Gas crunch: Jatropha, kudzu, algae and magic to rescue

What about peanuts?

Didn't Jimmy Carter get the prez job because unlike the other oil-rich perps,er prezies, peanuts can be made into a bio-diesel type fuel and so make him and the whole 'hidden govt' that runs the world spanking loads of cash.

Who else likes a spanking and has loads of cash....

Algae

There is great deal of research been done into algae into oil. And it's worth looking at. There are even genetically modified algae that produce huge quantities of oil.

All they need to grow is sunlight and C02.

Of course, growing and processing them in anywhere near commercial quantities will throw up lots of gotchas, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of using waste C02 from a coal plant to feed carbon hungry algae.

If it's possible, it would be a nice solution.

Cheers

Soylent Green

"algae as a cure-all for everything: carbon sequestration, water purification, automotive fuel and energy"

Algae. Yeah, right. Algae. That's what they said Soylent Green was made of.

Green biofuel is people!

Kool-Aid-Fueled Kars

Bravo for a well-administered dose of biofuel herbicide. Whenever the inconvenience of high fuel prices becomes great enough, all of my fellow countrymen with a predisposition to right wing survivalist isolationism or left wing communal agrarian utopianism find common cause in touting miracle cures that are somehow in tune with natures own digestive processes.

Of course, I'm little different, as I've been convinced since I was 13 that the only viable energy strategy involves hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines. Sure, generating hydrogen -- especially from water -- is inefficient, but a big investment in infrastructure will eventually amortize at any price. And vehicles using such a system will need to condense and save their exhaust for reclamation, otherwise Los Angeles really will be the land of perpetual rain like it was in "Blade Runner." Although maybe there's value in venting the exhaust in places like the spreading edge of the Sahara (where there are, what, 5 cars? 6?).

Yep. Those biofuel cranks are totally lining their brains with tinfoil, but we hydrogen cranks, we have the magic wand. Now let's get ourselves a tasty slice of that congressional pork pie!

Wait a minute. Do I see the bacterial crude guys gaining in the rear view mirror?

I think the point was . . .

. . . that the only real solution at the moment is to use less fuel and what we do use to be more efficent about it. All the other proposed schemes are going to make a tiny impression.

re:What about peanuts?

Mr Diesel himself in his very first engine did infact use peanut oil!

And have you noticed that you cant buy ground nut oil in the supermarkets now?

yes oddly peanuts are good! they dont need much processing, but dont they need a reasonable amount of water?

Manhattan Project == Nuclear Fusion!

Isn't a lot of money being spent by many countries on a Nuclear Fusion reactor in France? Isn't that, quite literally, the modern equivalent of the Manhattan Project?

Mine's the one with the "Ready Brek" glow around it.

Forget Algae...

I saw an article on this in Wired, about some Silicon Valley types trying to create some bubble-type hype over this. It all sounds really exciting until they mention that one rather large reaction tank might produce 1 bbl/day under ideal conditions and that it would take a plant the size of Chicago to produce about 25% of the USA's needs.

Just build some nuclear reactors!

Numbers PLEASE

We use around 88million barrels of oil p.a.

.

How many square miles of weeds, solar thermal or other?

How many m3 of water

How many $m invested

What proportion of key non-sustainable minerals needed

per million barrels p.a. of course.

Then we can see if the proponents or the detractors are fanticists!

Peter

Re: algae

Biofuel production is inefficient because plant metabolism is only as efficient as it needs to be to compete with other plants.

I've read (in New Scientist - and sorry! no reference to hand) that the highest yield you can get from biofuel production is equivalent to collecting 500 watts/sq.m. of solar energy. That boils down to under 50% efficiency in the UK and a lot less in sunnier places - and that's without figuring in the costs of refining and distributing the biofuel. Industrial solar energy capture in hot deserts like the US South-Western states or North Africa could do much better than that, thus providing a lot more energy from smaller and hence cheaper installations.

