Seagull Coated in Gulf Oil - Louisiana

As the toxic slur of oil and dispersants drift ashore across the American Gulf Coast, I wonder if this will be enough to make us change our ways?  Over the past hundred years, we’ve accomplished a lot.  We made the internal combustion engine the mainstream choice for transportation.  We’ve built roads and super-highways that link every state together in the United States.  We have a fueling infrastructure that has very few areas where you don’t have at least three or four choices of fuel stations.  We’ve developed advanced fertilizers and pesticides from petroleum that allows us to feed hundreds of millions of people.  We synthesize oil into olefins for making advanced polymers and plastics that allow us to carry disposable plastic water bottles wherever we go.

However, our voracious appetite for oil is polluting our environment and putting billions of dollars into the pockets of nations that undermine freedom, fund terrorism and have been linked to planting IEDs that kill our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Is it all worth it?

How many wars and Gulf oil spills will it take before we realize that we need to demand better alternatives?  Henry Ford mass-produced the first automobiles without any roads or fuel stations across the nation.  Americans fell in love with the automobile, purchased them and demanded roads and fuel stations.  We can do this again and it will be alot easier.

The Nissan Leaf electric vehicle will begin shipping in December of 2010.  They can be driven on the same roads and highways.  Electricity is available along every major road and highway in our nation.  If you believe we are a nation that can innovate and make the world a better place, trade in one of your cars for a Nissan Leaf and demand charging stations throughout your city or town.  Our grandparents did it and now it’s our turn.

from GreenFuel Technologies Biofuel White Paper

If GreenFuel algae facilities could be located at every operating
plant in the U.S., it would be possible to produce about 13.5
billion gallons of biodiesel and 8.5 billion gallons of ethanol per
year if those plants continued to produce electricity at levels
similar to production in 2005. While it may not be possible to
locate production at every plant, and not every plant has sufficient
land to site the GreenFuel operations – a high-level, first cut
estimate indicates that perhaps three-quarters of the plants are
feasible options. If this is the case, then GreenFuel could
theoretically supply about half of the alternative fuels that
President Bush called for in his State of the Union Address (35
billion gallons by 2017); reduce the amount of land that would be
needed by 90%; not use valuable agricultural land; and reduce
pressure on crop prices.

Also, if all plants are used, then there could be significant
production of biofuels in almost 30 states (Figure 11). This only
counts existing coal-fired power plants and GreenFuel could produce
algae co-located with natural gas-fired facilities, refineries and
industrial facilities that burn fossil-fuels so that there is
potential to locate biofuels facilities in a broader number of
locations. For example, California, which has little coal-fired
generation located in the state, has a number of refineries and
natural gas-fired plants that could produce algae giving fuel
suppliers the ability to produce fuels locally for the large
California market.
Figure 8: Theoretical production of biofuels if all coal plants have
a GreenFuel facility

GreenFuel has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from
these power plants. If sited at all the power plants, GreenFuel
might be able to reduce about 500 million metric tons of carbon. If
we take a conservative picture of the potential, where GreenFuel
would produce 16 billion gallons, then perhaps 250 million tons of
carbon could be reduced. This represents more than 10% of carbon
dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. If these emissions
are taken as credits in a potential greenhouse gas trading system,
it could be worth over 2 billion dollars a year.

Using GreenFuel algae as a portion of the biofuels demand and
supplementing corn and soybean feedstocks, the costs of delivering
biofuels to the economy can be reduced. Finally, what this
information tells the policy community is that we can safely push
towards a larger share of renewable fuels with very little risk that
the costs will be high because emerging technologies won’t be
available. If the cellulosic technology does not emerge as quickly
as expected, we can wait for it; we can produce 35 billion gallons
of biofuels by 2017 with a combination of GreenFuel and existing
technologies and have a cost-effective and robust energy system that
has fewer risks and more opportunities of wider geographic
production capabilities.

http://www.greenfuelonline.com/gf_files/WhitePaperBernstein051607.pdf

Published: December 27 2007 19:55 | Last updated: December 27 2007
19:55

Oil from algae, the microscopic plants that produce a green covering
on the surfaces of ponds and neglected outdoor swimming pools, may
soon be filling diesel pumps.

As crude oil has moved towards $100 (€70, £50) a barrel and
sustainable alternatives are sought in a bid to reduce carbon
emissions, researchers are investigating “second- generation”
biofuels – those not made from food crops such as soya or corn.
Scientists have found that, in terms of oil yield, algae could be
the most efficient source of biofuel.

Algae produces oil yields more than 100 times those of common
biofuel crops such as soya, yet requires a fraction of the
cultivation area. For example, one corn crop covering an acre nets
about 81 gallons of ethanol a year, while palm may produce 650
gallons of biofuel. Algae may yield up to 15,000 gallons.

“No other source comes close in magnitude to the potential for
making oil of algae,” says Al Darzins, director of the Research
Center for Biofuels at the National Research Energy Laboratories of
the US Department of Energy.

