BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

More on biodiesel from algae in a press release from Global Green Solutions and an article in the El Paso Times:

Glen Kertz thinks algae-filled plastic bags can be one solution to the world's thirst for fuel.

Kertz, a plant physiologist, developed a system using 10-foot-long water-filled plastic bags suspended in a greenhouse-like setting in the desert to grow algae, from which vegetable oil can be extracted to produce biodiesel.

"We expect to produce 100,000 gallons (of vegetable oil) per acre per year," which is a much higher yield than soybeans and other plants being used for biofuel, Kertz said Wednesday. He was showing off his patented Vertigro algae-growing system to news media, El Paso city officials and others at his company's 6.2-acre research facility in the Upper Valley.

"We think we can be cost-competitive with fossil fuels. That's our driving goal," he said.

Kertz, 54, is president and CEO of Valcent Products Inc., a publicly traded company, which he and investors formed about three years ago, and which now has most of its operations in the El Paso area.

It's developing the Vertigro system in a joint venture with Global Green Solutions, a 3-year-old publicly traded company with offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, the United States and Europe.

Kertz's algae-growing system "is so simple, it's ingenious," said Doug Frater, 55, president and CEO of Global Green, which has invested more than $3 million in the Vertigro test facility in Anthony, Texas, which includes a high-tech algae laboratory

READ More

digg_url = 'http://www.cincitdi.com/valcent-products-and-global-green-solutions%3A-algae-fuel'; digg_title = "Valcent Products and Global Green Solutions: algae for fuel"; digg_bodytext = "More on biodiesel from algae in a press release from Global Green Solutions and an article in the El Paso Times:\r\n\r\n\r\nGlen Kertz thinks algae-filled plastic bags can be one solution to the world\'s thirst for fuel.\r\nKertz, a plant physiologist, developed a system using 10-foot-long water-filled plastic bags suspended in a greenhouse-like setting in the desert to grow algae, from which vegetable oil can be extracted to produce biodiesel."; digg_skin = 'compact';

If they come even close to 100,000 gallons per acre per year that would be a major breakthrough. I truly hope they succeed.

Come to think of it, if they only produce 10,000 to 20,000 gal/acre/yr that would still be quite the achievement.

 

Physics says that it is impossible to produce more than 15K gal/acre/year of agoil using natural light.  Therefore, either

a= they are not using natural light. (...and see the conversations froggy vs me re: costs on this.  I don't agree with froggy that it's impossible for artificial lighting to be cost effective, but I do agree that it is going to be far harder to keep economically sane than many might naively think.)

b= their projection is wrong. (whether they are lying or simply mistaken is another matter.)

Voltaire:

I don't agree with froggy that it's impossible for artificial lighting to be cost effective, but I do agree that it is going to be far harder to keep economically sane than many might naively think.)

Funny how you disbelieve the math for even $.01/kwh price of 1gal of algoil under artificial lighting...  almost a 'cult-ish' belief... Is the oil addiction so strong that it defy's simple math?

Voltaire:

Physics says that it is impossible to produce more than 15K gal/acre/year of agoil using natural light.  Therefore, either

a= they are not using natural light. (...and see the conversations froggy vs me re: costs on this.  I don't agree with froggy that it's impossible for artificial lighting to be cost effective, but I do agree that it is going to be far harder to keep economically sane than many might naively think.)

b= their projection is wrong. (whether they are lying or simply mistaken is another matter.)

Wait a minute!

Voltaire, Weren't you the one that said going vertical was probably the solution to the land area/ lighted surface limitation problem? I'm pretty sure I remember that from another posting/argument between you and froggy.

 

Doctor:

Wait a minute!

Voltaire, Weren't you the one that said going vertical was probably the solution to the land area/ lighted surface limitation problem? I'm pretty sure I remember that from another posting/argument between you and froggy.

That was before he realized that there is only 1 sun that shines from 1 direction.

Doctor:

Voltaire:

Physics says that it is impossible to produce more than 15K gal/acre/year of agoil using natural light.  Therefore, either

a= they are not using natural light. (...and see the conversations froggy vs me re: costs on this.  I don't agree with froggy that it's impossible for artificial lighting to be cost effective, but I do agree that it is going to be far harder to keep economically sane than many might naively think.)

b= their projection is wrong. (whether they are lying or simply mistaken is another matter.)

Wait a minute!

Voltaire, Weren't you the one that said going vertical was probably the solution to the land area/ lighted surface limitation problem? I'm pretty sure I remember that from another posting/argument between you and froggy.

1= You have to go VERY vertical (think skyscrappers).

2= You need to use supplemental artificial energy + light of some form.

