Hank [BS/MSEE,
MSM $$$, Ph.D. Mgmt] teaches 
There is a different kind of effort toward getting off the USA fixation on oil-based energy - oil from algae. See the video below for more info [video from www.scribemedia.org here:] And companies are starting to spring up to take advantage of this technology, and a few of them are publicly traded, although Bulletin Board companies. OTCBB companies are listed here:
Katie Fehrenbacher in her March 27th, 2008 blog entry states:
If corn-based biofuels are the Britney Spears of the cleantech world (a fallen star but still all over the place), fuel made from algae is the next great American Idol winner (major potential in the pipeline). And despite the fact that algae-to-biofuel startups have been taking their sweet time bringing a pond scum fuel product to market, some inroads have been made recently — GreenFuel is building its first plant, PetroSun starts producing at their farm on April 1, and big oil Chevron and Shell have made some early bets as well.
As we watch this play out, here are 15 algae biofuel firms that you should know about:
See link here for Katie’s blurb on the 15 companies. www.oilgae.com is a site devoted to all things “oil from algae.” Hank
Quite interesting. Algae would be easy to grow/produce, inexpensive, and could be done in any controlled environment. Are there any other advantages, such as its yield?
If we are burning something we are still doing it wrong. Creating a combustible fuel, that may not even be cleaner than fossil oil, and calling it green is one of the biggest shams ever. Not saying this has no place, getting off middle eastern oil is a good thing, but don’t kid yourself about the environmental friendliness of anything that you burn.
And I am just as big of a gear head as anyone else out there, I spent all weekend (literally, the entire weekend) working on my car. I just happen to know that a 200hp electric motor that gets 100% of its torque at 0rpm is a crap load more fun than a 200hp gas-guzzler that gets 100% of its torque at 4,000rpm. (oh, and electric motors are near silent, so good bye exhaust noises, good bye annoying college kid with a coffee can for a muffler, good bye massive truck with no exhaust that deafens everyone in a 100ft radius).
Just because its biofuel does NOT mean its “green” or good for the environment. Green energy are things like: wind, solar and wave power generation.
I see this distinction between green and biofuels as an important one; one of them will temporarily help us get off middle east oil (biofuel), the other is the future.
Jim
I have also read something similar about getting fuel that is literally growing from trees, but thats about all I remember. I really don’t give these things too much attention because lets look at the reality of the situation. Ok, it’s great that we can create fuel from algae, but how much algae do you need to create a gallon of gasoline? What about 100 gallons? A million gallons?
It has been my experience that most of these alternatives just aren’t able to sustain our thirst for fuel, you would need one hell of a big pond of scum to create enough fuel to even make it financially viable to produce this stuff let alone put a dent in the oil companies.Also, Ethanol is a joke because of all the oil used to produce and transport it, not to mention your mpg will decrease dramatically so you have to fill up more often and the bad part is most people aren’t informed of this kind of thing!
As for electric cars, they are a good idea but the technology just isn’t quite there yet. About the best thing I’ve seen lately is that you can buy a Honda Civic that runs on natural gas and you can fill it up at your house. This is good because natural gas is a very clean burning fuel.
We don’t need a temporary solution, but that is all we have come up with so far. Wake me up when it happens.
Your right we don’t need a temporary solution, but it is where the market and the car manufactures and the oil companies will want to take us. (Why would they want to throw away a hundred years of product development and trillions of dollars in R&D?)
With any luck I will be the one waking you up.
It is a good thing that they are trying different things to prevent the use of oil, but I do not think algae is the thing that is going to bring us out of our problem. Yes you can grow it, but are we going to be able on control it and were would we grow the mass quanities at. I think that they might be on the right track, but not there yet!!
The yields from algae are very promising. Algae can contain up to 50% oil which can be converted to use in biofuels. Algae actually has alot of potentials other than its use in biofuels. Algae is used in a lot of things you would not expect to see it, for example algae is used in some ice creams. The best things about algae is it can be grown very quickly and only requires light and water to grown.
I saw this on the Discovery Channel last week. They said something to the order of 1000 times more oil per acre per year than corn or soybeans. That certainly seems like something work researching further.
