Post by patti on Oct 25, 2008 16:39:27 GMT -5
I was reading the Austin American Statesman this evening and I saw this story and my first thought was how convenient. We could just grind up the lawyers.
I have a pond/tank with lots of scum on it. After living here for a few years and trying to figure out what to call my very small body of water. I finally decided since the pond had all of this scum on it all summer. I called it Lawyer Lake
Patti
ENERGY
Pond scum could be fuel of the future
University of Texas and other area researchers are on forefront of studying promising biofuel.
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, October 25, 2008
With oil costs relatively high and ethanol production linked to rising food costs, University of Texas researchers have turned their attention to a promising alternative fuel source: pond scum.
Biologists and engineers have teamed with private companies, the state government and U.S. government on a batch of projects that are examining ways to cultivate algae, break open their oil-rich cells, and ultimately develop a new kind of biofuel.
Researchers at UT, home to the largest collection of algae in the world, are vying for a piece of a Defense Department research project that nudges scientists to find fuel alternatives for its jet airplanes from nothing more glamorous than algae. The department said it has not chosen who will get the research grants, but UT researchers say the federal government plans to spend at least $50 million on the project.
Champions of algae say the simple, plant-like organisms are well suited to solve some pressing energy problems. The energy potential, per acre, is higher than corn. And unlike other biofuel crops, algae do not require freshwater, since they can thrive on brackish, salt or untreated waste water. And they consume vast amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to proliferate.
The technology does have drawbacks: Biodiesel from algae has never been consistently produced in high volume, and extracting the oil — which is then converted to biodiesel — can be technically difficult and expensive. Still, scientists are optimistic.
"The potential for algae is absolutely enormous, simply because of the yields," said Al Darzins, who heads the algae research program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a research and development group within the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Agency, better known as Darpa, had challenged scientists to find an affordable surrogate for high grade jet fuel. The fuel had to be produced from "agricultural or aquacultural crops that are non-competitive with food material" and dependable enough not to freeze at 50,000 feet or boil on a tarmac in Iraq, according to Michael Webber, associate director of UT's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.
The algae project is part of a wider effort in Texas, home of the now-spent Spindletop oilfield, to make algae the next great source of fuel. Success may be a half-dozen years away, researchers estimate, but the state has had its stops and starts. On the Gulf Coast, a company called PetroSun had said it would open a farm in Rio Hondo by April of this year that would yield 4.4 million gallons of so-called algal oil a year, but the company is still working on getting permits. In the El Paso area, Valcent Products Inc. has won media attention as it builds a commercial-scale pilot plant to grow algae near some of its production facilities in Juarez. And over the summer, Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc., a Houston-based company, collaborating with the City of Austin and some of the University of Texas scientists, won a $250,000 state grant to study algae at Austin's Hornsby Bend facility.
Globally, companies from the Netherlands to China have been experimenting with turning algae into biofuels as they hope to find the next great fuel source. UT already has a head start on algae research.
The university's library of algae has more than 3,000 strains of the simple, plant-like organisms growing in test-tubes and flasks, with some of the strains dating to a Czechoslovakian collection that began in the 1920s.
Storing algae at UT
In laboratories in the campus' biology building, algae are stored in neatly shelved glass flasks. Some, like Volvox, appear to be exquisite, tiny bubbles; others look like small knots of vegetation. Refrigerators keep arctic strains cold, and red algae, which grows deep in the ocean, are dimly lit. Some cultures are preserved in liquid nitrogen. Machines shake test-tubes and pump in enriched carbon dioxide as researchers examine how the algae perform in different conditions.
Known as UTEX The Culture Collection of Algae, it is a sort of algae clearinghouse. State agencies, private companies, and even individuals ship algae here to study things such as DNA and toxicity. Historically, the collection has been used to test algae as fish food or for water quality experiments. Scientists have studied how pollution in the water, largely from fertilizer flushed into creeks, rivers and bays, has led to toxic algae blooms.
But during the last couple of years, the most prevalent use has been studies relating to biofuels production, said Jerry Brand, who oversees the collection.
Algae yield at least five times as much fuel per acre as corn. And they don't need fertilizers, which can ultimately be flushed into rivers and bays and kill off fish, said David Nobles, a microbiologist who studies algae at UT.
"All algae need is lots of sunlight, bad water and carbon dioxide," says Webber, "And that's what we've got at Texas.
"I keep waiting for the gotcha, but I haven't seen it yet," Webber said. "Pond scum might save the day."
Experiments under way
On a slope at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant in East Austin, Norm Whitton has laid out "closed algae ponds," what might best be described as transparent air mattresses, that are filled with bubbling green water. Whitton, the chief executive officer of Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc., and a small crew are experimenting with pumping sewage water and carbon dioxide into the closed ponds to grow algae. Since 2006, they have collaborated with University of Texas professors to experiment on at least 40 strains.
In a shoestring operation that aims to grow algae and commercially harvest oil, his company uses a Cuisinart to gnash fertilizer for the algae, a centrifuge he bought on eBay for $50 to separate algae from water, a food dehydrator to dry the plant out and a conventional toaster oven to bake the samples.
