While it may be way too early to declare a final winner in the race to find replacement renewable liquid fuels to replace the jet fuel and diesel that power so many of the vehicles in the world, there are some indications as to the technology that just might end up coming out ahead.
The results that are starting to appear also show that sometimes there is a disconnect between what the Government wants and considers possible and the real world. The concern over climate change (not peak oil) led many Governments around the world to mandate that propulsion fuels include a growing percentage generated from a renewable source. Six years ago I was in St Louis for the Renewable Energy Conference with its great emphasis on cellulosic ethanol. President Bush came to bless the endeavor, and much was made of it being the time to start building plants. A short while thereafter I started looking into the generation of biodiesel from algae, and brought up the, to me, logical suggestion of growing it underground. (That idea still gains me the occasional pat on the head). Some of the early reviews of the technology were not good, but nevertheless the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency began funding the development of algae, particularly as a source for jet fuel.
Time passed, and the development of the new fuels took quite different paths.In order to encourage the change to renewable fuels the EPA mandated that motor fuel include 100 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2009, 250 million in 2010 and 500 million by 2013. (This is on the way to a target of around 2 mbd by 2022.) Some of the original companies to seize on this opportunity started out with too great an ambition. Range Fuels, after some $156 million of Government loans from the Bush Administration, closed its doors this past year, unable to make the product it had promised. When it became obvious that the initial targets would not be met the mandated volumes were lowered, so that, for example, this year the industry target is 8.5 million gallons. But still the Government will fine companies, for not using a fuel that doesn’t yet exist in the volumes needed to meet those quotas.
Two firms say that they will be able, in time, to produce significant volumes; POET is beginning construction of a plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa that is targeted to produce 25 million gallons a year from 700 tons a day of the left-over material from corn fields after the corn is removed. They have currently stockpiled 61,000 tons of stover for use this year. There is some concern however over the long-term Biomass Crop Assistance Program which is supposed to help with funding. (DOE is to provide a $105 million loan). However the Scotland S.D. pilot plant can only handle a ton a day of material (turning it into 80 gallons of ethanol at a cost of around $3 a gallon), and so the rest is to be burned as a fuel at the ethanol plant in Chancellor, S.D. (This is a corn ethanol plant.)
A second plant will be built at Kinross in Michigan, by Mascoma following an agreement with Valero, and the award of $80 million from the Department of Energy. The plant is intended to generate an annual flow of 20 million gallons (1,300 barrels/day ) of cellulosic ethanol from hardwood pulp. The process is based on the use of engineered micro-organisms to the necessary saccharolytic enzymes and then converting the sugars released by those enzymes into the desired end-products. The process is knows as Consolidated BioProcessing (CBP) In the meanwhile they are also licensing a technology for improving the performance of corn ethanol plants. To date, therefore, the promise of cellulosic ethanol has not been met.
Other sources for liquid fuels have been also been tested, and some – particularly the use of vegetable oils, either pre or post use in fast food chains – have found some niche in the market. Alaskan Airways are using an 80% conventional 20% cooking oil derived mix. At the moment the cooking oil derivative is six times the cost of conventional fuel and Dynamic Fuels is the only commercial source with the plant having a capacity of 75 million gallons per year. The are now working with Solazyme to meet a target delivered volume of 450,000 gallons of renewable fuel, and that brings the focus back to biodiesel from algae.
By 2010 DARPA was already claiming that the contractors it was working with had shown the promise of producing algal biodiesel at a price of $2 a gallon. Following that step, the US Navy has begun trials with oil made from algae. In the set of agreements that have flowed out of the initial success, and led to the 450,000 gallon agreement, the U.S. Navy has taken delivery of roughly 75,000 gallons of biodiesel for testing in the fleet. And while the US Air Force is continuing trials of jet fuel made from camelina as the search for replacement renewable fuels continues. Beyond camelina (which has some problems finding a suitable home for large volume growth) commercial airlines are looking at algae sourced alternatives, with a United Continental flight having used a 60% conventional 40% algal sourced mix on a flight from Houston to Chicago. The algae-based fuel comes from Solazyme, which went public last spring and the company and has signed a non-binding letter of intent with the airline to sell them 20 million gallons of bio-sourced jet fuel starting in 2014. Interestingly the plant uses “indirect photosynthesis” to grow the algae, rather than open ponds. Robert Rapier has described the technology that they use. By using algae that do not require sunlight they can generate the fuel in bioreactors where the process can be better controlled. Gail Tverberg first wrote about the company in 2008.
Despite the opportunities that the fuel market presents, it does not, however, at the present time, provide much profit to a company, since it is costing about as much to produce a product as the market price will bear (around $3 a gallon). Thus it is still more profitable for the company to use the algal product in an earlier form as a triglyceride that can then be used in cosmetics and other chemical stocks. But, in contrast to the problems that cellulosic ethanol continue to have, I must admit to a quiet smile as I see the success that algal-derived fuels are starting to achieve.
Now if I could just get them interested in nice, constant temperature locations for their plants, with much of the infrastructure, walls, roof and floor already in place, and relatively little cost for development, my original projections just might . . . . . . .
Showing posts with label algae. Show all posts
Showing posts with label algae. Show all posts
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, October 9, 2009
Another thought on Algae
I occasionally write about the potential advantages that might come from growing algae as a source of biodiesel and other liquid fuels. However I have also tried to point out that it is not something that will allow you to drive your truck for ever on the green slime that is growing in your pond, starting tomorrow afternoon.
There is a long process of validation and scaling up that will be required to construct a viable productive industry, large enough to make a significant contribution to the nations supply. And by significant I mean in and around the million barrels a day mark. In an earlier post I tried to delineate some of the technical issues, and in another post the reasons why it will likely take between ten and twenty years before we see that level of success.
To get into that process will, of course, require some initial ideas with promise, and a significant amount of investment (for example General Atomics, Exxon, BP and Boeing - to name but four of the companies involves with very large investments in the potential of the technology). However it is often not clear how far along these developments are, relative to the hurdles that they have to overcome.
However, there has been an article by Emily Waltz in Mother Jones that recently pointed out to possible investors in the technology that they need to do at least the usual levels of due diligence before investing in the technology. It points out that there are something on the order of 200 companies worldwide that are working on the topic, but that it is not yet possible to purchase commercially available oil from any of them. It cites, in fact, the journey of one individual who visited apparently 40 of the companies in the United States, and concluded that he was better off starting up his own company than going to work for any of those that he had visited.
I remain convinced that there is a considerable potential for the process to become viable. However there are a considerable number of hurdles that have to be crossed before that point can be reached. An immediate rush to large scale trials can gloss over some of these problems with unfortunate results, not only for that individual project, but also for the reputation of the technology as a whole.
This is perhaps most recently demonstrated by the fate of Greenfuel Technologies about whom the above article does not stint its scorn:
There are some successes that have been reported on some of the subsidiary problems that have to be overcome on the way to generating a sufficient volume of oil to be realistically useful. These include ideas that relate to harvesting and separation of the different constituents of the mix. However, one of the difficulties in writing about a subject that is part of my day job, is that some of the more interesting current work cannot, at this stage, be published – for a variety of reasons – some obvious.
So let me stop before I get into too much trouble and merely note that the technology has already shown promise and some answers, but that I do not believe that it will provide the rapid response to the developing peak in oil production in sufficient time to have any impact on that situation.
There is a long process of validation and scaling up that will be required to construct a viable productive industry, large enough to make a significant contribution to the nations supply. And by significant I mean in and around the million barrels a day mark. In an earlier post I tried to delineate some of the technical issues, and in another post the reasons why it will likely take between ten and twenty years before we see that level of success.
To get into that process will, of course, require some initial ideas with promise, and a significant amount of investment (for example General Atomics, Exxon, BP and Boeing - to name but four of the companies involves with very large investments in the potential of the technology). However it is often not clear how far along these developments are, relative to the hurdles that they have to overcome.
However, there has been an article by Emily Waltz in Mother Jones that recently pointed out to possible investors in the technology that they need to do at least the usual levels of due diligence before investing in the technology. It points out that there are something on the order of 200 companies worldwide that are working on the topic, but that it is not yet possible to purchase commercially available oil from any of them. It cites, in fact, the journey of one individual who visited apparently 40 of the companies in the United States, and concluded that he was better off starting up his own company than going to work for any of those that he had visited.