IMO biofuel is a non-starter without a massive drop in energy use and/or equally massive global depopulation.

Florida and Texas

"It does no good to mention that all of, let's say Florida, Texas or a couple other states, would need to be turned over to [Jatropha biodiesel production]."

It doesn't? Sounds like a great idea to me. The whole of Texas and Florida, nothing but weeds.

Indeed, why stop there? How many other states are there?

[NOTE: I'm joking... well, other than about Texas]

@Nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants. Three choices at the moment:

1) Fusion - tech not ready, but hopeful

2) Thorium (or other fissile) reactors - tech not ready, but

3) Existing fission tech - max 100 years fuel left in the ground, assuming no increase in consumption. Plenty in the sea, but extraction tech currently consumes more energy than the fuel can generate

4) Existing breeder fission tech - could extend fuel reserves by a factor of 60, and because of the problems above, is the only realistic nuclear option. Problem - we need to be replacing our old reactors with these, and building new ones now. And we're not, we're mostly sticking with replacement. Even if it only takes a decade or so to start building them, we'll have burnt most of the fuel before they come online.

The waster problem isn't as bad as the greenies say because theoretically, it's containable and can be made safe. Sadly, in the real world, we are proving incapable of doing it properly, and it's turning out to be hideously expensive.

Which leads further into the problem - nuclear is currently slightly cheaper for the end user than renewables. But only if you discount security and waste disposal (shouldered by government and hence the tax payers). Realistically, with peak-fuel approaching and demand increasing, it's going to get more expensive and it's going to do it exponentially. Also bear in mind that current fission is at the end of it's improvement cycle - we aren't going to squeeze much more out of what fuel we have.

So, yes, nuclear could tide us over until we work out fusion or something else, but in reality, it has a supply problem that we aren't doing anything about, it's too expensive, and we're too disorganised to do get together and solve the problems.

It is PART of the solution, but it's not enough.

Renewables aren't the whole answer either, but we can build them now, have them working in weeks or months, not years, and we can guarantee that most of them are going to improve in efficiency and cost, without causing any waste or security problems.

Paris, because she's better with a calculator than most of the nuclear industry

But surely

...AGW is all just a lot of nonsense by environazis and research-grant hungry "scientists" who are all secretly in the pay of Greenpeace. And anyway, I need my car to get to work. Sorry reality, my need to earn a living outweighs the laws of physics. Stuff Boltzman, have you seen the price of a pint these days?

Seriously though, since 1988 I've been getting steadily more and more pessimistic about the chances of humanity doing anything to even /delay the onset/ of the tipping-point changes that are going to wipe out industrial civilisation as we know it today. (Think I'm exaggerating? Try looking up world cities within 20m of current sea-levels. Now bear in mind that the world's ports are also going to be under water, so no more international shipping, and by that time the price of oil will have long made air travel an expensive luxury only available to the super-rich.)

Doomed, I tell you, doomed. Ha ha, only serious.

re. Was there a point to that?

I think the point is that if the US (and by extension the rest of the world) wants to replace oil with some kind of farmed alternative fuel then it's just wishful thinking.

The point is that all the schemes outlined come to nothing when you try to scale them up to match the consumption of the US!

Any scheme that involves using farmland to grow fuel is going to come into conflict with the need to feed people.

The choices seem to be:

1) Use a lot less fuel per person (not popular in the US)

2) Have a lot less people (not popular anywhere really)

3) Magic fuel out of thin air (answers on a postcard please)

Yes, there's a lot of scope for creating electricity from nuclear power and renewables, but this isn't very useful for powering anything made in Detroit. Energy consumption for automotive use is the issue.

The world is going to change radically over the next fifty years (even if climate change isn't real, consumption of fossil fuels is); you can either start now and do it relatively painlessly or you can keep ignoring the issue and wait for the painful energy crunch.

Hombrew nuclear reactor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

If some oddball kid could get the materials to build an almost viable nuclear reactor in his parent's shed, maybe its time that all of us consider cutting our home power and heating bills, with a little box which sits in the corner which we dont talk about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

I've got an idea...