I think this could really work… It should be researched furher, especially with the ever climbing oil prices that are hurting ll of us….
This is a really interesting idea that should be expanded if it is actually feasible. I doubt it puts anything worse in the atmosphere than the what we use now. Technology aside this could have a major political impact by getting the focal point off of the middle east.
I also read about this in popular mechanics and it said that the most promissing thing about is is the yield capacity. And to those saying we do not need a temporary solution you have to be joking. Why would you waste all of the infrastructure that is already in place, I do not want to pay for itto be redone and I`m sure you don`t either. This seems like a groundbreaking technology that we could get into here.
Cool article, but I think the best part have been some of the responses. Particularily those by benzmacx. I agree with all his points and like that someone else isn’t just buying into all the temporary solutions.
I think it’s cool to hear of all of the possible alternative fuel sources used to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to clean up the environment. I never would have thought that algae oil could be used for fuel. It will be interesting to see which of the upcoming alternative fuel sources takes over the oil industry in the future.
Who would have thought that algae has the potential to produce energy or fuel.
Rob,
The electrical infrastructure for becoming totally dependent on Solar, Wind and Wave will have to change dramatically. You have to come up with a way to store huge amounts of energy for down times (night, not windy…). You also need very very high voltage lines stretching across the US to bring Solar (which should easily become the dominate alternative energy source). There are a plethora of ways to do this, one such way was documented by Wired magazine, using large underground caverns to store huge amounts of compressed air that can be released and turn a generator. The cost? 400 Billion over the next 50 years. The result? over 90% of the us energy would come from solar power. Seems like a lot of money, and all I have to say is that we could have done it many times over without the iraq war, and spread out over 50 years, it really isn’t that much.
Your argument is that that is 400 billion we do not need to spend if we can just use our current infrastructure. And to that I say, you have got to be joking me. Our current infrastructure costs billions of dollars a year just to maintain! My sister works for a company that has to clean up the environmental disaster zones that are gas stations. Tanks and pumps are constantly leaking gas (not only a waste of money, but also god awful for the environment). But that is the smallest fraction of what our current infrastructure costs us. First you have to ship the oil (this part biofuels somewhat alleviate as they are being shipped inside the US, from from the middle east, but it is still an expenditure) to a refinery (yes, that algae does not produce pure gasoline, it still needs to be refined and refineries cost money, all the old ones would be obsolete, all new ones would have to be built, costing billions if not trillions of dollars) and wait THERE IS MORE, you now have to take that refined fuel and ship it VIA TRUCKS all over America. This is a MASSIVE expenditure that does not need to be! Trucks burn a crap load of gas, and driving millions of barrels of fuel around every day is VERY expensive.
So, you have the choice of totally revamping the oil industry, or only adding on to the current electrical infrastructure. The high voltage lines are only needed to get power from one region to another, from there the current infrastructure will do just fine.
Then there is the whole Vehicle to Grid technology (V2G) where when you plug your car in, it becomes part of the grid, giving and taking energy, which helps at night when less people are driving, but the sun is not out.
Don’t kid yourself, biofuels are still a MASSIVE expenditure and could very well end up costing just as much, if not more than green alternatives. The green alternatives seem to have a higher short term cost, but your biofuels will come with a massive long term price.
And don’t forget, biofuels also require that you get a new car/seriously overhaul your current one. Most cannot put ANY ethanol in their car, let alone E85. A lot of people do not realize the damage that ethanol will do to your engine if it if put in (even if it is just an additive to fossil gas) it burns very “dry” and will damage your valves and valve seats over time. Newer cars do not suffer from this as they were designed to take that into account, but I much doubt anything from early 2000s and older will like ethanol in their gas. My 1985 190E 2.3-16v does not want any ethanol, and I hate how they mix it in now.
I guess to summarize, your are significantly modifying both infrastructures, both will cost a lot of money. Should you skip the intermediate step and just go for what is inevitable now? All common sense says yes, the only ones that say no are dumb politicians (because the the following people) and people who have a vested interest in burning something (oil companies, farmers…) who are so selfish and short sighted they do not care the consequences of their actions.