I remain convinced that there is a considerable potential for the process to become viable. However there are a considerable number of hurdles that have to be crossed before that point can be reached. An immediate rush to large scale trials can gloss over some of these problems with unfortunate results, not only for that individual project, but also for the reputation of the technology as a whole.
This is perhaps most recently demonstrated by the fate of Greenfuel Technologies about whom the above article does not stint its scorn:
The company insisted it could produce oil at the equivalent of more than 44,000 gallons per acre per year. Venture capitalists ponied up more than $33 million between 2005 and 2008, a sizable amount for an energy startup of its size.Part of the problem that arises is that there is not always enough scrutiny given to the ideas that are proposed, where fancy computer created pictures of possible future plants hide the reality of the thinness of the ideas and the lack of comprehension of the scale of the difficulties that must be overcome in a number of different fields, if the technology is to come to fruition. The article continues:
GreenFuel's pilot project proved twice as expensive as projected, and the company folded in May. "They had no technology—nothing except PR for outrageous claims repeated often enough to sound believable to some poor souls who bought into their fibs," says John Benemann, a former researcher at the University of California-Berkeley who now works as an algae consultant.
Whether the algae charlatans will be exposed before the DOE sinks taxpayers' money into their companies is another question. Curtis Rich, a renewable energy attorney, says he believes the DOE's review teams will be "able to determine those projects based on press releases and those based on sound research." But Benemann is not so sure. The week GreenFuel folded, the DOE awarded an Arizona utility $70.6 million to scale up the firm's technology.Outside of the major efforts that are being carried out, there are also a considerable number now of smaller programs that Universities such as ours are getting into, to further explore the technology. Algae have benefits not only from the oil that some varieties can form in sufficient volume to appear attractive, but also because they can adsorb significant quantities of carbon dioxide as a part of that photosynthetic process. Thus there is a potential for their use in reducing the carbon dioxide output from power plants and other gas producers. Often these experiments don’t get a lot of light, but occasionally even efforts such as ours catch a little attention.
There are some successes that have been reported on some of the subsidiary problems that have to be overcome on the way to generating a sufficient volume of oil to be realistically useful. These include ideas that relate to harvesting and separation of the different constituents of the mix. However, one of the difficulties in writing about a subject that is part of my day job, is that some of the more interesting current work cannot, at this stage, be published – for a variety of reasons – some obvious.
So let me stop before I get into too much trouble and merely note that the technology has already shown promise and some answers, but that I do not believe that it will provide the rapid response to the developing peak in oil production in sufficient time to have any impact on that situation.
Read more!
Monday, May 18, 2009
Cost viability and algae
Robert Rapier recently drew attention to the demise of GreenFuel Technologies, the company founded on ideas from MIT and Harvard and supported by millions of dollars in venture capital funding. One of the creative ideas that the company has was to located their plant at existing power stations so that the carbon dioxide generated in the flue gas could be fed into the bio-reactors holding the algae, with the gas also keeping the algae at an optimal growing temperature. It was a company that was in the vanguard of promoting the use of algae in both carbon dioxide collection and liquid fuels production.
The company, however, ran into problems in raising more money in the current climate, and with the technology.
(Source Biodiesel - Growing a New Energy Economy - Greg Paul, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005, 281 pages)
However, getting what has been achieved in the short term, into a production mode that sustains the same yield for year after year is not that easy. Nor is simply finding the best algae the only solution required for the problem.
Given the collapse of GreenFuel, it is perhaps useful to look at some of the things that need to be considered, if you are going to have a shot at a viable algae operation.
First you need to select an algal species. This is not as simple as it sounds, because the initial thought might be to screen all the thousands of algae types that exist around the world to find the ones that (a) hold the most oil and (b) grow fastest. Algae grow by multiplication and so the common metric for the latter is the time it takes to double the volume of algae in a container, with less than a day being a good place to start. And a species that has 50% lipid content (the oil component) is also the sort of ballpark we are looking for. There are a number of candidates that meet (or come close to meeting) these criteria. One of the benefits of the program that the NREL review of algae produced was a filter of the thousands of candidates, that gave data from which to select some of the more productive.
Let us, for the sake of discussion, call one candidate AA, another BB, and a third CC. One of the early things you discover is that some of the better ones grow in salt water (seawater) rather than in river/lake conditions. That makes a little difference, particularly if you are interested in putting your algae operation (we’ll call it a farm) out in the middle of the country many miles from an ocean. So that if you need that water you can either make it or import it, neither cheap.
And speaking of cheap, one of the first steps is to decide how you’re going to contain your algae and growing medium (nutrient). GreenFuels used plastic tubes, but as Fireangel pointed out over at The Oil Drum these are very expensive and he concluded
But that selection brings its own concerns. For the light to reach the algae throughout the water column in adequate quantity, the water can only be around 6-inches deep. This means that the ponds have to be large, (bringing in construction and other land costs). It also limits the species that can be grown, since the conditions are more tempered by local conditions and survivability. This almost mandates, for open systems, that the local conditions select the algae, rather than picking the best. (Which helps explain why we chose a confinement strategy based on facilities constructed for other purposes and paid for, but that is another story).
So having selected the algae and the farm, the next cost is for the nutrient that the algae needs, and to supply the carbon dioxide. Here the potential for beneficial selections should be considered, some algae for example can use sewage as the nutrient, and if cap and trade comes along, then some of the income can come from the carbon captured and used by the algae. (Proper distribution of the gas, and keeping the right quality and concentration also costs, as may the supply and its transport)
Having grown the algae, the next step is to harvest it and separate out the algae. There are some interesting new concepts (bearing in mind that the algae are a very small percentage of the pond volume).
One way of reducing the costs of separation by using an algae, such as botryoccocus, that weeps oil rather than creating it internally.
There seem to be two snags to the process, the first being that the algal productivity seems to decline with cycle number, and the other is that the biomass itself, once the oil is removed, may have value.
Costs from Solix for example:
OriginOil noting that
The process also generates glycerin and oxygen as byproducts that could be collected and become part of the saleable product.
Alternately the algae can be used to generate natural gas ) as suggested by Genifuel
There are thus a lot of considerations (I really did not get into efficient light use, correct fluid temperatures, and secondary processing) which led to the conclusion some time ago that this has to be addressed as a system problem, and set of solutions, rather than piecemeal. Profits and income streams from as many sources as possible have to be included, since without them, as with GreenFuels, the concept is not enough to be sustainable. And to develop the systems approach needs a lot of different inputs.
The company, however, ran into problems in raising more money in the current climate, and with the technology.
Getting the whole thing to run smoothly, though, was tougher than expected. GreenFuel could grow algae. The problem was controlling it. In 2007, a project to grow algae in an Arizona greenhouse went awry when the algae grew faster than they could be harvested and died off. The company also found its system would cost more than twice its target.It is that latter part of the paragraph that is the more telling. When folk first consider using algae as a future fuel source, it is often because, when tabulated, algae can produce more fuel per acre per year, than any other crop.
(Source Biodiesel - Growing a New Energy Economy - Greg Paul, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005, 281 pages)However, getting what has been achieved in the short term, into a production mode that sustains the same yield for year after year is not that easy. Nor is simply finding the best algae the only solution required for the problem.
Given the collapse of GreenFuel, it is perhaps useful to look at some of the things that need to be considered, if you are going to have a shot at a viable algae operation.
First you need to select an algal species. This is not as simple as it sounds, because the initial thought might be to screen all the thousands of algae types that exist around the world to find the ones that (a) hold the most oil and (b) grow fastest. Algae grow by multiplication and so the common metric for the latter is the time it takes to double the volume of algae in a container, with less than a day being a good place to start. And a species that has 50% lipid content (the oil component) is also the sort of ballpark we are looking for. There are a number of candidates that meet (or come close to meeting) these criteria. One of the benefits of the program that the NREL review of algae produced was a filter of the thousands of candidates, that gave data from which to select some of the more productive.
Let us, for the sake of discussion, call one candidate AA, another BB, and a third CC. One of the early things you discover is that some of the better ones grow in salt water (seawater) rather than in river/lake conditions. That makes a little difference, particularly if you are interested in putting your algae operation (we’ll call it a farm) out in the middle of the country many miles from an ocean. So that if you need that water you can either make it or import it, neither cheap.
