All plankton fuel posts

Spartan2 · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 9:47 am

More about BFS in spanish

If you have trouble reading spanish you can use this tool to translate it!

pstarr · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:53 am

Spartan2 wrote:

The system to produce the revolutionary fuel is based on two natural processes: the photosyntesis and the electromagnetic waves of the solar energy.

you just lost everyone with a grade-school science degree.

EnergyUnlimited · **Joined:** Mon May 15, 2006 12:00 am **Posts:** 3766

If entire idea *can* work, than it should be possible to build worldwide 50 000 plants, 1km2 each, in different locations within 50 or 100 years and keep on repleacing significant percentage of dwindling supplies of oil and even reestablish status quo on the end.
This would eliminate necessity of $15-20 trillion investment "up front".

However I have real difficulties to imagine, how to keep even 1km2 installations in sterile conditions preventing access of competing microorganisms capable to ruin algal/GM-bacterial fuel producing culture. I can imagine, that if production plant got only once contaminated with hostile competing microorganisms, than it would not be possible to clean it up and restart production again.
For the same reason it may not be possible to construct it and start production in the first place.

slick · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:00 am **Posts:** 128

Spartan2 wrote:

Of each one of them, 20% will be greasy matter, as opposed to 0.1% that it has the sunflower.

That solves the evaporation problem right there. Any organism that is 20% fat will float on water, greatly minimising evaporation.

Quote:

Then, using an organic solvent and a photoconverter - which patent is pending -, the oil that constitutes the biofuel is separated from the rest of the elements

Hmm, a solvent? I hope it's not a nasty one.

pstarr · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:05 am

There is something about the internet that attracts cornucopians and other techtopian numbnuts. I think it is the historical association with innovation and new technology that propelled the early infrastructure design and installation But that is no longer the case as the internet it is now a mature media like newspaper inserts or billboards.

So not everything said on the internet is automatically smart. Things you type on your computer keyboard can be dumb also. Like 55,000 square kilometers of gasoline plankton farms

lorenzo · **Joined:** Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:00 am **Posts:** 2233

Surfing the net, I stumbled...

... on this:

Quote:

Biofuels from algae - new breakthrough claimed

[...]
But the investments in this technology have been slow, and large-scale production is not likely in the near future.
This is because of the countless problems and barriers faced by algae systems, as they were highlighted by the research:

* if closed photobioreactors [ill. 1] are used, costs are extremely high (compare it to growing rapeseed or corn in greenhouses - it does not make commercial sense)
* if open pond systems are used [ill. 3] the costs drop dramatically but then the algae cultures become unstable with high drops in biomass productivity, yielding even less usable biomass than an average sugar cane or palm oil plantation
* given the fact that algae need water as a medium, both water requirements and the costs to process the wet algae are high
* genetically modified algae might be more stable, but then the environmental risks are extremely high (pollution and destruction of the biodiversity in water bodies and rivers)

[...]

There is not much in the press dossier that actually indicates whether open pond systems are used. If photobioreactors are the main infrastructural element of the system, then costs are likely to be prohibitive.

We'll have to wait and see what comes from this new algae venture. It might be one of the many that doesn't take off. The company has no website yet.

Source: http://biopact.com/2006/07/biofuels-fro ... rough.html

Does Omar know how much the costs of a photobioreactor infrastructure are?

SoothSayer · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:27 pm

Heineken wrote:

slick wrote:

Heineken wrote:

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aha ahhaha hahah ahah ahahah ahah ahahahah ahahah

That's my official response to the plankton oil story. We'll never hear about it again.

Oooh! Zinger! Lay off the Heineken, Heineken!

Good choices for "ignore," Slick. You've quickly grasped the landscape here.

Hmm - that was not very polite.

A quick scan of the Ignore List in question doesn't reveal any totally evil or troublesome posters .. just people who might happen to disagree with you.

Also, I suspect that the "publication" of Ignore Lists could lead to the creation of "Them" and "Us" groups, thus damaging the forum.

We could end up with two forums in one!

Ignore lists should, IMHO, be primarily reserved to block trouble makers, rabid posters and the like ... not people with views different from yours.

Don't forget that this is a Peak Oil forum, not a political forum, so blocking someone for their Open Discussion views might also block their possibly valuable Peak Oil input.