Remember that design was for 20+ story skyscrapper greenhouses using Nukes and/or PV farms to provide power for extra light beyond natural as well as other services (H+V+AC+fluid pumping+etc), .

...and froggy and I still disagree about the utility and cost effectiveness of supplemental light.  I'm still convinced the only way we can consistently achieve peak or close to peak productivity regardless of external environmental conditions is going to require an enclosed and artificial environment.  In addition, tricks like optimially pulsing light are nigh unto impossible without a supplemental light source.

"going vertical" mostly helps overcome the =land area use= issues.  But as anyone who has seen utility bills for a skyscrapper knows, greater <mumble> density per unit acre means higher energy use per unit acre.  Lot's higher.  But is would reduce the pressure on arable land.    

Voltaire:

   

...and froggy and I still disagree about the utility and cost effectiveness of supplemental light.  I'm still convinced the only way we can consistently achieve peak or close to peak productivity regardless of external environmental conditions is going to require an enclosed and artificial environment.   

Then you will go broke trying, which is mostly my argument on algoil. I have shown you the math...believe it or offer something different. 

Voltaire:

   In addition, tricks like optimially pulsing light are nigh unto impossible without a supplemental light source. 

Doesnt matter...photon to BTU is what I measured. I dont care if you pulse it or blast it or get it from the sun... you still have to produc so many photons to make plant biomass, PERIOD.

Voltaire:

    "going vertical" mostly helps overcome the =land area use= issues.  But as anyone who has seen utility bills for a skyscrapper knows, greater <mumble> density per unit acre means higher energy use per unit acre.  Lot's higher.  But is would reduce the pressure on arable land.   

I can buy all the land I want in the Sahara desert for pennies. I can buy all the land I want in rural Wisconsin for 3000/acre. I can buy all the land I want in the Sonoran desert for pennies on the dollar.

Oh yea...and by the way...why does a PBR need 'arable land'? I thought that was the whole point?

Raising algae is essentially agriculture ("aquaculture" to be more precise). 

So called "open" or "natural" algae raising schemes must have either an environment favorable for the algae in question or significant H2O, nutrients, etc "piped" in.

Locales where there is arable land are unfortunately much more likely to provide such things naturally (This means "cheaply" to folks like froggy). 

Equally unfortunately, open pond systems in places like deserts, etc are going to require =significant= water, nutrients, cooling, etc if you want to successfully raise algae. 

Significant enough IMHO that you might as well be using a PBR.  At which point you are already going to have use supplemental energy sources for all the cooling, pumping, etc required; so IMHO you might as well go the entire route and install a 3D grid PBR that uses supplemental light (thereby getting around the limits of natural light in that locale) that is pulsed as well as all the other tricks that can't be used by an open system.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.  Environments that are going to be easy to raise algae in naturally are usually going to be valuable to humans for other purposes as well.  Environments that are "cheap" are cheap because they are sub-optimal or pessimal for human use.  Which means they are likely going to be equally poor for most other agri/aqua culture use as well.

The real bad part of the fallacy that areas like deserts are "cheap" is that they are usually cheap only in initial AKA acquisition costs.  Said initial inexpensiveness comes at the price of significantly increased operational overhead.  Therefore very likely increasing TCO significantly compared to so called "not cheap" sites for raising algae.

...and those "not cheap" sites are usually needed/useful for far more important purposes to humans than raising algae.

I agree with froggy that raising algae is going to be significantly easier in some locales than others.  I disagree that we are going to be able to use the "easy" locales in the longer term.  We need those locales for other things.  I also disagree with froggy about just how cheap some of those immicable to life locales are going to be use in the longer term.  Especially if he wants to put open systems in places like deserts.

IMHO, the major value is using "easy' locales is in simplifying the algae growing problem that early stage researchers are going to have to solve.  Not as long terms locales for commericial production of algoil.  Long term use of "easy" locales for raising algoil is IMHO going to inevitably lead to another variation of the food vs fuel land use problem. 

Ok, so there hasn't been a post on this theme for 9 months.  I just discovered this theme and I want to comment on Voltaire's post.

Your calculation of the theoretical  production of algii oil was a big shock to me  and also to Valcent Products, I assume.  I wish I were competant enough to check your calculations. I was a chemist at one time but now I couldn't do the calculation if my life depended on it. 

 I wonder that the angle of the incident sunlight should not enter into your calculations.   

 In any case it seems to me that the critical number that you and Valcent Products needs to calculate or discover is (#1) the energy cost of circulating the algii around in its growing cells and filtering the grown cells off and (#2) the energy cost of extracting the algii oil.  This is the cricital number that will put a minimum price on algii oil. 