And speaking of cheap, one of the first steps is to decide how you’re going to contain your algae and growing medium (nutrient). GreenFuels used plastic tubes, but as Fireangel pointed out over at The Oil Drum these are very expensive and he concluded
That leaves gross profit of $3.00. That means at current prices it would take 50 years to just cut even on their investment. That is clearly not feasible. For one thing these polycarbonate sheets take a lot of UV damage and their useful life is almost always less than 15 years (usually 10 years).It seems that at a recent algal biofuels meeting it was concluded that the large flat race-track type of layout is the only one that stands the chance of financial viability.
But that selection brings its own concerns. For the light to reach the algae throughout the water column in adequate quantity, the water can only be around 6-inches deep. This means that the ponds have to be large, (bringing in construction and other land costs). It also limits the species that can be grown, since the conditions are more tempered by local conditions and survivability. This almost mandates, for open systems, that the local conditions select the algae, rather than picking the best. (Which helps explain why we chose a confinement strategy based on facilities constructed for other purposes and paid for, but that is another story).
So having selected the algae and the farm, the next cost is for the nutrient that the algae needs, and to supply the carbon dioxide. Here the potential for beneficial selections should be considered, some algae for example can use sewage as the nutrient, and if cap and trade comes along, then some of the income can come from the carbon captured and used by the algae. (Proper distribution of the gas, and keeping the right quality and concentration also costs, as may the supply and its transport)
Having grown the algae, the next step is to harvest it and separate out the algae. There are some interesting new concepts (bearing in mind that the algae are a very small percentage of the pond volume).
One way of reducing the costs of separation by using an algae, such as botryoccocus, that weeps oil rather than creating it internally.
Another, Phycal, is trying to harvest oil from algae without killing the algae. Instead, Phycal bathes the algae in solvents which can suck out the oil. Some strains of algae can go through the process four times or more.
There seem to be two snags to the process, the first being that the algal productivity seems to decline with cycle number, and the other is that the biomass itself, once the oil is removed, may have value.
Costs from Solix for example:
Algae biofuel startup Solix, for instance, can produce biofuel from algae right now, but it costs about $32.81 a gallon, said Bryan Wilson, a co-founder of the company and a professor at Colorado State University. The production cost is high because of the energy required to circulate gases and other materials inside the photo bioreactors where the algae grow. It also takes energy to dry out the biomass, and Solix uses far less water than other companies (see Cutting the Cost of Making Algae by 90%).By exploiting waste heat at adjacent utilities (one of our favorite forms of energy around here), the price can probably be brought down to $5.50 a gallon (see Will Waste Heat Be Bigger Than Solar?). By selling the proteins and other byproducts from the algae for pet food, the price can be brought to $3.50 a gallon in the near term.
OriginOil noting that
“The energy cost of extracting algae is 10 times the energy cost ofextracting soybean oil,” Riggs Eckelberry, CEO said.has a video on their site showing a cheaper way of getting the oil out.
The process also generates glycerin and oxygen as byproducts that could be collected and become part of the saleable product.
Alternately the algae can be used to generate natural gas ) as suggested by Genifuel
It works like this. Algae is grown in ponds and, while it is still wet, is it placed in gasifiers with a chemical catalyst that allows it to cook at relatively low pressures and temperatures, said president Jim Oyler. It cooks at 350 Celsius versus 700 Celsius.
The cooking produces a synthetic gas that is 65 percent methane, or CH4, and 35 percent carbon dioxide along with some other trace materials. The carbon dioxide is then pumped into algae ponds as food. It will be more expensive than natural gas pulled from the earth, but it will require lower subsidies than liquid algae fuel to be competitive with its fossil fuel equivalent. It yields 0.55 liters of gas per gram of dry material, Oyler claimed.
There are thus a lot of considerations (I really did not get into efficient light use, correct fluid temperatures, and secondary processing) which led to the conclusion some time ago that this has to be addressed as a system problem, and set of solutions, rather than piecemeal. Profits and income streams from as many sources as possible have to be included, since without them, as with GreenFuels, the concept is not enough to be sustainable. And to develop the systems approach needs a lot of different inputs.
Read more!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Jatropha, algae and camelina oils
If you had not gathered this before, then you should know that I have been favorably impressed with the potential of algae as a future source of biofuels. However I recognize that there is a considerable amount of research and business development and growth that will have to occur before such fuel makes a significant impact in the market place. Of the other alternative biofuel sources, I was also considerate of jatropha, which seemed to have some significant potential. The fuel comes from the nuts which the shrub produces, and since it can be grown on quite poor land, and in some countries is already in use a fencing plant I anticipated that its potential would be increasingly recognized. Well it has not quite turned out the way that I thought it would, at least not yet.
And so some comments on what has, and has not happened. Jatropha seems to have its own slogan “Soil to Oil” with a Center for Jatropha Promotion & Biodiesel located in Rajasthan in India. Jatropha curcus is a shrub or small tree that can grow on poor to marginal land in tropical parts of the world, growing to a height of perhaps 15 ft. It produces a nut in clusters of around 10, and the nuts contain seeds which are about 37% of an oil that will run a diesel engine without further refining.
Thr oil has been used in a 50:50 blend with jet fuel to power one engine of an Air New Zealand 747 on a 2-hr flight last December 30th. The oil has a lower freezing temperature than jet fuel, and has been estimated to cost around $43 per barrel. This flight was followed, on January 7th by a Continental Airlines flight which used a 737-800, and a mix of oil from jatropha and alga. The flight saw a 3% gain in fuel use by the engine using the biofuel. The algae oil came from Sapphire Energy the jatropha came from Terasol Energy. The biofuel was mixed 50:50 with jet fuel, and there were no modifications made to the engine.
The success of the test has encouraged Sapphire, who are now predicting that they will be able to produce 1 million gal/year (65 barrels/day) of diesel and jet fuel, rising to 10 million gallons (650 bd) by 2018 and 1 billion gallons (65 kbd) by 2025. Sapphire is based in San Diego.
Terasol supplies both oil and feedstocks, concentrating, at the moment, on jatropha and castor bean oil.
Japanese Airlines carried out their own test on January 30th. The Japanese flight, an hour-and-a-half long, used a mixture of 84% camelina, under 16% jatropha oil, and under 1% algal oil.
Camelina, (or wild flax) incidentally looks as though it deserves more investigation, since it grows on poor ground and has twice the yield of soy. Further it also has a low gell temperature.
The spent biomass is recognized as a good animal feed, and it grows in places like Kansas and Montana, perhaps alternating with wheat, in which combination it apparently increases the wheat yield by 15%, and gives 100 gallons/acre of oil.
Returning to jatropha, the President of Terasol recently answered some questions for Scientific American. He noted that the main problem the fuel now faces is one of scale.
The optimistic view of jatropha’s future is becoming less common, even as it is projected as a fuel of the future. There in fact some doubts
For example in Mali the nation has some 10,000 km of jatropha hedges that yield about 1 kg/meter/year. If all the nuts were collected and processed this would yield around 5 million liters per yr of oil (85.8 bd). Typical village hedge lies between 2 & 15 km, making oil generation very much a local enterprise. It is growing because there has been a move to provide local women with engine powered grain mills, to start small businesses. But the fuel cost was prohibitive. Collecting and processing the nuts can not only provide the needed fuel, but also inject about $3,800 on average, per village per year. As a result local hedges are growing in length, though somewhat slowly (from 5 – 15 km in 8 years.) The projects have also benefitted from development of a shelling machine for the nuts.
But while the growth is commendable, it is nowhere near working at the scale needed to have a significant market impact.
And so some comments on what has, and has not happened. Jatropha seems to have its own slogan “Soil to Oil” with a Center for Jatropha Promotion & Biodiesel located in Rajasthan in India. Jatropha curcus is a shrub or small tree that can grow on poor to marginal land in tropical parts of the world, growing to a height of perhaps 15 ft. It produces a nut in clusters of around 10, and the nuts contain seeds which are about 37% of an oil that will run a diesel engine without further refining.
Thr oil has been used in a 50:50 blend with jet fuel to power one engine of an Air New Zealand 747 on a 2-hr flight last December 30th. The oil has a lower freezing temperature than jet fuel, and has been estimated to cost around $43 per barrel. This flight was followed, on January 7th by a Continental Airlines flight which used a 737-800, and a mix of oil from jatropha and alga. The flight saw a 3% gain in fuel use by the engine using the biofuel. The algae oil came from Sapphire Energy the jatropha came from Terasol Energy. The biofuel was mixed 50:50 with jet fuel, and there were no modifications made to the engine.
