Save the world, run your car on sewage ...


Save the world, run your car on sewage ...
A e-mail from Mike Smith on another source of fuel

A well written article at:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

covers both U.New Hampshire work and work done by the U.S. Government on
making biodiesel from algae.

They got truly astounding yields (from 20 to 50 TONS / acre of algae at
about 50%+ oil content). Yes, oil content. Algae naturally have lots
of oil in them. No cellulosic conversion or fermentation needed.

The buggers are raised in salt water and fed sewage... Total land area
to replace all U.S. motor fuel needs (diesel and gasoline equiv.) is
about 150 miles by 100 miles. Absolutely dinky in comparison to any
other system I've seen anywhere. Doesn't need 'farmland'. It uses any
crap dirt with sun and sewage.

Texas alone is 900 miles wide. Call it a 17 mile wide stripe across
Texas. Heck, I bet that's less than they use to park their Trucks!
(Texas hyperbole ;-) Take a 150 x 100 mile chunk of West of the Pecos
Texas, and nobody could even find it with a map... This would be a
stripe about 5 miles wide across the whole nation. Call it 7.5 miles x
the Gulf of Mexico coast (with a bit of Florida atlantic ocean side).
Heck, you could drop the whole thing on Bakersfield and improve the
esthetics of the place too ;-)

Or think of it as a 30 x 10 mile facility in each state (though R.Island
might need to borrow a bit of land from Texas ...) And THAT is all
before the process is fully optimized or any genetic enhancement is done
to the algae. Algae are grown in open "raceways", not fancy closed
systems. Think "sewage pond" or doughboy pool ... not exactly high tech
or optimal sealed glass systems.

BTW, you don't need to be near the coast to do this, I'm just using that
example. There are algae that don't need salt water. The salt water
ones are preferred because folks like to drink the fresh water, and we
have unlimited salt water available. The most likely place to put this
"raceway" is next to sewage plants of major cities or large cattle feed
lots (like all the pig factories in Georgia and the Carolinas that are
destroying waterways with massive pig poo runoff pollution...)

Minor side bar (unrelated): I stumbled on several dozen sites wanting
to use Hemp (i.e. mary jane) for biomass fuel production. They sited
"10 tons / acre in 3 to 4 months" for production. If grown in warm
places with multiple crops / year that starts to be pretty good too,
though Eucalyptus and Algae still beat it in many cases. On the other
hand, it takes no special facilities other than dirt, it grows anywhere
and takes zero special skills to grow and harvest (heck, even stoners
can do it ;-0 ) Also, http://www.iogen.ca is a company that has
efficient enzymatic cellulose to ethanol systems. Don't let the stoners
find out though, "high and drunk" is not a good combination ;-)

So, the bottom line is that a zero net carbon system is: a) relatively
easy to do. b) takes relatively little land. c) doesn't need any
particular leap of technology. d) is already available in several
forms and technologies using many different species and can be
implemented anywhere from the Tropics to the Arctic Circle, though warm
is better. e) Is economically competitive at about present oil prices
and with little other than someone willing to do it and buy the
product. THE major reason it isn't done is because of the fear that
OPEC will cut oil prices to $25 /bbl and put you out of business. Now
that OPEC is pumping at near capacity and oil is staying at $60+ /bbl,
someone may finally start doing some of this.

Mikey

Posted: Wed - December 21, 2005 at 07:32 AM      

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