If some posters are here only for the Open Discussion aspects then perhaps they should think of finding another venue.

chuck6877 · **Joined:** Mon May 16, 2005 12:00 am **Posts:** 497

From:
http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12493

Mike Briggs of the UNH is the one of the leading algae biodiesel researchers. Here is what he says about open algae ponds:

Quote:

Open ponds suck, to put it mildly. Low oil algae or bacteria quickly take over any open pond. If you want to grow high oil algae, you need to either use covered ponds, or photobioreactors. And that is where the key challenge is - being able to build these cheaply.

Algae has to be grown like he says in covered ponds or photobioreactors to prevent contamination. It is an easy assumption that plankton will have to be done in the same manner to prevent contamination.

Plankton will not be some magic bullet. It will take time to build the infrastructure and all the components to make it happen, just like coal to oil, electric cars, etc.

These can be done though. The covered ponds will be done I'm sure. The problem is things take a lot of time to do. TIME. TIME. TIME. That is what matters.

Oil will be replaced in about 20-30 years according to DOE expert Robert Hirsch if we start now. He also says that if moving to alternatives to oil begins when the peak is occuring like now, that extremely hard financial times will result (READ WORSE THAN GREAT DEPRESSION)

If we can survive the near-term peak without destroying the planet with a thermonuclear war, we will come out of the coming Greater depression one day a better people. That is my opinion.

There is definitely a high likelihood things could get really bad, even unimaginably bad before they get better, but they'll eventually get better.

Chuck

Ayame · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 2:21 pm

AHHA I've finally figured out where the human race is going.
we will get our energy from a big vat of plankton
we will grew our meat in a lab
then we can bulldoze the rest of the planet for 20+ billion humans and keep a few funny animals we like in a zoo.
Next stop: planet death star.

lorenzo · **Joined:** Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:00 am **Posts:** 2233

A few years ago, I had a very long discussion with Mike Briggs about algal biofuels, at his biodieselnow forum. The annoying thing with these algae systems is that they need copious amounts of CO2 fed to them. That means: dependence on CO2 emitting power plants.

Obviously, it would be a form of carbon displacement, because the CO2 that's sucked up by the algae from the coal plant, get released in the atmosphere when the algal biodiesel is burned, so at least we have made use of that CO2 from the coal plant to produce energy containing algae, instead of just releasing it straightaway.

But fundamentally, the systems will always have to be coupled to CO2-emittors. That differentiates these algae systems from genuine biofuels and genuine energy crops.

If you were to close all coal plants, you could not grow algae in a photobioreactor. But you could of course start growing energy crops independently from any coal plant. That's a major difference, and it's a stain on the sustainability of algae systems.

Spartan2 · **Posted:** Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:22 pm

pstarr wrote:

Spartan2 wrote:

The system to produce the revolutionary fuel is based on two natural processes: the photosyntesis and the electromagnetic waves of the solar energy.

you just lost everyone with a grade-school science degree.

I don't say that. The article does. I was just trying to be as accurate as possible translating the article.

I should know better...

Heineken · **Posted:** Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:34 am

Spartan2 wrote:

pstarr wrote:

Spartan2 wrote:

The system to produce the revolutionary fuel is based on two natural processes: the photosyntesis and the electromagnetic waves of the solar energy.

you just lost everyone with a grade-school science degree.

I don't say that. The article does. I was just trying to be as accurate as possible translating the article.

I should know better...

That makes it even worse. How do we know the scientists, and the journalists who spread the word about their arcane bioenergy projects, really know what the hell they're doing or saying? By the time it filters down to us common folk, reliability is zero. Meanwhile, I'm tapping my foot waiting to see the miraculous results.

Many scientists' claims are exaggerated in an attempt to keep those research grants alive.

Chicken_Little · **Posted:** Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:42 pm

I'm willing to bet $10 that there will not be 52,000 square kilometers of covered plankton pools worldwide in 10 or even 20 years time.

slick · **Joined:** Tue Jul 18, 2006 12:00 am **Posts:** 128

Chicken_Little wrote:

I'm willing to bet $10 that there will not be 52,000 square kilometres of covered plankton pools worldwide in 10 or even 20 years time.

You'd probably be gobsmacked if you knew how many km[sup]2[/sup] are covered by oil facilities right now.

I think if the technology works and is a viable replacement, you'll see those 52Kkm[sup]2[/sup] covered quicker than you'd believe.

pstarr · **Posted:** Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:38 pm

slick wrote:

You'd probably be gobsmacked if you knew how many km[sup]2[/sup] are covered by oil facilities right now.

couple dozen? hundred.

slick wrote:

I think if the technology works and is a viable replacement, you'll see those 52Kkm[sup]2[/sup] covered quicker than you'd believe.

Slick, how is 23 TRILLION dollars for startup viable?

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