The success of the test has encouraged Sapphire, who are now predicting that they will be able to produce 1 million gal/year (65 barrels/day) of diesel and jet fuel, rising to 10 million gallons (650 bd) by 2018 and 1 billion gallons (65 kbd) by 2025. Sapphire is based in San Diego.
Terasol supplies both oil and feedstocks, concentrating, at the moment, on jatropha and castor bean oil.
Japanese Airlines carried out their own test on January 30th. The Japanese flight, an hour-and-a-half long, used a mixture of 84% camelina, under 16% jatropha oil, and under 1% algal oil.
Camelina, (or wild flax) incidentally looks as though it deserves more investigation, since it grows on poor ground and has twice the yield of soy. Further it also has a low gell temperature.
The spent biomass is recognized as a good animal feed, and it grows in places like Kansas and Montana, perhaps alternating with wheat, in which combination it apparently increases the wheat yield by 15%, and gives 100 gallons/acre of oil.
Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University recently described camelina’s business model to Capital Press as: “At 1,400 pounds per acre at 16 cents a pound, camelina would bring in $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would garner $230.”
Returning to jatropha, the President of Terasol recently answered some questions for Scientific American. He noted that the main problem the fuel now faces is one of scale.
the main obstacle is the lack of research and practice in large-scale commercial cultivation, as well as mechanized harvesting. Currently most jatropha and castor are grown on smaller, independent farms. The second obstacle is yield and unit of input. Research in plant breeding needs to continue in order to improve the quantity and quality of oils being produced.They see commercial quantities of the jatropha being available in 3-5 years.
The optimistic view of jatropha’s future is becoming less common, even as it is projected as a fuel of the future. There in fact some doubts
Not only was the cultivation of jatropha supposed to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than it released, but the miracle tree could also stabilize and restore degraded soils. That’s surely why Scientific American in 2007 called jatropha “green gold in a shrub,” a plant that “seems to offer all the benefits of biofuels without the pitfalls.”The problem, again is one of scale. With the average farm being around 12 acres (at 2-300 gal/acre/year) the current gains come mainly from local use, rather than collection to meet larger national goals.
Fast forward a couple of years. By 2009, governments from China to Brazil, along with several major biofuel companies, had planted — or vowed to plant — millions of acres of jatropha. In India alone, the government has announced plans to subsidize an intensive program to plant jatropha for biofuels on 27 million acres of “wastelands” — an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
For example in Mali the nation has some 10,000 km of jatropha hedges that yield about 1 kg/meter/year. If all the nuts were collected and processed this would yield around 5 million liters per yr of oil (85.8 bd). Typical village hedge lies between 2 & 15 km, making oil generation very much a local enterprise. It is growing because there has been a move to provide local women with engine powered grain mills, to start small businesses. But the fuel cost was prohibitive. Collecting and processing the nuts can not only provide the needed fuel, but also inject about $3,800 on average, per village per year. As a result local hedges are growing in length, though somewhat slowly (from 5 – 15 km in 8 years.) The projects have also benefitted from development of a shelling machine for the nuts.
But while the growth is commendable, it is nowhere near working at the scale needed to have a significant market impact.
Read more!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Can politics be removed from biofuel generation?
The Administration has been praised for its move to rely more on science in the generation of policy, and on Tuesday a new group was announced that will work to encourage a new generation of biofuels.
Certainly the Administration recognizes the financial cost, with some $800 million of DoE stimulus money being directed at research, development and the funding of test projects. However $484 million will go to demonstration projects, some of which are already being funded. The major emphasis seems to remain on generating ethanol, though an algae biofuels consortium will also be funded. This is to be followed by $1.1 billion in DoA funds much of that will go to help producers, through the biofuels credit program, restructure their businesses to survive. At present production is down and there is not enough (if any) profit to be made between the price of the corn feedstock and the sale of the ethanol.
The carbon costs of each process, will be calculated by the “controversial” formula, but the calculation was first subjected to “peer revew.” Though I guess that the validity of that process depends on the peers that were used.
In regard to the algae effort the Univ of New Haven are looking for better strains of algae to use. They note that some $195 million was raised for investment in algae work last year.
One of the greater drivers for algal biofuel development is coming from DoD who are anxious to find a replacement source for the jet fuel, on which an increasing percentage of their mobile systems run. DARPA have been taking a lead in developing this research. One of their advances has just been given some publicity
The fact that algae make fuel while consuming CO2 is also being presented to Congress at the same time as a new report on the subject is being released. (pdf).
In perhaps a sign of things to come, an ethanol plant in Iowa is going to add some algal photobioreactors to the plant. The algae will take advantage of the water heat and CO2 generated from the ethanol plant, with hopes to use some 60% of the CO2.
The working group aims to accelerate funding to biofuels producers, in the hopes that they will phase out fossil fuel use at their own plants, instead using biofuels.Part of the study will, however, try to create a standard for assessing the GHG costs of producing and using the new fuel.
The group, which will be headed by the chiefs of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture, also exists to encourage a new generation of biofuels made from biomass and other non-corn feedstocks.
Mirroring a similar change in California, EPA is proposing to measure carbon emissions that come as a result of biofuel production. This includes a complicated and controversial formula that adds in emissions that occur when overseas farmers respond to higher food prices by converting forest and grassland to cropland.It may well be that the “controversial” formula may take the discussion out of pure science, and give the opportunity to ease politics back into the discussion.
“Life cycle estimates of the greenhouse gas relate to the fuel cycle and land conversion,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “This research will be very important to future policies.”
Certainly the Administration recognizes the financial cost, with some $800 million of DoE stimulus money being directed at research, development and the funding of test projects. However $484 million will go to demonstration projects, some of which are already being funded. The major emphasis seems to remain on generating ethanol, though an algae biofuels consortium will also be funded. This is to be followed by $1.1 billion in DoA funds much of that will go to help producers, through the biofuels credit program, restructure their businesses to survive. At present production is down and there is not enough (if any) profit to be made between the price of the corn feedstock and the sale of the ethanol.
The carbon costs of each process, will be calculated by the “controversial” formula, but the calculation was first subjected to “peer revew.” Though I guess that the validity of that process depends on the peers that were used.
In regard to the algae effort the Univ of New Haven are looking for better strains of algae to use. They note that some $195 million was raised for investment in algae work last year.
One of the greater drivers for algal biofuel development is coming from DoD who are anxious to find a replacement source for the jet fuel, on which an increasing percentage of their mobile systems run. DARPA have been taking a lead in developing this research. One of their advances has just been given some publicity
Researchers at the university (UT) have already developed an electromechanical process for extracting oil from an alga cell that is rapid, energy-efficient, free of solvents and less expensive than competing methods. The technique employs electric fields to break open the cell.In another development Richard Sayre at theDanforth Center in St Louis has discussed the use of algae that can be milked instead of being destroyed. The goal of the DARPA program is to reduce the cost of the biofuel to $3 a gallon.
Another group of researchers at the university is focused on the science of separations research and is identifying techniques to separate the oil from the algae biomass once it has been released.
The fact that algae make fuel while consuming CO2 is also being presented to Congress at the same time as a new report on the subject is being released. (pdf).
In perhaps a sign of things to come, an ethanol plant in Iowa is going to add some algal photobioreactors to the plant. The algae will take advantage of the water heat and CO2 generated from the ethanol plant, with hopes to use some 60% of the CO2.
Read more!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Energy Summit - the second morning
The second day of the Summit began early, but still had all four University Chancellors and the University President in the room at 7:30 am although it took a fair while longer for the body of the room to start to fill. In his welcoming remarks the Chancellor of the University of Missouri-Columbia noted that by changing to burning tires, switchgrass and an assortment of waste, the campus had cut its coal consumption by 5% this past year.
The first speaker of the day was Robert Dixon of the Climate Change and Chemicals of the Institute for Environmental Security. He was a member of the IPCC, and has been Head of the Energy Technology Policy Division of the IEA. (A glitch meant we did not see his opening slides). He began with the point that the world has areas of extreme energy poverty and that we need to change the way in which we do business. Indonesia will soon pass the United States in the amount of GHG that it emits, yet all our economies are built around the use of petroleum, and this is not a sustainable base.
Having been part of the IPCC and the IEA he commented on the difficulty in explaining positions to world leaders when you only get ten minutes of their time. At the moment we are not on a path to a sustainable future, and that message cannot be conveyed in that small an amount of time.