Jim
I guess because I have been so irate about this topic I need to disclose that I am invested in these green technologies (well, I guess I am vested in using electricity to power a car… I am NOT vested in ANY power generation methods), biofuels/oil would be against my interests. However, I am vested in them because I want them to succeed, it did not happen the other way around.
ALGAE!!! next they will be making fuel from human and animal FECES! Which would be great in the efforts of recycling and definitely environmentally friendly. But this is interesting and would like to know more about it. It would be interesting to see who it was that found this method and what was their initial reason for using algae.
I’m not going to try to jump into this arguement about whether algae is a viable source for fueling our cars, but will say that the different techniques scientists are using to try to power our vehicles is encouraging. It’s neat to see that there are potentially various alternative fuels, and algae is a step in the right direction. I’m not an expert who could debate whether or not algae will be a realistic substitute, but do think that we are heading in the right directions as far as exploring other sources of fuel.
I could see how this could have some potential. I like the idea of algae better than ethanol. I can’t see it driving up the cost of food like ethanol does. Would creating fuel from algae require anything different in certain engines? I know you can run cars on vegetable oil but it is thicker than diesel and requires some modifications to the engine to prevent damage over time.
Algae seems so obvious if you think about it. It is the fastest growing and takes in the most CO2! This would be a great alternative to harsher growing plants like corn and soybeans. I know some ideas are already out there, but I think we should focus on how to make fuel from pre-existing garbage. There is so much of it already that we could use it and bring the world garbage volume down to a minimum! Then, I guess, we would have to resort back to algae and plants when all the garbage is gone!
This is definitely an interesting take on the alternate fuel issue. I would have never thought that algea could be used to produce bio-fuel. Yet, I do have the same skepticism as a few others - we would need a ton of algea to satisfy, as ScottB put it, “our thirst for fuel.” And although at this time this may be a temporary solution, who knows what discoveries could be made in the process of studying its uses and applications. I am constantly intrigued by all of the research that goes into finding these alternative fuels.
So I am with Ryan Rendino on this one, this argument seems to be a little out of my league. Good for the researchers to have found this source. Big oil wouldn’t invest in this if they didn’t see the green potential (read: money). With Honda producing cars that emit water vapor, other auto makers with hydrogen and biofuels, GE turning major resources toward ecoimagination, I think this signals some opportunity for us, and is a great development in both our future and in our way of life.
Man this is awesome! I watched the discovery channel though and they can run cars on H2O, and even compressed air. The cool thing about compressed air though is that we can drive the cars in cities and they will essentially clean the air. The only problem is someone needs to find a way to reasonable put an air compressor on the car. The only way now if if compressed air tanks are put onto the car making it no as efficient. But what would be really cool is if we could colonize other plants. ~John Fodor
This is very new to me and it is awesome..I know that there are some cars out there that can be run on H20/biofuel. But I never thought algae…Algae grows very fast and absorbs significant amount of C02 as well… which means this can be used for fuel…What is next? it seems like cars can be run on basically anything nowdays
I’m wondering how much CO2 will it take to mass grow Algae.
I’ve done some research for another class about biofuels and in an article I found, it said that just preparing the land for biomass plants and processing them to become biofuels will emit more greenhouse gas into the air than the positive effect of the produced biofuel.
Rob Astorino,
I’m not saying that an entire new infrastrucure needs to be created, but it will need to be modified. Don’t get me wrong either, I’m all for the research and development of new and better fuels as well as ways to better utilize the fuels that we are currently using. I’m just saying that you can’t jump on the first boat that drifts by because chances are it has a hole in it.
There is a problem in the gulf of mexico with nitrogen. The nitrogen travels from up here to the gulf, then it grows an algae which sucks all the oxygen out of the water killing fish and other plants and has destroyed fishing communities along the coast. If that same harmful algae was profitable to collect and remove, oh what a good day that would be for the people of New Orleans.
Everyone seems worried that we will run out of oil before we find another source of fuel, but with everyone working together one of the many ideas like this will prove sufficient soon i’m sure.
its really exciting to think that a much better way of fueling cars is coming soon
I really hope that we can find reliable alternatives for real oil. These gas prices are getting rediculous, and as a college student with no income, it’s even worse!