seems a little slow, so I thought I'd post a bit of very interesting info I came across recently.

Comparatively speaking...when producing oil from the following (to produce ethanol) expect these quantities per acre/per year:

Corn - 18 gal
Palm - 700-800 gal
Algae (pond) - 20,000 gal

In the evolution of ethanol production, regardless of the biomass of choice, one of the limiting factors is land surface area. Here is a very interesting video describing a vertical system for algae production.

Vertigro closed-loop photo bioreactor. Pay special attention to his very last sentence.

More info here.

 

That was an AWESOME watch! Thanks!

 

Wow Alge is awesome! Thats pretty exciting, hopefully they will be taken seriously by the gov etc, and not pushed aside by greedy oil monsters........

 

I'll be happy with anything they can make it out of that gets it back under $2 a gallon. I read they can make it out of garbage for $1.50g and there building new plants all over. It started the year here at $2.42 and same time last year $2 it's starting to look like another product like oil that they can make millions on.

 

Awesome find. Powered by single celled organisms.

 

All the corn growers are gonna throw a fit though. They will no longer get gov subsidizing. The corn growers are pushing e-85 becaus ethe gov pays them to plant it and then they get payed when they sell it. They win twice. You know they will have all their lobbyist groups in DC pushing to shut this down. Its not about saving the planet or producing it cheaper, its about we get a lot more money for our corn now.

 

thats cool i hope it goes through

 

Anyone got $10 million? That's the market cap for that company.

Actually, you'd only need $5 million + $1

 

If I heard the last sentence right he said we could plant 1/10 of the state of New Mexico and it would produce enough to power the whole US. Is that what he said?

 

That's what he said. That's pretty damn impressive.

Its very interesting to consider this prospect vs electric cars. Although the algae does sequester CO2, an energy infrastructure based on algae would still result in large amounts of CO2 production when burning the fuel. I wonder what is the ratio of CO2 absorption from algae growth to production by burning the fuel.

 

The only knock I've heard on the Alg-oil is from some "forum" scientists. One of them posited that the inventor's calculations were off because there are only so many photons per square meter or something. But I don't know enough to know if that's true or not.

 

I think the greenhouse design with the vertical rack growing system would negate the limitations of so many photons per sq meter on flat surface.

But of course the surface of the earth is not actually flat anyway. The curved "roof" of the greenhouse simply magnifies and bends the light rays to serve a more useful purpose than could be done on a flat suffice. I think!

 

Thought I'd share this article:

Is Ethanol the Answer?

I know it is an old article, but I was surprised by this quote. It tends to go against the grain (pun intended) of the ethanol haters and corn huggers.

"Ethanol yields roughly 26% more energy than it takes to produce it, according to a just-published study by the University of California at Berkeley. That's because corn grows using free sunlight and because farming has gotten very efficient. Gasoline provides only about 84% of the energy required to produce it, the study says."

Am I reading this right?

1. It would take 100 gallons of ethanol energy to produce 126 gallons of ethanol.
2. It would take 100 gallons of gasoline energy to produce 84 gallons of gasoline.

That's what I'm understanding it to say. That means, corn ethanol - the very poorest possible source - is still a more efficient energy source than gasoline. Plus the bonus that corn is renewable. That's incredible. I love it.

When I go to the poll, I mean pump, I'm voting for Ethanol!

 

gasoline was in the beginning a waste product of refining oil. so they created a market for this left over product of making oil. thus they begot gasoline

to suggest it takes more energy to make gas than it makes is in a sense correct. Since you can never get more energy out than you put in.
The unlocked energy from oil is very much a net positive for us. iow There is no way it takes more energy to make gasoline than you produce. Maybe if you consider all the energy to refine oil and heap that only on the gasoline produced. As if the refined oil was a freebie.

Now the notion that ethanol makes more energy than it costs is misleading too.
Think about it, how do they define the production of ethanol, by the amount of oil or gasoline required to make it. Until recently ethanol was a net loss, a pretty big energy drain to produce something that removes more than it replaces... specially if what it replaces cost more than it makes of itself in the beginning.(?)

I can see how allowing the sun to grow the corn will reduce the man made energy required to produce ethanol. This 24% gain mentioned must be a very recent development. That number must also be reliant on very beneficial weather conditions, which may not always be present.
There is no doubt ethanol may become more and more noble. The question is... is there something that much better. In the mean time these small production improvements are helpful.
After all, why are so many of us looking for ethanol supplies in our neighborhood?

 

One big debate we had in environmental science last year at UNT, was actually over ethanol and the many allegations of it being worse than gasoline itself, we had to study the pollutants that ethanol put out over gasoline as well as the fact the your actually taking food that many countries need for starving citizens and instead using it as a fuel source, we came up with the conclusion for the debate , ethanol is about as useful as our depleting gas reserves.

Also i've never seen that algae process before very interesting.