The world needs not only new technologies, but also a new system that should include energy efficiency, since that is the gift that keeps on giving. Yet, if we are to reduce GHG we need some 24 – 32 new nuclear plants a year, and the world is only installing 1 or 2. To force the change he feels that we should have cap and trade with a $50/ton cost for allocations, but if the world is to get down to the carbon dioxide levels required, then the cost should rise first to $200/ton and then to $500/ton. (On an editorial note, based on Missouri consumption, where a $50/ton carbon cost doubles our electricity price, this is calling for pricing that will take it up, first by a factor of 4 and then 10 – so that electricity will approach $1.00 per kilowatt hour, and if your bill is now $200 it will become $2,000 a month).
Replacing coal will require ALL technologies be advanced forward, and they should be funded, but there are many pathways being proposed and these must be co-ordinated to give a viable roadmap for the future. They will provide many opportunities for investment, but given that the current system has had its investment cost covered there is a challenge to find the funding for replacements. Public sector R&D is down, and so politicians must work to reverse this trend if we are to find the answers that we need. An energy revolution is urgently needed, but there are barriers of funding and timeliness so we must take action to induce change.
Mark Templeton has recently been installed as the new Missouri Energy Czar (coming from heading up Yale Law School). He began by listing some pluses including the first city (Rock Port) that is powered entirely by wind. Yet at the moment Missouri ranks 45th in Energy Efficiency and so there is a need to communicate to the public, giving them ways that they can save. If we could just save 15% of our electric use, and 10% of our natural gas use, this would, over time, add up to $2.8 billion in savings.
Yet we cannot only address the problems of the past (by weatherization etc) but we also have to find new future answers. Missouri is 49th in use of renewables, and 18th in use of wind power. (Ed note: Possibly because we don’t have enough of the higher speed winds we need?) In summer we get as much sun as Florida, and while biomass is not that far along, it is an indigenous resource. If Washington is going to push us, then we might as well move ourselves.
He noted that fuel prices are going back up and we are now at a time where OPEC cuts in supply are controlling cost. Missouri is seeing record unemployment, we need to find and develop the next generation of green jobs. To this end they are working with the Office of Economic Development.
The University President. Gary Forsee, then introduced the Governor of the State, Jay Nixon. The Governor picked up on the theme carried by Mark Templeton, tying Education and the Economy together, and stressing that we need a trained workforce, in the right areas, to move us out of the recession. We need to change our economy but must recognize that the energy demand per capita will not go away, though improved efficiency and conservation are going to be vital parts of the future economy.
He cited the new wind farm, and work on batteries to store excess wind energy, as current indicators of progress, but justified his continued investment in education and retraining . He noted that while normal drivers brake around a curve, NASCAR drivers accelerate so that they can take advantage of the coming straight stretch. He views Missouri’s economy in the same way.
He drew attention to his program to fund young interns to work in future areas of renewable energy with the comment, in passing, that giving kids money was sure to stimulate the economy, since they were certain to spend it. We must both walk and talk the talk, and so, at the podium, he signed an Executive Order lowering the energy use in state buildings.
The Governor was followed by Richard Sayre of the Danforth Center who spoke of the benefits of algae, and some of the paths that are being taken, including using algal species that weep oil and can be milked (using alkanes) and then put back out to pasture, rather than internally producing it and having to be destroyed to recover the oil. He again commented that ice caps could be gone in the summer before long (no I’m not going to put the reality graph up again).
Energy from biomass has the potential to create more “green” jobs than other renewables, and he noted that the United States already produces more ethanol than Brazil. But the parts of the country that have highest solar intensity to help plant growth also have poor soils and a lack of water. He showed a map for the country locating the 30-inch rainfall line as running down almost through Columbia, and questioned, based on it, which biofuels we should focus on. Since oil crops have more energy than starch, biodiesel producers are more logical. At present oil costs from algae are divided with slightly more than half in production, and slightly under half for harvesting. With a pond only containing 0.1% useful product there is obviously a need to reduce the latter costs. Interestingly he noted that, growing algae in Missouri, it is not the cold of the winter that is the problem, but rather the warmth of the summer. He then went on to make a number of the arguments that I have made when I talk of the advantages of growing algae underground (light spectra control, use of the full amount and at levels that algae will grow at optimally). By adding sugars to the water, they have found a dramatic increase in the oil production rate, and by changing the algae to use lower light levels they have doubled the production rates from deep ponds. With the additional change to “weeping” algae they have had a 3-fold increase in biomass production and a 40% increase in the oil production rate.
Rob Duncan the Vice Chancellor for Research at UMC, was on 60 Minutes (video report ) last week talking about cold fusion. He gave an expanded talk on the subject, noting that he had gone from being a cynic to a believer.
After reviewing the history he went on to share some of the photos and experiences from his visit to the Israeli lab doing the work. And in the process of explanation he may have made a number of other converts. When there has been talk before of energy output being greater than input in the experiments, I always got the impression that it was not that much. But he talked of vessels boiling over, and getting a MegaJoule of energy, where there should have been a hundred joules. But more convincing to me was the surface of the palladium rod, which, after the experiment had small “volcanic” pits with molten ejecta.
He could not yet explain it, but he noted that at this stage it does look real. However there is a huge gap between discovery and useful engineering application and so the topic must be approached with less hype and more focus on a scientific method for determining evolution of the technology.
Dr Duncan was the last of the Invited Speakers, and the Summit then broke into two consecutive parts. In the first there were four sets of concurrent papers by Missouri research groups talking about their work, and this was followed by two sets of two panels where there was discussion on Clean Coal, Transportation and Biofuels; Nuclear energy; and Infrastructure. Since this post is getting a bit long, I will summarize these in the next post.
Earlier posts in this series covered the program; the keynote address by T. Boone Pickens; and the first invited speakers; and the end of the first day.
The first speaker of the day was Robert Dixon of the Climate Change and Chemicals of the Institute for Environmental Security. He was a member of the IPCC, and has been Head of the Energy Technology Policy Division of the IEA. (A glitch meant we did not see his opening slides). He began with the point that the world has areas of extreme energy poverty and that we need to change the way in which we do business. Indonesia will soon pass the United States in the amount of GHG that it emits, yet all our economies are built around the use of petroleum, and this is not a sustainable base.
Having been part of the IPCC and the IEA he commented on the difficulty in explaining positions to world leaders when you only get ten minutes of their time. At the moment we are not on a path to a sustainable future, and that message cannot be conveyed in that small an amount of time.
The world needs not only new technologies, but also a new system that should include energy efficiency, since that is the gift that keeps on giving. Yet, if we are to reduce GHG we need some 24 – 32 new nuclear plants a year, and the world is only installing 1 or 2. To force the change he feels that we should have cap and trade with a $50/ton cost for allocations, but if the world is to get down to the carbon dioxide levels required, then the cost should rise first to $200/ton and then to $500/ton. (On an editorial note, based on Missouri consumption, where a $50/ton carbon cost doubles our electricity price, this is calling for pricing that will take it up, first by a factor of 4 and then 10 – so that electricity will approach $1.00 per kilowatt hour, and if your bill is now $200 it will become $2,000 a month).
Replacing coal will require ALL technologies be advanced forward, and they should be funded, but there are many pathways being proposed and these must be co-ordinated to give a viable roadmap for the future. They will provide many opportunities for investment, but given that the current system has had its investment cost covered there is a challenge to find the funding for replacements. Public sector R&D is down, and so politicians must work to reverse this trend if we are to find the answers that we need. An energy revolution is urgently needed, but there are barriers of funding and timeliness so we must take action to induce change.
Mark Templeton has recently been installed as the new Missouri Energy Czar (coming from heading up Yale Law School). He began by listing some pluses including the first city (Rock Port) that is powered entirely by wind. Yet at the moment Missouri ranks 45th in Energy Efficiency and so there is a need to communicate to the public, giving them ways that they can save. If we could just save 15% of our electric use, and 10% of our natural gas use, this would, over time, add up to $2.8 billion in savings.
Yet we cannot only address the problems of the past (by weatherization etc) but we also have to find new future answers. Missouri is 49th in use of renewables, and 18th in use of wind power. (Ed note: Possibly because we don’t have enough of the higher speed winds we need?) In summer we get as much sun as Florida, and while biomass is not that far along, it is an indigenous resource. If Washington is going to push us, then we might as well move ourselves.