"It's not splashy, and it's not flashy," said Whitton, whose company had invested $200,000 in research and patent applications and $100,000 in equipment on a third of an acre before the state announced he had won the state grant. "We want to increase our yield and reduce our capital costs."
The object is to squeeze oil out of the algae, or what Whitton calls "getting the goodies out."
Whitton envisions covering thousands of acres in Central Texas with algae ponds, enough to pump out hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day.
The algae-to-fuel process sounds simple enough on paper: Scientists can scoop the algae from ponds, concentrate it into a paste and tease out— either by squeezing or with solvents — a greenish oil, stocked with chlorophyll and other pigments. After some filtering of the oil, they can deliver a clear, vegetable oil-looking product to biodiesel producers. That's the plan, at least.
The cost of harvesting algae
Besides finding the right strain of algae, the challenge for UT scientists is separating algae from oil. Bob Hebner, the director of UT's Center for Electromechanics, an energy research lab, said still unpublished results thus far have been positive. Hebner's research group has received at least $1 million in research funding and has patents pending and expects to participate in the Darpa project.
Darzins said algae producers could harvest about 1,000 gallons of biodiesel from an acre of algae and engineering improvements and refinements in the strains of algae used could make a "reachable (production) goal of 5,000 to 6,000 gallons a year." In Texas, corn producers can get 340 to 450 gallons of ethanol out of an acre of corn, depending on growing conditions, said David Gibson, executive vice president of the Corn Producers Association of Texas.
The difference becomes more stark when calculating the amount of energy per gallon of fuel. A gallon of ethanol has two-thirds the energy content of a gallon of algae-based biodiesel , according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In other words, if one car filled up on ethanol and the other filled up on algae biodiesel, the first car would go two-thirds the distance of the second.
Despite all the optimism about algae's potential as another fuel source, it remains unproven on a commercial scale. While algae's oil yield appears to be far higher than that of corn, Nobles said, "we know how to grow corn, and it's a well established crop."
The oil-rich varieties of algae, on the other hand, have "never been demonstrated to grow in a high volume, consistently," said Brand.
A gallon of ethanol costs between $2 to $2.25 to produce, depending on the price of corn and natural gas, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group.
Capital costs to build algae ponds and invest in the technology to harvest oil make the cost of a gallon of algae biodiesel between $9 to $18 to produce, Darzins said.
Darzins said running a closed system, in greenhouses similar to the ones Sunrise Ridge is experimenting with, could be at least double that.
Whitton said the more expensive enclosures may be necessary.
"In an open pond we were good at growing things, but not the algae we wanted," Whitton said. "We grew toads and worms and bugs
I have a pond/tank with lots of scum on it. After living here for a few years and trying to figure out what to call my very small body of water. I finally decided since the pond had all of this scum on it all summer. I called it Lawyer Lake
Patti
ENERGY
Pond scum could be fuel of the future
University of Texas and other area researchers are on forefront of studying promising biofuel.
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, October 25, 2008
With oil costs relatively high and ethanol production linked to rising food costs, University of Texas researchers have turned their attention to a promising alternative fuel source: pond scum.
Biologists and engineers have teamed with private companies, the state government and U.S. government on a batch of projects that are examining ways to cultivate algae, break open their oil-rich cells, and ultimately develop a new kind of biofuel.
Researchers at UT, home to the largest collection of algae in the world, are vying for a piece of a Defense Department research project that nudges scientists to find fuel alternatives for its jet airplanes from nothing more glamorous than algae. The department said it has not chosen who will get the research grants, but UT researchers say the federal government plans to spend at least $50 million on the project.
Champions of algae say the simple, plant-like organisms are well suited to solve some pressing energy problems. The energy potential, per acre, is higher than corn. And unlike other biofuel crops, algae do not require freshwater, since they can thrive on brackish, salt or untreated waste water. And they consume vast amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to proliferate.
The technology does have drawbacks: Biodiesel from algae has never been consistently produced in high volume, and extracting the oil — which is then converted to biodiesel — can be technically difficult and expensive. Still, scientists are optimistic.
"The potential for algae is absolutely enormous, simply because of the yields," said Al Darzins, who heads the algae research program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a research and development group within the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Agency, better known as Darpa, had challenged scientists to find an affordable surrogate for high grade jet fuel. The fuel had to be produced from "agricultural or aquacultural crops that are non-competitive with food material" and dependable enough not to freeze at 50,000 feet or boil on a tarmac in Iraq, according to Michael Webber, associate director of UT's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.
The algae project is part of a wider effort in Texas, home of the now-spent Spindletop oilfield, to make algae the next great source of fuel. Success may be a half-dozen years away, researchers estimate, but the state has had its stops and starts. On the Gulf Coast, a company called PetroSun had said it would open a farm in Rio Hondo by April of this year that would yield 4.4 million gallons of so-called algal oil a year, but the company is still working on getting permits. In the El Paso area, Valcent Products Inc. has won media attention as it builds a commercial-scale pilot plant to grow algae near some of its production facilities in Juarez. And over the summer, Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc., a Houston-based company, collaborating with the City of Austin and some of the University of Texas scientists, won a $250,000 state grant to study algae at Austin's Hornsby Bend facility.
