Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth was covered with shallow oceans filled with algae and other simple critters(=wezens).
As landmasses shifted and grew, water was displaced, leaving thick masses of algal residue that were eventually buried, compressed, and heated, yielding oil.
In 1859, Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville, PA.
The world began to use oil for everything, and since then has consumed over a trillion barrels. With such furious consumption, world oil reserves are set to dwindle.
We're depleting in less than 300 years what took hundreds of millions of years to form.
Biofuels are a form of solar energy. Because crops convert solar energy into chemical energy in a process called photosynthesis.
It's this chemical energy, in the form of oils, that we need to produce biofuels.
In fact, algae does this so well that up to 50% of its body weight can be fat, or the oil needed to make biodiesel.
That makes algae the highest yielding feedstock for biodiesel, producing 24 times more oil per acre, on average, than the next leading feedstock: palm oil at 635 gallons/acre/year.
It is possible to use human sewage and wastewater from agricultural endeavors to enhance the growth of algae.
In fact, when done right, algae can double and even triple overnight with the addition of these fertilizers.
Compare that to the five-month growing season for soy or canola!
Plus, as algae grows it absorbs CO2 from the air.
In addition, fertilizer for other food crops can be produced by using the leftover nutrients that aren't used to make the biofuel.Top
Na de waterstofhype 2006 en ethanolboom 2007 wordt 2008 het jaar van de algen.
ASP (Aquatic Species Program) is een onderzoeksprogram om brandstof te winnen uit algen in 1978 door president Jimmy Carter gestart als gevolg van de Golfcrisis.
Algen hebben voor hun groei nodig, zonlicht, CO2 en water nodig.
Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga’s body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.
There are more than 100,000 strains of algae, with differing ratios of three main types of molecule: oils, carbohydrates and protein. Strains of algae high in carbohydrates as well as oils produce starches that can be separated and fermented into ethanol; the remaining proteins can be turned into animal grains. GreenFuel hopes its pilot plant will see initial yields of 8000 gallons of biodiesel and 5000 gallons of ethanol per acre of algae.
27-6-2008
One of the main advantages of biofuels is that the plants used to make the fuels need lots of CO2 to grow, potentially making it possible for the aviation industry to achieve true carbon-neutrality.
Not only does ethanol not contain enough energy per unit volume to be suitable as an aviation fuel, but growing enough corn or soybeans to power all the world's airliners would require an area just about the size of the United States, according to Boeing. Nor does ethanol have suitable boiling and freezing points for aviation use.
Experts believe "second-generation biofuels" derived from the wood and nuts of plants such as Jatropha curcas (Barbados Nut) and babassu, which grow strongly in arid areas unsuitable as arable land and which (in jatropha's case) are poisonous anyway, represent a good interim solution.
However, there is a problem: Although their oils offer much higher energy content and much better boiling/freezing-temperature characteristics than ethanol, these plants wouldn't yield enough oil per hectare to be able to serve the aviation industry's fuel requirements unless, again, very large areas were given over to their cultivation.
Algae a likely long-term answer
There is broad consensus throughout the industry that, longer-term, algae represent the optimum solution to aviation's fuel needs. A number of basic problems need to be solved, such as ensuring enough light gets to every part of an algae tank to enable all the cells to grow properly; and drying algae cells sufficiently to enable the oil they contain to be extracted and cracked into jet fuel.
But Boeing and Airbus are confident these problems can be solved - and the benefits that algae offers as a "third-generation biofuel" are immense. Algae can produce an oil yield 15 times that of second-generation biofuel plants: The world's entire airliner fleet could be powered from a cultivated area just the size of West Virginia, or Belgium, says Boeing.
Additionally, because algae can be grown in tanks anywhere, biofuel-producing algae farms could be sited next to facilities producing jet fuel from coal or natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch process. These "coal-to-liquid" or "gas-to-liquid" processes generate large amounts of CO2 from fossil fuels, making them unsuitable as sustainable fuel sources. However, if the CO2 they generate is piped off and used to grow algae in nearby farms, the two forms of fuel production together could create an efficient, carbon-neutral symbiosis for jet fuel production.
2-7-2008
What's more, the U.S. has a serious energy security problem. We consume 20.7 million barrels per day (bpd), while importing 12.4 million bpd—leaving us 60% dependent on petroleum imports.
And while crop-based biofuels initially offered a glimpse of relief, their contribution to rising fuel prices (even though drought, lower yields and higher demand are the main causes) has led first generation biofuels to essentially be labeled the fourth member of the Axis of Evil.
But what most don't realize is that rising food prices also hurt crop-based biofuels producers, who obviously have to pay higher prices for their feedstocks like corn and soy oil. Soy oil prices, one of biodiesel refiners' favorite feedstocks, have risen more than 35% in the past six months.
Plus, the algae growth cycle can actually be used as a carbon sequestration mechanism because carbon dioxide is the primary input required by algae to grow. In fact, if the U.S. were to derive all its diesel from algae (60 bgy), the growth of that algae could displace 56% of U.S. power plant emissions.
Growing algae is also very water efficient. Producing enough to make 60 bgy of biodiesel could require as little as 16 trillion gallons of water. To put that in perspective, we use 4,000 trillion gallons of water per year to grow corn in the U.S.
The best part is, algae can grow in brackish, saline and wastewater, further reducing the amount of freshwater needed to grow it. And the nutrients in wastewater actually feed the algae, making it possible to cultivate at any one of the 5,100 wastewater treatment facilities nationwide.
UHN onderzocht (2004): extracting oil from mustard seed, and turning the oil into biodiesel. It grows well in Minnesota's climate, yields a good amount of oil per acre, and after extracting the oil, the mustard meal remaining makes an excellent organic pesticide.