He noted that fuel prices are going back up and we are now at a time where OPEC cuts in supply are controlling cost. Missouri is seeing record unemployment, we need to find and develop the next generation of green jobs. To this end they are working with the Office of Economic Development.
The University President. Gary Forsee, then introduced the Governor of the State, Jay Nixon. The Governor picked up on the theme carried by Mark Templeton, tying Education and the Economy together, and stressing that we need a trained workforce, in the right areas, to move us out of the recession. We need to change our economy but must recognize that the energy demand per capita will not go away, though improved efficiency and conservation are going to be vital parts of the future economy.
He cited the new wind farm, and work on batteries to store excess wind energy, as current indicators of progress, but justified his continued investment in education and retraining . He noted that while normal drivers brake around a curve, NASCAR drivers accelerate so that they can take advantage of the coming straight stretch. He views Missouri’s economy in the same way.
He drew attention to his program to fund young interns to work in future areas of renewable energy with the comment, in passing, that giving kids money was sure to stimulate the economy, since they were certain to spend it. We must both walk and talk the talk, and so, at the podium, he signed an Executive Order lowering the energy use in state buildings.
The Governor was followed by Richard Sayre of the Danforth Center who spoke of the benefits of algae, and some of the paths that are being taken, including using algal species that weep oil and can be milked (using alkanes) and then put back out to pasture, rather than internally producing it and having to be destroyed to recover the oil. He again commented that ice caps could be gone in the summer before long (no I’m not going to put the reality graph up again).
Energy from biomass has the potential to create more “green” jobs than other renewables, and he noted that the United States already produces more ethanol than Brazil. But the parts of the country that have highest solar intensity to help plant growth also have poor soils and a lack of water. He showed a map for the country locating the 30-inch rainfall line as running down almost through Columbia, and questioned, based on it, which biofuels we should focus on. Since oil crops have more energy than starch, biodiesel producers are more logical. At present oil costs from algae are divided with slightly more than half in production, and slightly under half for harvesting. With a pond only containing 0.1% useful product there is obviously a need to reduce the latter costs. Interestingly he noted that, growing algae in Missouri, it is not the cold of the winter that is the problem, but rather the warmth of the summer. He then went on to make a number of the arguments that I have made when I talk of the advantages of growing algae underground (light spectra control, use of the full amount and at levels that algae will grow at optimally). By adding sugars to the water, they have found a dramatic increase in the oil production rate, and by changing the algae to use lower light levels they have doubled the production rates from deep ponds. With the additional change to “weeping” algae they have had a 3-fold increase in biomass production and a 40% increase in the oil production rate.
Rob Duncan the Vice Chancellor for Research at UMC, was on 60 Minutes (video report ) last week talking about cold fusion. He gave an expanded talk on the subject, noting that he had gone from being a cynic to a believer.
After reviewing the history he went on to share some of the photos and experiences from his visit to the Israeli lab doing the work. And in the process of explanation he may have made a number of other converts. When there has been talk before of energy output being greater than input in the experiments, I always got the impression that it was not that much. But he talked of vessels boiling over, and getting a MegaJoule of energy, where there should have been a hundred joules. But more convincing to me was the surface of the palladium rod, which, after the experiment had small “volcanic” pits with molten ejecta.
He could not yet explain it, but he noted that at this stage it does look real. However there is a huge gap between discovery and useful engineering application and so the topic must be approached with less hype and more focus on a scientific method for determining evolution of the technology.
Dr Duncan was the last of the Invited Speakers, and the Summit then broke into two consecutive parts. In the first there were four sets of concurrent papers by Missouri research groups talking about their work, and this was followed by two sets of two panels where there was discussion on Clean Coal, Transportation and Biofuels; Nuclear energy; and Infrastructure. Since this post is getting a bit long, I will summarize these in the next post.
Earlier posts in this series covered the program; the keynote address by T. Boone Pickens; and the first invited speakers; and the end of the first day.
Read more!
Monday, March 16, 2009
Of hybrids and algae
As I had mentioned in an earlier post, we are thinking of getting a second hybrid in the family, with thoughts turning toward the Ford Fusion. At the time of the decision, there still seemed to be an aura around the concept of hydrids that continued to make them seem a more desirable product. With the drop in gas prices, and their higher initial price over conventional gas models, that is no longer the case.
Shell appear content to continue funding of their algae program. Back in 2007 the reviews were mixed:
In the next step in the development last June the partners were talking of having the first commercial plant available within three years. A site has been found in Maui near a power plant, that would provide a source for the CO2, and with high interest from officials, the date for the plant to be started moved up to 2011. The technical breakthough has been to limit the amount of time that the algae spend in the open ponds, the crop is harvested, and a new stock is injected, with new nutrient, at an already high concentration, so that the residence time is short, and competition from other species is limited before the algae have consumed the nutrient, multiplied, and are ready for harvesting. By doing it this way, it is claimed that costs are reduced. To bring the feed stock up to the required volume needed for injection, the algae are first bred in plastic tubes. In regard to the volumes of carbon dioxide that are consumed
Cellana meanwhile is moving ahead with algae selection at the the facility on Kona. They have screened some 5,000 possible candidates down to 75 who were evaluated for high throughput, cutting the number down to 12, of which 8 were considered viable for outside cultivation. These will be studied and screened down as the Kona pilot plant develops in 2010. That facility will be a 2.5 ha size, and will be used to help plan the full commercial facility that has now been targeted for 2014. They have now down-selected to 7 species and hope to have their first harvest this quarter, with the first oil produced in volume by the end of the year. One of the team partners, Bodo University in Norway, is evaluating the de-oiled biomass as an animal feed. The production plant has the following objectives
•Total algae pond system area : 400 ha
•Algae yield : 30 – 120 g/m2/day
•CO2 captured : 77 500 – 310 500 tonnes/Year
•Algae oil = 3.5 barrels/tonne algae
•Carbon credit : 15 $/tonne CO2
It has an anticipated 7 year return on investment if it can sell the biodiesel for over $3.46 a gallon (which is currently isn’t).
"When gas prices came down, the priority of buying a hybrid fell off quite quickly," said Wes Brown, a partner at Los Angeles-based market research firm Iceology. "Yet even as consumer interest declined, the manufacturers have continued to pump them out."I hadn’t realized that we were planning on joining such an exclusive group. And perhaps we can see why Ford have not been more aggressive in selling (they aren’t).
Last month, only 15,144 hybrids sold nationwide, down almost two-thirds from April, when the segment's sales peaked and gas averaged $3.57 a gallon. That's far larger than the drop in industry sales for the period and scarcely a better showing than January, when hybrid sales were at their lowest since early 2005.
executives at other automakers (than Toyota) concede they lose money on every hybrid sold. "If we were making money on the Civic hybrid, we weren't making a lot," Honda spokesman Chris Martin said.However sales of the Honda Insight seem to be doing better than expected, but this is because the new model is cheaper than a Prius. if the price can hold under $20,000 then that sales growth is expected to continue.
That may help to explain why fewer than two of every 100 Chevy Malibus sold last month had the hybrid powertrain and why Ford priced its new hybrid Fusion, which dealers expect to start receiving this month, $8,000 above the gasoline-only version.
Ford expects to produce about 20,000 Fusion and Milan hybrids this year, or about 1% of its total production. . . . . . . Three weeks ago, Jerome Haig, a lawyer in Torrance, put down a $500 deposit on a Fusion hybrid, even though he hasn't even test driven one because they have yet to hit lots. "I do like the idea of getting a hybrid," Haig said.
But he admits that he may not have considered the car if not for a $3,400 tax credit on Ford hybrids and a deduction on new car sales tax. The latter was part of the $787-billion federal stimulus package. "The tax advantages are a pretty big incentive."
Shell appear content to continue funding of their algae program. Back in 2007 the reviews were mixed:
algae always seemed promising as a biofuel feedstock. They devour CO2, multiply like rabbits, are oily, and don’t need much land. The U.S. Department of Energy spent almost twenty years studying more than 3,000 varieties of algae to see what would work. Nothing did; Clinton pulled the plug in 1996.The Hawaiian pilot plant on Kona is run by a joint venture called Cellana and uses non-modified species in a surface “racetrack” set of ponds. The first step in the process was to find the right local species. This involved putting test tubes of different strains out to find which ones grow the best.
