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Will We Need Bio-fuels?
Written by-Zach- 
Fuel prices may be one of the hottest issues of today. I think it basically stems from the fact that Americans don’t really care what goes on as long as the price of gas is low. Ethics and integrity is willingly thrown out the window so long as the price of gas stays affordable.
The truth of it all is that we will never “run out of oil”. How do I know? Supply and demand. If we were in danger of running out of oil it would become extremely expensive. As supply decreases prices increase. So how much are we willing to spend for our personal transportation? That’s what it all comes down to, because the closer we get to running out, the higher the price will get. It’s not going to skyrocket to $20 a gallon in a year though, as the supply gradually decreases, prices will gradually increase. Eventually, we won’t be able to afford it.
So what happens when oil prices creep up beyond our willingness/ability to pay? We find other ideas. Car companies won’t sell cars if people don’t buy gas. So they will be forced to make cars that are affordable or go out of business. You can bet that everyone who uses oil now will quickly find some other form of energy that their technology will run on.
Although we will never run out of oil, we will need alternative fuel sources for when the prices become too much for the average person. What’s the best idea to solve our problems?
Hydrogen? Corn? Nope. Algae.
Algae will be the future of fuel. Algae as a fuel source is incredible. Some types of algae are made up of 50% oil, which can be made into bio-fuel.
Advantages of Algae Fuel
- After the initial building of algae farms it would cost 1/3 of what we spend every year buying oil from other nations.
- The money we spend on algae fuel, is not leaving our country, but actually helping to stimulate our own economy.
- Algae farms could be used to clean up waste streams from humans or animal farms.
- Corn can produce 100 gallons per acre per year whereas algae can produce 4,000 gallons per acre per year.
- Using 80% of the acreage we now use for bio-fuels, we could fuel the entire United States using algae farms.
- The acreage used for algae farms is likely to be desert land, which is unused land anyway.
- A corn crop takes a year to grow, an algae crop can be grown in a couple of days.
Conclusion
As long as we can a.) get oil companies to invest in this or b.) keep oil companies from ruining this, I think that this has great potential for solving some if not all of our nations fuel problems as well as some of our economic problems.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html http://www.greenfuelonline.com/gf_files/algaefuel.pdf http://www.biodieselinvesting.com/biodiesel-archives/2008/03/08/green-star-president-discussing -algae-biodiesel-and-cellulosic-ethanol/ http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/algae5.jpg http://www.cincitdi.com/system/files/2/bioreactor.jpg http://www.allseasonsmoving.net/fuel.jpg
Very interesting!
Wow. One of the most intelligent views on the current oil situation I recently seen! Never heard about making fuel out of algae, though. But if what you say holds, it looks like a viable option
Misha
moree interesting to talk about technolgy suppresion by the oil companies
I think this is an awesome idea but, you know, there is no shortage of ideas about what the next fuel source might be after oil gets too expensive. Whether it’s nuclear, wind, water, or biofuel as you suggest, something will have to come after oil gets too expensive or we will all be in trouble. My favorite idea for the next big fuel is human crap: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2005/07/68127. This has not got a great chance of succeeding as the next big fuel because, although we buy crap all the time, we don’t want to pay for crap that we know is crap. Algae is probably a lot more likely to succeed from a consumer perspective even if it doesn’t, in fact, smell all that much better than crap. But, hey, if someone ever comes up with an economical fuel source that anyone would actually look forward to having processed right next door to their home, that person will be the next gajillionaire. Anyway, great post.
Dude.. have you fallen and bumped you head? Seriously
Hi Jason. Well, now that you mention it, yes, I have fallen and bumped my head on a number of occasions. I have also bumped my head without falling. And, once or twice, I have bumped my head and then fallen. In spite of all these cranial collisions, I am still able to recognize others’ attempts at humor, however feeble and failed those attempts may be.
