> TP Sparber <tpsparber> wrote: > Jed Rothwell wrote, > > > > Kyle R. Mcallister feels frustrated that no one responded to this > > message. I sympathize; no doubt he put a lot of effort into it, but I > > suppose people do not feel qualified to discuss the issue. I > > certainly cannot judge the chemistry, but I can address the last sentence: > > > > >Is there actually enough useable (as in, we can actually really > > >harness it) wind around the US to power all this? Solar? > > > According to this Biodiesel from Algae Farms report, yes. > > http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html > > "The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, > funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy > Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this > program was to investigate high-oil algaes that could be grown specifically > for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production1. The research began as > a project looking into using quick-growing algae to sequester carbon in CO2 > emissions from coal power plants. Noticing that some algae have very high > oil content, the project shifted its focus to growing algae for another > purpose - producing biodiesel. Some species of algae are ideally suited to > biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50% > oil), and extremely fast growth rates. From the results of the Aquatic > Species Program2, algae farms would let us supply enough biodiesel to > completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel in the US (as well as > its other main use - home heating oil) - but we first have to solve a few > of the problems they encountered along the way." > > "NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel > could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is > equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining > challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and > companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous > section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we > would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one > quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount > would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that into > perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US > comprises 120,000 square miles.Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum > transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 > percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not > advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. > This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the > scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 > million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop > farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for > farm animals." > > > There was an algae farm experiment near Roswell, NM when nearby oil was > really cheap, Aliens contaminated it. :-) > > Fred
Sigh... those pesky aliens. I wonder about the expenses involved in supplying nutrients and other raw materials that would be needed to feed the algae? The report claims: "The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $46.2 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the $100-150 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries, with all of that money leaving the US economy. " On the surface, sounds encouraging. OTOH, looking at this from a different and more cynical perspective: While producing ethanol is presumably not the same as generating oil feedstock there have been protracted debates within this discussion group, particularly from Jed, about how utterly inefficient it is (presumably under current economic/technological circumstances), to produce ethanol from corn due to the horrendous amount of fossil fuel consumed to produce the fertilizer as well as to run all the farm equipment. I wonder if there might still be huge hidden costs not mentioned in the above oil feedstock report. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.Zazzle.comn/orionworks