That is because algae-to-oil is a balancing act: Only the hardiest strains thrive with temperature variations, and they have fewer lipids. Really greasy algae aren’t outdoors types. So a lot of small algae biofuel companies prefer “photobioreactors,” or grow closets for algae. Others go back to the farm, but keep algae under wraps.
Shell says its pilot project will determine which strains of algae are commercially viable and which will best be able to suck up CO2 emissions from power plants. In the meantime, its Hawaiian project will be using bottled CO2.
In the next step in the development last June the partners were talking of having the first commercial plant available within three years. A site has been found in Maui near a power plant, that would provide a source for the CO2, and with high interest from officials, the date for the plant to be started moved up to 2011. The technical breakthough has been to limit the amount of time that the algae spend in the open ponds, the crop is harvested, and a new stock is injected, with new nutrient, at an already high concentration, so that the residence time is short, and competition from other species is limited before the algae have consumed the nutrient, multiplied, and are ready for harvesting. By doing it this way, it is claimed that costs are reduced. To bring the feed stock up to the required volume needed for injection, the algae are first bred in plastic tubes. In regard to the volumes of carbon dioxide that are consumed
A very rough calculation would be a minimum of 250,000 tons of CO2 per year captured by 1,000 hectares (roughly 2,500 acres) of algae, for a coal-fired or diesel-fired power plant. So a very large commercial facility, say 20,000 hectares (roughly 50,000 acres), could perhaps capture 5 million tons of CO2 per year. This calculation will be further refined during the joint venture demonstration phase.The nutrient added to the seawater will largely be nitrates and phosphates, as it depletes in the water, the concentration of oil in the algae increases.
Cellana meanwhile is moving ahead with algae selection at the the facility on Kona. They have screened some 5,000 possible candidates down to 75 who were evaluated for high throughput, cutting the number down to 12, of which 8 were considered viable for outside cultivation. These will be studied and screened down as the Kona pilot plant develops in 2010. That facility will be a 2.5 ha size, and will be used to help plan the full commercial facility that has now been targeted for 2014. They have now down-selected to 7 species and hope to have their first harvest this quarter, with the first oil produced in volume by the end of the year. One of the team partners, Bodo University in Norway, is evaluating the de-oiled biomass as an animal feed. The production plant has the following objectives
The project will use 10 percent of the Maui Electric plant’s CO2 emissions as feedstock. The CO2 will be delivered by pipe from the Maalaea pipe, and the plant will produce up to 3 Mgy of algae oil based on a projected 750-acre algae farm producing 5,000 acres per gallon.There are some doubts about the longer term and larger scale production that will be needed if algal biodiesel is to make a significant contribution to fuel supplies. But even with those doubts the potential for removing carbon dioxide remains attractive, and the Alberta Research Council has joined with Innoventures Canada to look at this .
The company said that it expected that it would take up to three years to obtain permits for the operation, which would be profitable in the first year of production according to HR Petroleum execs.
The ARC says the preliminary target for its Carbon Algae Recycling System project is a 30 per cent reduction of the greenhouse gases produced by an average 300 megawatt coal-fired power plant. CARS proposes to feed flue gas (CO2, nitrogen oxides and other emissions) directly from industry into ponds to feed algal growth.The Canadian system has a target set of data (ppt)
"We are in the early stage of looking at carbon dioxide bio-fixation to micro-algae," says Quinn Goretzky, project manager for strategic initiatives at the council. "Our vision is to transform carbon into a value-added good."
To date they have focused on green algae. Of 21 samples under examination, nine failed to thrive.
"Five were taken to characterization, and that relates to biomass and rate of growth," Goretzky says. "Algae is made up of fatty acids and lipids, which is the most important since they go to fuel. The carbohydrates go to ethanol and the proteins to animal feed and fertilizer."
He admits the process as it stands right now is energy-intensive. The ARC consortium favours a large greenhouse-covered pond system. "This maintains temperature, delays evaporation and reduces contamination."
•Total algae pond system area : 400 ha
•Algae yield : 30 – 120 g/m2/day
•CO2 captured : 77 500 – 310 500 tonnes/Year
•Algae oil = 3.5 barrels/tonne algae
•Carbon credit : 15 $/tonne CO2
It has an anticipated 7 year return on investment if it can sell the biodiesel for over $3.46 a gallon (which is currently isn’t).
Read more!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
P46. Pick Points
Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest:
I watched a little of the demonstration outside the Capitol Power Plant this afternoon, in a line feed from the CapitolClimate Action site . There was not that much snow visible, just a little on the bushes, and everything was relatively peaceful. (About 7 inches fell apparently). There was some sort of march, but the video was live and without a commentator, so much of what I saw was very unscripted. Apparently some of the demonstrators came from a conference that was being held in town.
The first thing shown (at about 1:30 pm when I tuned in) was a group of demonstrators outside the CPP gates chanting, and being encouraged to do so by a man with an electronic bullhorn. The chants were along the lines of “no coal, no gas, no compromise.” You may remember from my note yesterday that the plant is fired with a mix of 65% natural gas, and 35% coal, so they obviously want to shut the plant down. How to provide for the energy needs of the Capitol and surroundings? The next chant was “Coal is over, coal is done, get your power from the sun!” Well for those not paying attention Washington is just coming out of a major snowstorm, so any solar panels would be covered with snow, as the bushes were behind the demonstrators. So sun would not be an option today – how about nuclear – no carbon dioxide – next chant “no coal, no gas, no nukes, no kidding”. I think no kidding is right, where are they going to get the power to supply heat and light to the east coast? Remember that it is very cold in the region at the moment, and there was no visible wind in the afternoon. James Hansen was there and the Congresswoman that represents DC in the House, and one of the Kennedys. I had other things to do, but it all seemed very low key in the time that I watched it. They are playing the highlights again at the website, and are promising to go back to Coal Mountain again.
Plans are moving in Iraq to restart a drilling program that will yield 60 wells a year at 5,000 barrels/day/well.
The transcript is out for the API telecon I participated in on Friday. The transcript can be downloaded here.
Those taking part included:
The Bear, The Absurd Report
Brian Westenhaus, New Energy and Fuel
Dave Summers, Bit Tooth Energy
Devil’s Advocate, Copious Dissent
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
Geoff Styles, Energy Outlook
James Shott, Observations
Nate Hagens, The Oil Drum
Peter Carlock, OPNTALK (which has the transcript posted -
Stephen Rhodes, The Republican Temple who also has some video from the Capitol demonstration today.
Brian Westenhaus had a post on Friday about a new way of getting light into the photobioreactors for algae growth. Several folk had forwarded it to me for review. It is way of distributing the light that we looked at a couple of years ago but doesn’t really address a couple of the problems relating to the drop off in intensity with distance, though it helps get light to the bottom of deeper ponds. He also writes about the Petroalgae operation in Florida. This is getting closer to a target of 5,000 gallon/acre/year yield which is the target set as a break-even point for algae. (There are lots of caveats to that number). Biovenitas has more coverage over this past weekend, The potential for green energy technologies to provide jobs is becoming more of an issue and certainly when we talk of research projects it is something that is brought up in almost every discussion with potential outside partners.
OPEC is still pumping about 780,000 bd of oil above the targets they have earlier set, but are down to 25.62 mbd, which takes them to abot 81% of the targeted cuts. Venezuela would like the target to be enforced, and more cuts made to bring the price up to $70 a barrel. I think it will likely get there this summer anyway, though, as noted last week Secretary Chu is not as concerned with OPEC oil as he is with the longer-term issues of cutting energy demand and dealing with the climate issues of energy production
.
Pakistan approved a wind farm in Sindh. Power will be provided to Karachi and Hyderabad. The 50 MW wind facility may also be joined by a similar sized solar farm. Details of a wind survey around Pakistan are available.
More stories can be found at The Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.
I watched a little of the demonstration outside the Capitol Power Plant this afternoon, in a line feed from the CapitolClimate Action site . There was not that much snow visible, just a little on the bushes, and everything was relatively peaceful. (About 7 inches fell apparently). There was some sort of march, but the video was live and without a commentator, so much of what I saw was very unscripted. Apparently some of the demonstrators came from a conference that was being held in town.