I was reading up on the global warming impact of the concrete industry (which is variously reported as being somewhere between big and huge, 'up to 15% of all man-made CO2 emissions' by some reports).

The concrete industry claim (I think they mean in the best case, the most energy efficient) that 40% of the CO2 from concrete comes from the fuel / energy required to burn the limestone, and 60% comes from the CO2 expelled from the burning limestone itself.

The next claim is that the 60% portion is all reabsorbed (from the atmosphere) into the crumbling concrete over the next few (many?) hundred years so it doesn't really count in the long run.

Anyway, here is the suggestion: A concrete plant is a perfect example of a major point source. So, whatever it costs, sequester the CO2 from all concrete plants. Just do it. The plants can even be relocated to optimum locations and the concrete moved around by train. You can't ask for better than major point sources where you can even adjust the schedule of emissions (unlike power plants). It doesn't get any better.

Now, with this plan, the concrete becomes a NEGATIVE source of CO2 as it reabsorbs CO2 (the 60%) from the atmosphere over the following few (many?) hundred years.

It's 1.6 for the price of 1.0 !!! And on major regional point sources that are already a best-case. And the concrete industry need not complain because if they accept this challenge, then we will throw huge buckets of money at them. They should get rich and deservedly so if they help out in this manner.

It's a no brainer.

Send the Nobel Prize via e-mail.

I think this is the negotiation stage.

The stages of grief:

1. denial

2. anger

3. negotiation

4. sorrow

5. Acceptance.

The world is running short of cheap fossil energy, not just oil. No other energy source has the huge energy return on energy invested that a traditional oil well has. Modern industrial society is designed around cheap plentiful fossil energy. There is no plan B. Not even nuclear can make up the shortfall we are facing.

The global financial model is built on the assumption of ever increasing amounts of cheap fossil energy. That is even more insane. Even if we could make marginal schemes like algal biofuels work, we could never catch up with the demands of exponentially growing global GDP.

The global economy is going to contract in proportion to the global energy supply. We are profligate with energy, we can adapt to a low energy existence if we try, but it will not much look like industrial society. We have very little time left.

@ @Nuclear power plants

I think you are being a little too positive about nuclear power ;)

"2) Thorium (or other fissile) reactors - tech not ready, but"

I thought the usefulness of Thorium is that it can be bred into U233 (would be happy to be corrected on this) that leads on to...

"4) Existing breeder fission tech - could extend fuel reserves by a factor of 60, and because of the problems above, is the only realistic nuclear option."

The problem is that breeder fission tech has proved not to be a realistic nuclear option. It seems that expermental breeder reactors are being closed down and research halted in most places with only the French Phenix and Japanese Monju (when not on fire) experimental sites still functional. The Super Phenix is the only example of a commercial size reactor and that was unable to demonstrate anything like the theoretical 1.3 breed ratio, even during the brief intervals when it was operating at capacity. In fact they appeared to have major problems getting above 1. Personally, I find this disappointing as fast breeder tech certainly had a much brighter future than LWR - if they could have got it to work

Poor reporting.

You're wrong about algae.

Like bacteria, and unlike the higher plants that you rightly disdain as hopeless, algae grow exponentially until they run out of a critical resource. Mostly what they need is CO2 (from the atmosphere) and sunlight (the more the better). And some strains are 80% oil when you squash them - oil that's very easy to process into diesel fuel.

Algae can be grown both in saltwater (no shortage in the oceans) or in polluted freshwater (which they detoxify as they grow). They don't need much in the way of other nutrients, beyond having what's left after the oil is squished out of them returned to the pond for recycling into more algae. It's bio-solar power in its purest form, and (usefully for vehicles) it generates oil rather than electricity.

Yes, it would take a vast amount of land covered in ponds to supply our needs. No, that wouldn't be agricultural land. It would be barren desert. There's no shortage of desert. Much of it adjacent to oceans, for the water supply.

