Topic: 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year?

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

A startup based in Cambridge, MA--Joule Biotechnologies--today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.

Joule Biotechnologies grows genetically engineered microorganisms in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies.

So far, the company has raised "substantially less than $50 million," Sims says, from Flagship Ventures and other investors, including company employees. The firm is about to start a new round of financing to scale up the technology.

[Rod ONeal]

Read the article and it looks great! Personally, as long as there's starving people in the world, turning food into gasoline should be criminal. This seems to be an ideal solution. They are even claiming competitiveness with oil at only $50.00 a barrel. Of course this means that the oil companies will never allow it to happen.  

[Dash Jones]

I'm still wanting Solar energy myself.  Free, AND CLEAN by itself, though if one uses a battery that can be used as an argument that the battery will cause pollution...but by itself Solar energy is the cleanest of them all.

Still, biofuel being able to produced effectively would work towards some of the US's goals of alternative energy sources, and may be a better solution for vehicles as well as useful to use in powerplants that use hydrocarbon fuels already.

[marstone]

I'm still wanting Solar energy myself.  Free, AND CLEAN by itself, though if one uses a battery that can be used as an argument that the battery will cause pollution...but by itself Solar energy is the cleanest of them all.

Still, biofuel being able to produced effectively would work towards some of the US's goals of alternative energy sources, and may be a better solution for vehicles as well as useful to use in powerplants that use hydrocarbon fuels already.

making a solar panel is also not clean (yet)  lots of processing to make the pure base.  There are some that are greener, but they produce less power per square foot.

[Sirgod]

One of the most ingenious manners of  Power that I saw suggested, and I'll have to find the link, was this guy came up with a plan to put Wind generators in the already existing power towers.

You know those huge 4 footed Steel power towers that stretch across no fly land. Right in the center of those, you place the wind mill. The cost he figured to ship, mount, and hook up to the grid was around 2k, and could get cheaper if more places retooled.

now when you think of all the towers across the US, each generating there own wind power, The reduction on Fossil Fuels would be emmense.

Stephen

[Panzergranate]

With the oil compaines reporting that we've only managed to use up 16% of the world's known easy to extract resevoir oil reserves, and only 2% of the world's known (slightly less easy) to extract Shale Oil reserves, why do we need to move to bio-fule so early??

The COMMGW claims that we're going to run out of Oil in the next 50 years and the Oil industry says that, bearing in mind, that taken just over 100 years to consume 16% of the resevior Oil, that we have enough Oil for just over 500 years remaining.

So basically the big lie, to scare people into abandoning the internal combustion engine, has backfired and the world has started manufacturing bio-fuel and causing envioronmental mayhem in its wake.

We don't need bio-fuel.... we have over 500 years worth of Oil still to use up.

The world is being tricked into doing insanely stupid things..... and only a few people have realised this so far.

[Clark Kent]

Panzer, how is this for an argument for dropping fossil fuels: I'm sick of being tied to a commodity that regularly changes price by 20 cents per gallon in a day. I especially feel this way when it happens because some fourth rate third world petty potentate has a camel that farts funny.

[marstone]

Panzer, how is this for an argument for dropping fossil fuels: I'm sick of being tied to a commodity that regularly changes price by 20 cents per gallon in a day. I especially feel this way when it happens because some fourth rate third world petty potentate has a camel that farts funny.

Bio fuels will have wide range of price changes also, power per gallon is lower the normal gas also.  So even saving some money you can end up spending more as you use 30% more E85 then E10.  The saving carbon is a wash also, once you count the full carbon foot print of growing, harvesting, transportation, and production of ethanol/biodiesel.

Now I am for working out the details of this fuel, but it is impractical (riots have almost started in Mexico as the price of corn for tortillas has gone through the roof because of the ethanol production).

Oil will be around for along time yet, but the limit is on how much we can extract at any one time.  We are coming up on a extraction limit similar to the one that we hit back in the '70's.  Either we have to expand pumping to keep ahead of demand or we will hit a major shortage in the near future.  (the need is to expand all the options we have, produce bio-fuels, increase oil production, produce better was to store energy, etc).

I haven't seen an all encompassing plan.  The last thing is without the government spending a fortune to subsidise the energy production on so called green energy, it wouldn't be in a price range to compete with more traditional methods of energy production.

[Lieutenant_Q]

should just add a couple more things to this.

If you don't want the price to fluctuate every time a two-bit dictator decides to try to show that he means something (read Iran, Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia), we should start tapping the vast oil reserves we have in the west plains, the northern Alaskan Tundra, in the Gulf of Mexico, or off the West Coast.  Its all there and easy to get at, but policy makers have decided (whether to appease their communist allies in Greenpeace, or simply because they LIKE the two-bit dictators) that all that oil is off limits.  You want to know how bad it's gotten in recent years?  Several Offshore platforms in the Gulf were damaged by the Hurricanes that hit last year, 11 and 12 months later, they still are not operational.  Why?  Because the Government won't issue the permits to repair them.