The first thing shown (at about 1:30 pm when I tuned in) was a group of demonstrators outside the CPP gates chanting, and being encouraged to do so by a man with an electronic bullhorn. The chants were along the lines of “no coal, no gas, no compromise.” You may remember from my note yesterday that the plant is fired with a mix of 65% natural gas, and 35% coal, so they obviously want to shut the plant down. How to provide for the energy needs of the Capitol and surroundings? The next chant was “Coal is over, coal is done, get your power from the sun!” Well for those not paying attention Washington is just coming out of a major snowstorm, so any solar panels would be covered with snow, as the bushes were behind the demonstrators. So sun would not be an option today – how about nuclear – no carbon dioxide – next chant “no coal, no gas, no nukes, no kidding”. I think no kidding is right, where are they going to get the power to supply heat and light to the east coast? Remember that it is very cold in the region at the moment, and there was no visible wind in the afternoon. James Hansen was there and the Congresswoman that represents DC in the House, and one of the Kennedys. I had other things to do, but it all seemed very low key in the time that I watched it. They are playing the highlights again at the website, and are promising to go back to Coal Mountain again.
Plans are moving in Iraq to restart a drilling program that will yield 60 wells a year at 5,000 barrels/day/well.
In 2008 Iraq produced 2 million b/d, which the ministry is eager to boost to 3 million b/d as soon as possible and to 4.4 million b/d within the next 4 years. Iraq wants to achieve 6 million b/d of production by 2013.Iraq has had to redo its budget twice already, due to the falling price of oil, and thus is anxious to reinstate itself as a producer.
"The parties to the joint venture intend to invest a total of $400 million to enable [IOSC] to purchase and operate 12 new drilling rigs and for provision of logistical support and working capital in order to deliver state-of-the-art performance in its operations," MPC said. IOSC also wants to improve local Iraqi expertise and integrated drilling technology.
The transcript is out for the API telecon I participated in on Friday. The transcript can be downloaded here.
Those taking part included:
The Bear, The Absurd Report
Brian Westenhaus, New Energy and Fuel
Dave Summers, Bit Tooth Energy
Devil’s Advocate, Copious Dissent
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
Geoff Styles, Energy Outlook
James Shott, Observations
Nate Hagens, The Oil Drum
Peter Carlock, OPNTALK (which has the transcript posted -
Stephen Rhodes, The Republican Temple who also has some video from the Capitol demonstration today.
Brian Westenhaus had a post on Friday about a new way of getting light into the photobioreactors for algae growth. Several folk had forwarded it to me for review. It is way of distributing the light that we looked at a couple of years ago but doesn’t really address a couple of the problems relating to the drop off in intensity with distance, though it helps get light to the bottom of deeper ponds. He also writes about the Petroalgae operation in Florida. This is getting closer to a target of 5,000 gallon/acre/year yield which is the target set as a break-even point for algae. (There are lots of caveats to that number). Biovenitas has more coverage over this past weekend, The potential for green energy technologies to provide jobs is becoming more of an issue and certainly when we talk of research projects it is something that is brought up in almost every discussion with potential outside partners.
OPEC is still pumping about 780,000 bd of oil above the targets they have earlier set, but are down to 25.62 mbd, which takes them to abot 81% of the targeted cuts. Venezuela would like the target to be enforced, and more cuts made to bring the price up to $70 a barrel. I think it will likely get there this summer anyway, though, as noted last week Secretary Chu is not as concerned with OPEC oil as he is with the longer-term issues of cutting energy demand and dealing with the climate issues of energy production
.
Pakistan approved a wind farm in Sindh. Power will be provided to Karachi and Hyderabad. The 50 MW wind facility may also be joined by a similar sized solar farm. Details of a wind survey around Pakistan are available.
More stories can be found at The Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.
Read more!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
P43. Pick Points
I mentioned in Monday’s post that I have an interest in algae, and so I will put up a couple of items that caught my attention this weekend. The first deals with the possibility of using wind power to provide some of the energy that algae need to foster growth Some of the European wind farms have been up for a while, and one in Denmark, that was installed in 1990, is looking at using some of the extra power to encourage algae growth. The algae, through the generation of biofuel, would thus act as a form of “battery” for the wind. One problem, however, is to ensure biological security, since the escape of algae species into a favorable place, such as in Hawaii, can have negative results, and require costly capture and remediation. The use of algae for flue gas cleanup has inspired a number of efforts, from Israel to MIT (who use it to make hydrogen), to Missouri . There is also the blog Oilgae, which carries the MIT report on the topic.
Developers of the Shtokman project are talking about using CCS as part of the strategy for development at the site. There is anticipation that the cost of the project will decline with the poor economy. More details of the loan from China to encourage a pipeline and oil supply to that nation are now emerging. The change in investment strategy has the advantage of getting a good price now for the oil, and securing it into the future. Russia is also trying to find a way to improve the efficient use of energy, with planning for a new law on the way, and an example of how it might be done, comes from a dairy. In the United States homeowners can look at the Home Energy Rating System which compares the energy use of a house with a standard. Based on the result that you get different approaches may be needed to lower the number (a 200 means you use twice the standard). Oregon is moving to have the state provide loans to encourage upgrading of homes in a way that would make them more energy efficient. As I noted in Monday’s post, this is something that we are seeing in an increasing number of states.
St Mary Land and Exploration is drilling horizontal wells into the Woodford, and Haynesville shale and while cutting the number of rigs back to 7, from 16 at the peak of last year, one or two of the rigs will shuttle between the Haynesville, the Eagle Ford and the Marcellus shale sites. The lateral section of the well is around 3,300 ft, and with 10 slick-water fracs will use some 3,000,000 lb of resin coated sand proppant. There is some move in Pennsylvania to require that drilling records for the Marcellus be made public (including production data) every six months. Other states such as Louisiana and Wyoming post such production on Web sites. Chesapeake, who is drilling both Marcellus and Hanesville is currently getting a favorable press. With natural gas prices projected as perhaps falling as low as $2 per MMBtu due to lack of demand and overproduction, this years prospects don’t look good for the industry.
Scotland is looking for new ways to develop marine energy, the target being some 60,000 MW. The current projects are based in Orkney, and the European Marine Energy Centre. The current targets are sites around Britain and Ireland that are capable of producing more than 1,000 MW each, largely from wave and tidal energy.
The State Governors are asking Presidential help in promoting biofuels hoping to see approval, for example, of ethanol blends above 10% and as high as 30%. (This was something Dr Chu was asked about last week).
Because of the global financial problems Russia and Kazakhstan are considering slowing the development of the Karachanganak project (which is reputed to have 47 trilion cubic ft of gas).
Developers of the Shtokman project are talking about using CCS as part of the strategy for development at the site. There is anticipation that the cost of the project will decline with the poor economy. More details of the loan from China to encourage a pipeline and oil supply to that nation are now emerging. The change in investment strategy has the advantage of getting a good price now for the oil, and securing it into the future. Russia is also trying to find a way to improve the efficient use of energy, with planning for a new law on the way, and an example of how it might be done, comes from a dairy. In the United States homeowners can look at the Home Energy Rating System which compares the energy use of a house with a standard. Based on the result that you get different approaches may be needed to lower the number (a 200 means you use twice the standard). Oregon is moving to have the state provide loans to encourage upgrading of homes in a way that would make them more energy efficient. As I noted in Monday’s post, this is something that we are seeing in an increasing number of states.
St Mary Land and Exploration is drilling horizontal wells into the Woodford, and Haynesville shale and while cutting the number of rigs back to 7, from 16 at the peak of last year, one or two of the rigs will shuttle between the Haynesville, the Eagle Ford and the Marcellus shale sites. The lateral section of the well is around 3,300 ft, and with 10 slick-water fracs will use some 3,000,000 lb of resin coated sand proppant. There is some move in Pennsylvania to require that drilling records for the Marcellus be made public (including production data) every six months. Other states such as Louisiana and Wyoming post such production on Web sites. Chesapeake, who is drilling both Marcellus and Hanesville is currently getting a favorable press. With natural gas prices projected as perhaps falling as low as $2 per MMBtu due to lack of demand and overproduction, this years prospects don’t look good for the industry.
Scotland is looking for new ways to develop marine energy, the target being some 60,000 MW. The current projects are based in Orkney, and the European Marine Energy Centre. The current targets are sites around Britain and Ireland that are capable of producing more than 1,000 MW each, largely from wave and tidal energy.
The State Governors are asking Presidential help in promoting biofuels hoping to see approval, for example, of ethanol blends above 10% and as high as 30%. (This was something Dr Chu was asked about last week).
Because of the global financial problems Russia and Kazakhstan are considering slowing the development of the Karachanganak project (which is reputed to have 47 trilion cubic ft of gas).
Read more!
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