Maybe we should be thankful that we have some minimally arible land in the lower latitude US. Perhaps that is why the largest greenhouse in the word is located in Southern Arizona. Perhaps the recent housing market slump will make land in Southern Arizona sink back to that pennies on the dollar figure that showed up in some of these emails.

My final comment is "15,000 gallons of oil per acre per year"! Wow. That should work when diesel is $12 a gallon.  I would certainly like to start an oil farm on my 167 acres in Southern Arizona.  I need a startup capital grant!

 

Entropy3141:

Your calculation of the theoretical  production of algii oil was a big shock to me  and also to Valcent Products, I assume.  I wish I were competant enough to check your calculations. I was a chemist at one time but now I couldn't do the calculation if my life depended on it. 

 I wonder that the angle of the incident sunlight should not enter into your calculations. 

Hi Entropy3141 (5926535897932... Evidently you will never be completely here, but that seems appropriate for someone of apparently your transcendental nature...).  Welcome to the boards.

Remember the calculation I was referring to was for the =best= we can do with natural sunlight @ ~ sea level.  So we are assuming optimum weather conditions and optimum solar angle of incidence as well.

As for how to do the calculation.  You have at least 3 ways.

1= look up how much insolation hits the earth for the locale you are interested in and then use that energy budget for photosynthesis assuming no losses.

2= pretend you have a 1 meter^2 transparent "plate" on the surface of the earth.  On average 1366W go through it from the Sun at any given time.  Again, this gives you an energy budget.

3= (The 3D option).   Draw a =very= long and skinny cone from a point on the surface of the sun facing the earth to an area on the surface of the earth.   Now take a conical frustum at the base of the cone who height is equal to whatever you are planning on building to capture sunlight there.  The 3D volume thus defined is filled with a knowable density of photons.  Once again, this gives you an energy budget.

4,046.86 square meters / Acre

Maximum (two axis tracking) Solar insolation in June in South West, USA = 8 to 10 KWH / square meter / day.

4046.86 m**2 / Acre  *  10 KWH / m**2 / day  * 365 days / year = 14,771,039 KWH / A / yr at maximum (June) intensity.

vegetable oil ~ 130,000 BTU / gallon * 1 KWH / 3413 BTU = 38 KWH / gallon

A theoretical maximum of 387,796 gallons of vegetable oil / Acre / year - at maximum (June) solar insolation levels, to boot.

 

That's if absolutely 100% of the photons are captured and 100% converted to 100% vegetable oil - at June levels.

That's the very utmost maximum - without any losses whatsoever.

100,000 gallons / year?  That'd be a 25.8% conversion at these overly generous June levels.

 

Does 25% even sound likely / probable / rational?

I'd be shocked and extraordinarily pleased if some specie(s) of algae could *absorb* 25% of the solar energy!  Maybe some day we'll genetically bio-engineer such a thing?

An overall net efficiency of, say, 5% would yield 19,400 gallons per Acre per year of vegetable oil.

Thus, 10,000 to 15,000 gallons / Acre / year sounds a whole lot more likely / probable / realistic, to me.

 

All in all, the bottom line will be $/BTU or $/KWH.

Actually, $/mile fuel expense is the real world measure.

Given multi-junction PV has now hit 40% in the laboratory, they might give algae a run for their money.  Especially if some sort of hybrid PV / thermal concentrating system can (more?) economically really suck up, say, 50% or better of the solar energy.  And, if EEStor's "secret" EESU ultra / hypercapacitors store electricity as well as claimed, there probably won't be a lot of interest or need for ICE or their liquid fuels.

nekote:

14,771,039 KWH / A / yr at maximum (June) intensity.  ....   A theoretical maximum of 387,796 gallons of vegetable oil / Acre / year - at maximum (June) solar insolation levels, to boot. ...  That's if absolutely 100% of the photons are captured and 100% converted to 100% vegetable oil - at June levels. .... That's the very utmost maximum - without any losses whatsoever. 

You have missed a very important conversion factor, PAR. Plants fix visible light which is ~ 50% of the income light. 

Also, this first number doesnt account for the biological losses that is being alive. This includes respiration, protein building, photorespiration, night time losses, conversion energy to turn sugar into lipids, sex, etc...

At the end of the day, Mike Briggs comes up with a ~ # of 20000/ac/year as the absolute highside barring novel pathways genetically engineered. Which is why 100000/ac/year is absurd and not even worthy of time spent until they show what the novel pathway is to boost production more than factor of 5.

Not to beat a dead horse but this doesnt include the mechines like pumps, presses, dewatering... better known as EROI.