Algae are one of the three renewable technologies that could actually scale up to a big enough scale, the others being solar-thermal and solar-PV. All can make good use of desert land.

WTF?

What was that all about? Usually articles on El Reg are quite good, but that was just a directionless rant!

Obviously, Yanks need to learn to drive a lot less. Higher fuel prices will do that. Clearly, collecting weeds and squashing them to get the grease isn't going to directly replace all fossils fuels. Yes, corn-to-ethanol is just another Dubya tax-handout to his pals.

What exactly did that article say that wasn't already blindingly obvious?

Do you lot have editors?

@Solution

"The "nuclear waste" problem is a straw man - it can be contained and disposed of pretty safely."

Huh? Disposed of? You mean left in a swimming pool (high/intermediate level) or dumped in a hole in the ground and hoping no one finds it accidentally (low level).

Roughly every 20 years since the 40's, the nuclear industry has claimed that the waste problem will be solved within 20 years - still waiting. Though sub-critical reactors look hopeful for annihalation of the nastiest stuff, what is being done to properly dispose of the mountains of low level waste?

"Anything you do creates waste - at least we track and are careful to dispose of or store nuclear waste properly"

Tracked properly? So how come fuel reprocessing plants carry a significant inventory of missing material, ie stuff that supposedly went in to a process but never came out?

Stored properly? Most nuclear waste from civilian power is in temporary storage while awaiting permanent storage to be found some time in the future. In fact, in the US, all spent fuel is still stored in cooling ponds at the reactor sites.

So what about hard numbers?

So if a group comes forward and says "we estimate we can produce 10,000 barrels a day via algae" - are you calling them liars, incompetent, what?

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826595.900-algae-oil-promises-truly-green-fuel.html

Or are you simply suggesting that because an alternative energy source cannot completely subsume current need, it is not worth pursuing?

This was a strange article.

(On the bright side, I had been under the impression that kudzu was brought to the States years ago nefarious Europeans (obviously looking to have some fun watching the US transform into one giant green carpet) - but sparked by this article to look it up in wikipedia - I now know it's the Asians that are to blame for the introduction of this noxious botanical menace to the glorious South ;)

Nuclear and Solar Power Satellites

Nuclear fission/fusion is a reasonable short term solution, however more energy is needed (huggies advocating "do less with less" should go live in a dank cave somehwere). We are a bit limited energy wise on the surface of this mudball, so what is needed is for the first world to start harvesting all that solar energy in space that is 'going to waste'.

Even better, America/Europe can do this, but the oil cartels so far can't. Well, we could if there was any national spine anywhere to be found....

Even a simple expedient of intensifying the insolation at specific areas to enhance algae growth is possible-- and cheap to orbit as a distributed constellation. We need to start somewhere and stop whining.

@ Soylent Green

Liposuction to the rescue!! If we could "harvest" 10 pounds of fat from half the population of the United States per year, that would be.... um... lots. Convert that to biodiesel and we have a renewable source of fuel that will never run out.

And now all those people who insist on driving their Hummer to their local MickeyD can feel good about themselves as they are actually "fueling the economy".

Thanks for remembering me, Reg

Hey, I just want to say thanks for remembering that I commented on this very issue -- biofuels from algae -- a few months back. Glad to see you're all for it, in your usual "I don't understand this so I'll slag it off" manner.

Cheers. Let me know when you need some more stories. Or -- tell you what -- just do what I do and learn about the technology. It'll do you good.

It's too late already

For those that are posting here thinking that the alternatives will save all the expensive real estate in low lying places from flooding, it's wake up time! It's already too late!

The ice caps melt - release trapped CO2, permafrost melts - releases CO2 and trapped Methane, desertification no carbon absorption, sea temperature change - release to deep bound Methane, this chain reaction has started and cannot be stopped!

Biggest worry - we have a non sustainable water consumption increase, we will be going to war over water in the near future!

Paris because she will always have bottled water at hand.