I was reading about algae as a bio-fuel, looks like it actualy works on paper, unlike any other bio-fuel ideas floating around which have dangerous trade offs.... even if you just skip my bla bla bla opinion, the wiki articls are a good read and informative, i put them at the bottom in hopes you (the reader) will still bother to read my spin on it. =D
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my mini-paper on why current bio-fuel tech is not a real solution.
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ASSUMPTIONS:
world produces 86million barrels per day
world farm land 5billion
5billion acres feeds 10billion people
20gals gas from 1 barrel oil
using bio-fuel to COMPLETELY substitute our oil supply (vs. supplementing it,)
Problems with bio-fuel biodiesel and ethonal. Land use, ecconomic impact on food supply, efficency in comparison to other energy resources such as solar or wind energy[1].
Here is a quick breakdown of various life forms that produce bio-diesel oils, the last number is gallons/acre of land......
[edit] Yields of common crops
Crop kg oil/ha litres oil/ha lbs oil/acre US gal/acre
corn (maize) 145 172 129 18
cashew nut 148 176 132 19
oats 183 217 163 23
lupine 195 232 175 25
kenaf 230 273 205 29
calendula 256 305 229 33
cotton 273 325 244 35
hemp 305 363 272 39
soybean 375 446 335 48
coffee 386 459 345 49
linseed (flax) 402 478 359 51
hazelnuts 405 482 362 51
euphorbia 440 524 393 56
pumpkin seed 449 534 401 57
coriander 450 536 402 57
mustard seed 481 572 430 61
camelina 490 583 438 62
sesame 585 696 522 74
safflower 655 779 585 83
rice 696 828 622 88
tung oil tree 790 940 705 100
sunflowers 800 952 714 102
cocoa (cacao) 863 1,026 771 110
peanuts 890 1,059 795 113
opium poppy 978 1,163 873 124
rapeseed (Canola) 1,000 1,190 893 127
olives 1,019 1,212 910 129
castor beans 1,188 1,413 1,061 151
pecan nuts 1,505 1,791 1,344 191
jojoba 1,528 1,818 1,365 194
jatropha 1,590 1,892 1,420 202
macadamia nuts 1,887 2,246 1,685 240
Brazil nuts 2,010 2,392 1,795 255
avocado 2,217 2,638 1,980 282
coconut 2,260 2,689 2,018 287
oil palm 5,000 5,950 4,465 635
Chinese tallow 5,500 6,545 4,912 699
Algae* 39,916 47,500 35,613 5,000
Our planet productes 86,000,000 barrels of oil per day Roughly 20 gals of gas per barrel as a yield (42 total) Thats about 600Billion gals per year of gas using palm oil, creating 635gal/acre/year thats 1billion acres of land (using the best of the best plant for oil) needed to feed the world's oil demands (this year) I know, i know, theres a few gallons of diesel, kerosine in that barrel too but for the sake of rough guessing.....
There is rougly 5billion acres of farm land world wide to date[3]. This is a devistating impact to our current food supply no matter how you dice it. Even in the short term, someone is going to lose. This farmland figure supposidly is below our theoretical maximum output, which is 10billion people, so technicaly we have 40% overhead here. But supply and demand does kick in, so either way you dice it, again, food costs go up, frarmable land goes down, ect ect ect. Farm land demand will go up AND fuel demand will go up so that 40% overhead will disapear quite fast.
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All that being said, y i think this algae thing has a shot:
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From the wiki, an interesting feasable alternative to plants making bio-fuel, algae, at 5000 gal per acre thats only 122million acres of land needed to feed the worlds CURRENT fuel demands. Now the energy index is still an issue but i dont know if the one for algae has been studied like the other plants have.
Quote:
[edit] Biodiesel production
Currently most research into efficient algal-oil production is being done in the private sector, but if predictions from small scale production experiments bear out then using algae to produce biodiesel may be the only viable method by which to produce enough automotive fuel to replace current world gasoline usage.[15]
Microalgae have much faster growth-rates than terrestrial crops. The per unit area yield of oil from algae is estimated to be from between 5,000 to 20,000 gallons per acre, per year; this is 7 to 31 times greater than the next best crop, palm oil (635 gallons). (Citation needed)
Algal-oil processes into biodiesel as easily as oil derived from land-based crops. The difficulties in efficient biodiesel production from algae lie not in the extraction of the oil, which can be done using methods common to the food-industry such as hexane extraction, but in finding an algal strain with a high lipid content and fast growth rate that isn't too difficult to harvest, and a cost-effective cultivation system (ie, type of photobioreactor) that is best suited to that strain.
Open-pond systems for the most part have been given up for the cultivation of algae with high-oil content. Many believe that a major flaw of the Aquatic Species Program was the decision to focus their efforts exclusively on open-ponds; this makes the entire effort dependent upon the hardiness of the strain chosen, requiring it to be unnecessarily resilient in order to withstand wide swings in temperature and pH, and competition from invasive algae and bacteria. The energy that a high-oil strain invests into the production of oil is energy that is not invested into the production of proteins or carbohydrates, usually resulting in the species being less hardy, or having a slower growth rate. Algal species with a lower oil content, not having to divert their energies away from growth, have an easier time in the harsher conditions of an open system.
Some open sewage ponds trial production has been done in Marlborough, New Zealand.[16]
A feasibility study using marine microalgae in a photobioreactor is being done by The International Research Consortium on Continental Margins at the International University Bremen.[17]
Research into algae for the mass-production of oil is mainly focused on microalgae; organisms capable of photosynthesis that are less than 2 mm in diameter, including the diatoms and cyanobacteria; as opposed to macroalgae, e.g. seaweed. This preference towards microalgae is due largely to its less complex structure, fast growth rate, and high oil content (for some species). Some commercial interests into large scale algal-cultivation systems are looking to tie in to existing infrastructures, such as coal power plants or sewage treatment facilities. This approach not only provides the raw materials for the system, such as CO2 and nutrients; but it changes those wastes into resources.
In November 8, 2006, Green Star Products has announced that it has signed an agreement with De Beers Fuel Limited of South Africa to build 90 biodiesel reactors with algae as raw material. Each of the biodiesel reactors will be capable of producing 10 million gallons of biodiesel each year for a total production capacity of 900,000,000 gallons per year when operating at full capacity, which is 4 times greater than the entire U.S. output in 2006. Also, GreenFuel Technologies Corporation has delivered a bioreactor to De Beers Fuel. Doubts have been expressed about Green Star's expertise in biodiesel technology. [18] Green Star's president did however answer questions in an online interview with WallSt.net where he claimed that the South African biodiesel production has exceeded the original expectations.[19] A subsequent TV investigation has thrown doubt on these claims.[1]
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture
Source
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070716091608AAVeHE0
Now all in all, does the world have to all switch to somthing? NO and prolly not even a good idea to. Diverisfy fuels helps tremendously. w/ all things said here in that perspective, the equation changes, perhaps enough so that we can delay bad things, long enough to come up w/ somthing all together better. But from where i sit looks like a long shot....
All the energy on earth came from one of two places, the Sun, or a supernova-created radioactive isotope (which was "somone else's sun" a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away). If we harvest this energy faster than its formed, we are in trouble. Unless someone figures out fusion any time soon. =D
o8k
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