If I must be entirely serious, algae is a great idea but suffers from a number of flaws. The greatest of these, IMHO, is that it requires that we expend energy creating something for the sake of turning it back into energy. That is, conventional fossil fuel expends resources to discover, extract, and then process a rich, natural fuel. Many biofuel proposals replace the discovery and extraction steps with creation and harvesting steps: we must breed and harvest algae or corn or what-have-you before processing. The benefits of algae over alternatives, as Zach points out, are its low cost, its ease of production, and the fact that it consumes human waste. That’s great. In effect, Zach’s algae proposal would convert human waste into fuel through organic processing using algae as the processing agent. I think such a system has many benefits but, as I said, also suffers from flaws. It requires the expenditure of energy for the creation of an artificial, balanced, and controlled sub-ecosystem for the propagation of algae, and the human waste used to fuel algae production is narrowly defined and must be tightly controlled. In fact, the human waste used for algae production must be entirely organic, and thus would require its own pre-processing.
Here is my, I think very similar, proposal. Eliminate the algae — that’s one energy-expending step removed — and expand the definition of “human waste” to include all manner of organic and inorganic waste. Process this waste using a combination of chemical and nuclear processes to restructure the carbon chains so that you can choose the kind of fuel you want to produce. Do so in a closed system, so that the energy produced fuels the process itself, and in a closed-loop system, so that there are no emissions from the process.
As an example, in Quebec, AMEC PLC is building a plant to turn human waste directly into a chemical analog of diesel gas. (See, e.g., http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/271380 and http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2007/11/18/4666109-cp.html.) The definition of human waste here includes petroleum-based inorganic matter and post-consumer organic matter in addition to human feces (aka crap). The plant in Quebec will process used disposable diapers (plastic, cotton, and all), but this choice was made only for the sake of end-product consistency. Literally, any human waste that is elementally carbon-based — petroleum-based plastics, rubber from tires, paper, clothes, whatever — can be renewed. The output can be utilized with existing technology: it can be pumped directly into existing cars and trucks, can be used to heat homes with conventional burners, and can fuel existing generators. The system is closed — it fuels itself — and is a closed loop — it results in no emissions. We eliminate the algae from Zach’s system while also eliminating the need to develop cars and heating equipment that can utilize algae-based fuel. Meanwhile, we are eliminating landfill material at the same time that we create a fuel that, including the amortized startup cost, is less than half the cost of its fossil-fuel analog.
Seriously.
I’m not sure, Stoogepie, if Jason was directing that at you or me. Either way. Your response was funny, and your diction continues to amuse me.
Oh. I see now. Well, in that case, dude, have you fallen and bumped you head?
Ok so… from now on, we’ll use names. Because this vagueness is getting to me.
Stoogepie, is the question now on me? or back to Jason?
I invite everyone to tell us whether, in fact, they have fallen and bumped you head. But maybe we should take that thread elsewhere, since it is related to algae only insofar as algae must sometimes fall and bump you head, “you” in this case meaning the algae’s little unicellular or plant-like heads. I was referring more to mankind’s eternal struggle with falling and bumping you head. Life Alert addresses the same issue in a similarly rhetorical manner.
Ha ha… Ok well, I don’t remember the last time I bumped me head. Perhaps, that’s the reason I can’t remember.
Fuel from algae would really help the world that is sure to run out of fuel supply in the near future. A lot of companies have started of the research and some like Aquaflow in NZ have been quite successful. It is also better to stick with algae rather than biodiesel(generated from vegetable oil or jatropha) for the latter seems to have raised ethical questions about food scarcity.
Thus the needs of biofuel research and production surely have to be met to secure our future.
By the way, you might want to have a look at the resources we provide for the latest in Bio-Fuels @ our Future of Engineering Blog
Hey Vanessa, thanks for the information. I read your article on algae biofuel and it was pretty interesting, as were many other articles on your site. My favorite was probably the stem-cell roundup, which was really thorough. Thanks for the link! I still have what may best be called a morbid fascination with the idea of somehow turning our landfills into energy, but that may simply signify that you haven’t bumped you head as often as I have.
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