Researchers at the laboratories have also found they can greatly
increase the amount of oil produced using genetic engineering
techniques. Modified algae can produce oil yields of 60-70 per cent
compared with the 5-20 per cent in oil contents of natural algae.

One of the advantages of sourcing oil from algae is that algal
biodiesel could be used in diesel cars without further modification
of the engine. But for relatively small volumes, bio-ethanol needs
to be blended with petrol unless the vehicles have been adapted.
Biodiesel is also a versatile source of fuel which, Mr Darzin says,
could be used for ships, trains, jet fuel and cars.

This month Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s biggest oil company, became
the latest business to put its faith in algae, announcing that it
hopes to build a commercial research plant which it believes will
produce biodiesel from algae in two years.

It is taking a majority stake in a joint venture, with Hawaii-based
HR Biopetroleum, that will initially build a small research plant
but hopes to move to a full-scale commercial plant of 49,421 acres.

Shell says that algae’s environmental credentials are greatly
superior to those of “first-generation” biofuels. This is because
algae does not need to be grown on farmland and deforested land,
thus minimising the damage to ecological systems. Unlike soya or
corn, it does not add pressure to food prices when grown as a
biofuel.

Obtaining oil from algae is not new. Scientists working in the 1950s
discovered some strains of algae had a very high oil content that
could relatively easily be converted
to fuel.

However, the real barrier to algae taking off as a source of fuel
has been the cost of production. Growing algae in open ponds reduces
cultivation costs but makes it difficult to control the
environmental conditions. The algae can easily get contaminated with
naturally occurring but less efficient strains.

But if algae are grown in closed tanks, the process may end up being
too expensive. “The bottleneck in the process is the expensive
technology required for algae oil production,” says Ralph Simms, a
senior analyst at the International Energy Agency in Brussels.

Growing high concentrations of algae is difficult and the costs of
obtaining oil from it make algae more expensive than other biofuels.
At the moment, bio-ethanol production costs about $2 a litre
compared with the wholesale price of gasoline of $0.45.

“In order to be competitive, algal biofuel costs should be cut down
to less than that of the bio-ethanol price,” says Mr Simms.

Don Paul, chief technology officer at Chevron, the US energy company
which is also funding a research programme on algae, thinks the
success of second-generation biofuels depends on collaboration among
industry, universities, research institutions and governments.

Their co-operation will be essential to overcome the technological
and commercial challenges that these products involve.

Shell admitted at the launch of its algae joint venture that it
would be a substantial journey to make algae-based biofuels
commercially viable, and there would need to be technological
innovations along the way.

Even then, it added, the economics of algae-based biodiesel would
probably have to be supported by tax breaks or incentives that
reflected its superior environmental impact compared with first-
generation biofuels.

For the moment, algae oil output remains small, with the largest
production volume at a few hundred gallons a year, claimed by
several US start-up companies working on this technology.

But as the oil majors and clean technology companies race to
discover the technological breakthrough, the days of algae oil may
soon be on us.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95de5afa-b4a3-11dc-990a-0000779fd2ac.html

For Loveland Connection

Dr. Ken Reardon, a professor of chemistry and bioengineering at
Colorado State University, is pictured in a lab on campus. He is a
researcher in biofuels, especially algae, and is making a push to
find new fuel sources. Reardon is also the director of the Colorado
Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2.

Think about squeezing energy from large-scale algae farms, or
genetically modifying bacteria to help turn plants into fuel sources
to power vehicles.

It may sound futuristic, but Fort Collins could make it happen in
the next year.

One of the leaders in the push to find new fuel sources is Ken
Reardon, a Colorado State University chemical and biological
engineering professor and a director of the Colorado Center for
Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2.

C2B2 is a collaborative organization comprised of CSU, the
University of Colorado, Colorado School of Mines and the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. Its focus is on the research
of new biofuels.

While Reardon has been looking at biofuels on and off since the
1970s, he hopes with the funding from sponsoring organizations of
C2B2 and the collaboration of minds from the different participating
research organizations that headway can be made in the area of
research.

“It won’t be headway that people outside of the research circle see
as major headway,” Reardon said. “But our approach has a lot of
potential.”

With several grants providing some of the necessary seed money,
Reardon hopes to look at specific areas of biofuel research in his
own studies.

The first major need for information is in the production of
biofuels from algae.

Fuel from algae is expensive to create, and no one knows how to do
it on a large scale, Reardon said.

“No one knows how to grow it in an economical way,” he said.

Reardon will also look at what is called reactor engineering -
learning how to manipulate how fuels are created with different
reactors to find optimal timing and output.

Third, Reardon wants to see changes in the process to make fuels
other than ethanol that have a more similar molecular structure to
gasoline.

And with the possible move away from ethanol, C2B2 will also begin
looking at other plants that can be better used for fuel production.

“If we want biofuels to be a significant part of fuel production,
they can’t compete with land used for fuel crops,” Reardon said.

While the number of directions research can move in the biofuel
field may seem overwhelming, Reardon is excited about the upcoming
findings that will come out of the collaboration.

http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200771229015