The second item is that we could start pumping all the oil we want, unless we build more refineries, all that oil is useless.  But again, the government has decided that Oil is evil and we shouldn't be using it.  Many existing refineries are coming up on 30 years old.  After that the EPA (as well they should) will start closing them down.  But with no new permits being issued to build more, expect gasoline prices to simply sky-rocket.  Remember last September when the country saw gas spike up to $4.50 a gallon?  That was because Hurricane Ike went right over the Oil refining facilities in Pasadena, Texas.  To maintain the current supply of gasoline that we have, EVERY refinery in the US has to operate at 90% capacity.  Take more than one or two offline for any length of time, and $4-5 dollar gasoline will be here before you know it.

[Panzergranate]

One of the problems in Europe, for car and motorcycle owners and mechanics, is the sudden use increasing amount of Ethanol to try to raise the energy content of our 95 and 98 RON grade petrol without causing knock.

Unfortunately, Ethanol destroys engine seals and tubing that is rubber based PLUS disolves "Pet Seal", which is used by some European car and motorcycle manufacturers (Triumph have a huge problem!!) to seal gas tank seams during production.

Ethanol is also a bit problematic with older fuel injection systems not originally calibrated to cope. Carbs, on the other hand, just take a quick five minutes of screwdriver twiddling to have things running right.

When it comes to extracting more power through alternative fuels, I've tried it at one time or another.

Interestingly enough, Parafin & Two Stroke Oil made a moped run 5 MPH quicker, with no ill effects, than unleaded 85 RON grade petrol.

I used to run Nitro-Toluene, back in the late 1980's, when I drag raced motorcycles, which is my favorite choice of fuels.

I've used Methanol and Nitro-Methanol, which has the downside of producing nasty Athelrides in place of N2O and CO2.

A lot of the alternative fuel options produce nasties a lot more problematic than N2O and CO2 regarding human health hazards.

And if any of you are kind of wishing that petrol engines could be run on cooking oil just like Diesel engined vehicles, you can!!

However, the cooking oil has to be mixed with Methalated Spirit or some alcohol that will vapourise and combust under compression.

[Rod ONeal]

We could have 2 stroke EFI diesels. Technology that's ready today. Won't happen though, because all this green talk is just smoke and mirrors to hide them stealing our money.

[toasty0]

With the oil compaines reporting that we've only managed to use up 16% of the world's known easy to extract resevoir oil reserves, and only 2% of the world's known (slightly less easy) to extract Shale Oil reserves, why do we need to move to bio-fule so early??

The COMMGW claims that we're going to run out of Oil in the next 50 years and the Oil industry says that, bearing in mind, that taken just over 100 years to consume 16% of the resevior Oil, that we have enough Oil for just over 500 years remaining.

So basically the big lie, to scare people into abandoning the internal combustion engine, has backfired and the world has started manufacturing bio-fuel and causing envioronmental mayhem in its wake.

We don't need bio-fuel.... we have over 500 years worth of Oil still to use up.

The world is being tricked into doing insanely stupid things..... and only a few people have realised this so far.

COMMGW? Can you post some links so that I can read up and read the context of these claims about 500 year crude oil supplies? I'd really like to read through some of that literature.

[Panzergranate]

Well BP announced yesterday, that they've discovered a massive deposite of oil under the Gulf Of Mexico.

All I did, to find the truth about our oil global oil reserves, was to type in "oil industry total oil reserves", or something along those lines, into a search engine.

Also, a few years ago, before the "we're running out of oil soon" romour mill started grinding, there was a BBC documentary on the then newly discovered Azarbyjan oil fields, which are 3 to 4 times larger than the Arab oil fields.

The issue being raised was that Azarbyjan didn't want to become a member of the OPEC cartel andwould sell oil independant of it, once they had the pipeline across Turkey to the Medeterainian Sea plus oil depot built. (It's still under constrcution.)

It was stated that the oil field, by itself, contained enough oil to stisfy global consumption for just over 500 years.

Apparently, the whole "We're running out of oil" myth is based on an ignorant misunderstanding (and maybe wishful eco-nazi thinking) of believeing that all the world's oil supply comes from Dubai, who's oil field is expected to run dry within the next 50 years.

The other Middle East oil fields are still good for a century of so.

The premeture move to Bio-fuels is proving to be an ecological disaster in some parts of the world.

The truth is out there.... you only have to look and ask for it.