Shortcut: 1 million years for oil reduced to 1 hour

[rhoenix]

Engineers have sped up a naturally occurring process to make crude oil from algae from about a million years to just minutes.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pumped a slurry of wet algae into a chemical reactor, which then subjects the biological material to very hot water under high pressure to tear it apart and convert it into liquid and gas fuels.

The resulting crude oil can then be conventionally refined into aviation fuel, gasoline or diesel fuel, the researchers reported in the journal Algal Research.

The team’s experiments converted more than 50 percent of the algae’s carbon into crude oil, sometimes up to 70 percent, in about one hour and created nothing more hazardous than an odor of dirty socks, rotten eggs and wood smoke from the processed biological material.

In fact, the leftover water and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium can be recycled to grow more algae.

Algae has long been considered a potential source of biofuel and has been produced by several companies on a research scale, but the fuel was projected to be prohibitively expensive.

However, the recently developed technology uses a number of methods to reduce costs and has been licensed by the Utah-based Genifuel Corp., which is building a pilot plant with an industrial partner.

The process works an algae slurry that contains up to 90 percent water, unlike most current processes that used dried algae, and cuts costs significantly by eliminating the need for time and energy used to dry out the biomaterial.

“Not having to dry the algae is a big win in this process; that cuts the cost a great deal,” said Douglas Elliott, who led the PNNL research team. “Then there are bonuses, like being able to extract usable gas from the water and then recycle the remaining water and nutrients to help grow more algae, which further reduces costs.”

Other groups have tested similar processes, but most of that work was done one batch at a time.

The PNNL system runs continuously and processes about 1.5 liters of algae slurry per hour in the laboratory reactor, and scientists think this can be accomplished on a commercial scale.

The method also eliminates the need for complex processing with solvents such as hexane to extract energy-rich oils from the algae.

The system runs at more than 660 degrees Fahrenheit at about 3,000 pounds per square inch, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification.

The system isn’t easy or cheap to build, but Elliott said cost savings later in the process justified the investment.

“It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher,” Elliott said. “In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.”

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If this works out to be commercially viable, the oil market (and therefore the energy markets) might begin changing rather quickly. This will be interesting to watch.

[Josh]

Assuming it works, this is more evidence of why nihilistic doomsaying is a crock. Too many projections are made for years and decades down the road on simplistic curves while not taking into account that our technology and therefore production/utilization of resources is always changing.

[General Havoc]

This is a potentially massive find. If it can be replicated on an industrial scale...

[Lys]

I don't put much stock in nihilistic doomsaying, but there's a difference between that and bringing attention to problems that we as a society will have to deal with sooner or later. If people don't know there's a problem, then they're not going to put effort into trying to fix it, and nobody would be looking into synthesizing oil if carbon emissions and running out of easily accessible natural reserves wasn't a concern. To be specific, our dependence on fossil fuels causes three related problems that modern society is facing at present: energy generation, energy storage, and climate change.

First there's energy generation. Fossil fuels are chemical energy gathered and stored over millions of years by a combination of biological and geological processes that leave them in a relatively easy to use form. All that we have to do to take advantage of it is expend only a fraction of the stored energy in order to extract, process, and distribute it. The problem is that the supply is limited, and as we use up the more extractable reserves we have to resort to using a greater and greater fraction of the stored energy to actually make use of the remainder, until eventually we fail to actually get more energy out of it than we're putting into it, or we just flat out run out of stuff to extract. At the same time this is happening energy demands keep increasing due to various factors. This is ultimately a long term problem, and there's plenty of time to come up with solutions, but it is something we do have to deal with.

Energy storage is a very closely related problem to the above. Pretty much all of the alternative energy generation methods to fossil fuels don't inherently put it into an easily transportable, high energy density form. Bluntly, the energy density on anything other than petrol and diesel is either pretty crappy (batteries) or else requires a very large industrial plant to take advantage of it (nuclear). At present the closest contender is compressed hydrogen, which is actually superior to petrol and diesel in terms of units of energy per unit of mass, but considerably worse in terms of units of energy per unit of volume. In other words, it's lighter but bulkier, and a lot of the equipment required to keep the hydrogen compressed destroys much of the mass savings.