Globally, companies from the Netherlands to China have been experimenting with turning algae into biofuels as they hope to find the next great fuel source. UT already has a head start on algae research.
The university's library of algae has more than 3,000 strains of the simple, plant-like organisms growing in test-tubes and flasks, with some of the strains dating to a Czechoslovakian collection that began in the 1920s.
Storing algae at UT
In laboratories in the campus' biology building, algae are stored in neatly shelved glass flasks. Some, like Volvox, appear to be exquisite, tiny bubbles; others look like small knots of vegetation. Refrigerators keep arctic strains cold, and red algae, which grows deep in the ocean, are dimly lit. Some cultures are preserved in liquid nitrogen. Machines shake test-tubes and pump in enriched carbon dioxide as researchers examine how the algae perform in different conditions.
Known as UTEX The Culture Collection of Algae, it is a sort of algae clearinghouse. State agencies, private companies, and even individuals ship algae here to study things such as DNA and toxicity. Historically, the collection has been used to test algae as fish food or for water quality experiments. Scientists have studied how pollution in the water, largely from fertilizer flushed into creeks, rivers and bays, has led to toxic algae blooms.
But during the last couple of years, the most prevalent use has been studies relating to biofuels production, said Jerry Brand, who oversees the collection.
Algae yield at least five times as much fuel per acre as corn. And they don't need fertilizers, which can ultimately be flushed into rivers and bays and kill off fish, said David Nobles, a microbiologist who studies algae at UT.
"All algae need is lots of sunlight, bad water and carbon dioxide," says Webber, "And that's what we've got at Texas.
"I keep waiting for the gotcha, but I haven't seen it yet," Webber said. "Pond scum might save the day."
Experiments under way
On a slope at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant in East Austin, Norm Whitton has laid out "closed algae ponds," what might best be described as transparent air mattresses, that are filled with bubbling green water. Whitton, the chief executive officer of Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc., and a small crew are experimenting with pumping sewage water and carbon dioxide into the closed ponds to grow algae. Since 2006, they have collaborated with University of Texas professors to experiment on at least 40 strains.
In a shoestring operation that aims to grow algae and commercially harvest oil, his company uses a Cuisinart to gnash fertilizer for the algae, a centrifuge he bought on eBay for $50 to separate algae from water, a food dehydrator to dry the plant out and a conventional toaster oven to bake the samples.
"It's not splashy, and it's not flashy," said Whitton, whose company had invested $200,000 in research and patent applications and $100,000 in equipment on a third of an acre before the state announced he had won the state grant. "We want to increase our yield and reduce our capital costs."
The object is to squeeze oil out of the algae, or what Whitton calls "getting the goodies out."
Whitton envisions covering thousands of acres in Central Texas with algae ponds, enough to pump out hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day.
The algae-to-fuel process sounds simple enough on paper: Scientists can scoop the algae from ponds, concentrate it into a paste and tease out— either by squeezing or with solvents — a greenish oil, stocked with chlorophyll and other pigments. After some filtering of the oil, they can deliver a clear, vegetable oil-looking product to biodiesel producers. That's the plan, at least.
The cost of harvesting algae
Besides finding the right strain of algae, the challenge for UT scientists is separating algae from oil. Bob Hebner, the director of UT's Center for Electromechanics, an energy research lab, said still unpublished results thus far have been positive. Hebner's research group has received at least $1 million in research funding and has patents pending and expects to participate in the Darpa project.
Darzins said algae producers could harvest about 1,000 gallons of biodiesel from an acre of algae and engineering improvements and refinements in the strains of algae used could make a "reachable (production) goal of 5,000 to 6,000 gallons a year." In Texas, corn producers can get 340 to 450 gallons of ethanol out of an acre of corn, depending on growing conditions, said David Gibson, executive vice president of the Corn Producers Association of Texas.
The difference becomes more stark when calculating the amount of energy per gallon of fuel. A gallon of ethanol has two-thirds the energy content of a gallon of algae-based biodiesel , according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In other words, if one car filled up on ethanol and the other filled up on algae biodiesel, the first car would go two-thirds the distance of the second.
Despite all the optimism about algae's potential as another fuel source, it remains unproven on a commercial scale. While algae's oil yield appears to be far higher than that of corn, Nobles said, "we know how to grow corn, and it's a well established crop."
The oil-rich varieties of algae, on the other hand, have "never been demonstrated to grow in a high volume, consistently," said Brand.
A gallon of ethanol costs between $2 to $2.25 to produce, depending on the price of corn and natural gas, said Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group.
Capital costs to build algae ponds and invest in the technology to harvest oil make the cost of a gallon of algae biodiesel between $9 to $18 to produce, Darzins said.
Darzins said running a closed system, in greenhouses similar to the ones Sunrise Ridge is experimenting with, could be at least double that.
Whitton said the more expensive enclosures may be necessary.
"In an open pond we were good at growing things, but not the algae we wanted," Whitton said. "We grew toads and worms and bugs