After someone takes all this into account, the shine of algae comes off quite quickly like it did ethanol. Can it be done? Not the way most ppl are going about it and certainly not in the form of 'algoil' that is present so often in the press and here on BDN.

froggy,

 Ethanol works

 what doesnt work is the conventional feedstocks that  are being used.

it boggles the mind when thinking of how narrowminded and nearsighted the so called experts are when doing due dillegance prior to investing in alternative energy.

 any idiot should have realised that you cant feed the world and produce fuel from the same food crops. as the population increases exponentially it outstrips the capability of providing food ECONOMICALLY to the populace now this  is not a problem we face NOW but Soon. (sooner than we would like to accept. ) there are so manty resources that are untapped and that cost taxpayers huge amounts of money. they are treated as problems not as solutions.. THINK OUT OF THE BOX..

cpnventional thinking leads nowhere...

Marc 

froggy,

We're in complete agreement.

My calculations were for 12 months of max sun in June, ignoring PAR, biological losses, ... , as you point out.

Knowing that there are always many bites of (inefficiency) multipliers (that are always less than 100%) at each of bunches of steps that hammer down the final end % possible.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1934566?seq=3

"Most leaves would absorb 60-80% of the incident photosynthetically active radiation".

So, an absorption rate of 60-80% of the energy is not unrealistic. If you say that 50% of the energy from the sun is visible light,  we have about a 30-40% absorption rate * the % of visible light a specific strain of algae can absorb.

 

You guys need to do some research before you discuss this.

Also, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/107621564/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

 

We describe a first-principles analysis of a system for the continuous culture of the green alga Scenedesmus obliquus under light-limiting conditions. According to this analysis, the productivity of the algal culture is given by the relation Y = E_mI₀AK(1 - e^-cl) - GRcV, where Y = yield (g cells/h), E_m = 0.20 (the maximum attainable photosynthetic conversion on an energy basis), A = illuminated area (m²), K = 0.156[(g cells/h/W), the energy equivalent of the algae], I₀ = light intensity (W/m²), = extinction coefficient (L/cm/g),c = cell concentration (g/L), I = light path (cm), R = respiration rate (g carbon/g cells/h), V = culture volume (L), and G = ratio of g cells to g carbon (2.04). This formula is completely determined and has no free adjustable parameters. Using parameter values determined independently, the model accurately predicted the relationship of productivity to cell density in the culture system.

LightEnergySun = 502.9; % Light power per unit area entering Earth ’s...
atmosphere from the Sun in 400 -700 nm wavelength (W/m^2)

 

https://www.afresearch.org/skins/rims/q_mod_be0e99f3-fc56-4ccb-8dfe-670c0822a153/q_act_downloadpaper/q_obj_abdd0b45-9e60-429f-be99-cf264658aed2/display.aspx?rs=enginespage

rmarty:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1934566?seq=3

"Most leaves would absorb 60-80% of the incident photosynthetically active radiation". 

  This quote must be on the other 3 pages of the cite. And Im not disagreeing with it. A few times, I have discussed that Chlorophyll is extremely efficient in absorbing light. I think Mike Briggs also has.

rmarty:

  If you say that 50% of the energy from the sun is visible light,  

  As long as we have your paper on hand... it quotes a number of 45% and not 50%.

rmarty:

  we have about a 30-40% absorption rate * the % of visible light a specific strain of algae can absorb. 

  Lets ave it to 70% and lets use 45% = 31.5%.

rmarty:

  algae can absorb.  

So fine... the algae can take in ~30% of the incoming light. But as I repeatedly state, maybe its

rmarty:

  You [that]  need to do some research before you discuss this. 

, that the bottleneck of photosynthesis is not the uptake of the light cycle inwhich you are referring to, but its the downstream Carbon fixing of the dark cycle. Then there is more bottlenecks in the fixing of the CHO from the dark cycle into all the other bioprocessing cycles all plants need to live. When it comes to 'algoil' production, there is a whole nuther set of bottlenecks of turning the CHO of the dark cycle into lipids.

This is also why I am an advocate of GMO'ing a whole new pathway based off of the Photo cycle and not the Dark cycle. There are a few projects that I have written about that are trying to accomplish this by tuning the light cycle to produce H2 instead of sluffing off that extra energy.

Care to discuss this somemore rmarty?

The night cycle is one of the things valcent is working on, as well as many other companies. They are going through tons of strains of algae and looking for the most oil productive ones.

 

Reguarding your projects on producing H2 instead of oil. Why not just use a nuclear reactor to make electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas? Nuclear energy is the best form of energy us humans have created, and all of the negative stigma related to it is the only thing holding it back.

 

Personally, I think nuclear is the answer to our "energy crisis" as it can both produce electricity, and it could also be used to create hydrogen gas for fuel cells from water.

Just my thoughts..