Having established that, how does this breakthrough help us with the above two problems? Well, in terms of energy generation doesn't seem to help very much. Presumably the primary energy input for algae growth here is the same as in nature: the sun. We are getting some actual energy generation going on there, but the process to turn the algae into usable form requires high temperatures and pressures, and the energy to do that has to come from somewhere. It doesn't look very efficient in terms of the energy input to create the artificial fossil fuels versus the actual available energy stored in said fuel. In fact, it's impossible to get a net energy output greater than the net energy input, we just get to cheat a little because the sun's contribution can be treated as free. However, this could be a winner in terms of energy storage. Just how useful depends on exactly how lossy the process is, but it's certainly promising, espeically given the infrastructure already exists to take advantage of it.

Finally there's the third problem: climate change. This arises from all the carbon that has been sequestered deep in the Earth and is now being released back into the atmosphere by us burning fossil fuels. Artificial petroleum doesn't make the problem any worse because it's inherently carbon neutral. The algae takes carbon from the atmosphere when it grows, then the carbon is released when the resultant petrochemicals are burnt, ultimately causing zero net change to atmospheric carbon levels. Of course, the power plant driving the process could itself not be carbon neutral by burning actual fossil fuels, but at the same time it could be something like a hydroelectric or nuclear plant which would keep net carbon input at zero. At the same time, it's unlikely to make the problem any better either. Just because we can make artificial petroleum doesn't mean we're going to stop extracting the natural version, not for quite a while. Even if there's a net power gain from the artificial stuff it's likely to be rather small, which means that in terms of satisfying energy demand continuing to extract fossil fuels will still look attractive.

Ultimately it's an interesting advancement that could be useful in various ways, but I don't think it's going to by itself make a huge difference. In the grand scheme of things, it is but one part of the grand solution to our impending energy generation and storage problems. I believe that in the primary solutions will lie in nuclear power - both fission and fusion - and improved batteries, assisted by expansion and greater use of renewable energy sources. In terms of the climate change problem... honestly I don't think there's is going to be any solution. The impression I'm getting is that the window to do something meaningful about it is closing and there just isn't enough of a fuck being given on a world wide scale. We'll just have to suck it up and deal with the consequences, but it's not the end of the world.

[Josh]

I don't put much stock in nihilistic doomsaying, but there's a difference between that and bringing attention to problems that we as a society will have to deal with sooner or later.

Totally agree, and I'd listen to somebody like you specifically listing the challenges we have to address with no problem. It's the 'Peak oil is coming and we're going to all revert to the stone age!' bullshit that gets up my nose. It's a form of religious mania, usually promulgated by people with a messianic streak who feel that they're living righteous lives and they're gleefully anticipating when all us sinners are going to pay for our evildoing.

Personally I think that nuclear power and electric cars are going to render a lot of our fossil fuel consumption moot within the next fifty years anyway.

[Lys]

Someone brought something important to my attention with respect to this. The limiting factor in algae to oil schemes isn't really the processing of the algae into oil. There's already been a number of processes to do it, this one just happens to be much more efficient and can be run in a continuous cycle. That's all well and good, but the primary hurdle standing in the way of producing petroleum from solar power via algae is the efficiency of the algae-creation process, or rather the dire lack thereof. Nobody can manage to make more than about 1000 gallons of algae per acre, and there's just not enough energy density per unit of land for it to be a worthy investment. The yield would have to increase an order of magnitude for the process to be economical, and that's juts not happening without genetically modifying the algae, and that kind of modification is presently beyond our means.

[Josh]

Someone brought something important to my attention with respect to this. The limiting factor in algae to oil schemes isn't really the processing of the algae into oil. There's already been a number of processes to do it, this one just happens to be much more efficient and can be run in a continuous cycle. That's all well and good, but the primary hurdle standing in the way of producing petroleum from solar power via algae is the efficiency of the algae-creation process, or rather the dire lack thereof. Nobody can manage to make more than about 1000 gallons of algae per acre, and there's just not enough energy density per unit of land for it to be a worthy investment. The yield would have to increase an order of magnitude for the process to be economical, and that's juts not happening without genetically modifying the algae, and that kind of modification is presently beyond our means.

Given the rate that algae was trying to grow in the pool I think I've got that one licked.

[Batman]

Maybe the very idea of growing algae on land is part of the problem?

[Lys]

If the solution were that simple then it wouldn't be a problem, Batman. The algae isn't grown on land, it's grown in nutrient rich water, and keeping the water in open ponds is inherently inefficient compared to clear containers. With containers you can maximize the surface area receiving sunlight, and minimize the loss of water. The only benefit of open ponds is that they're much cheaper to build.

[Batman]

But I'm the one without the sense of humour.

I was just responding in kind to Josh's comment about the algae in his pool being the answer to the problem.

[frigidmagi]

So basically we need a series of tubes.