Low Cost Gasoline

[prosperity]

Would this work? It's not "cool" as in eco-friendly, but it seems "cool" as in the potential for really cheap gasoline that we don't have to pay a dictator for and don't have to worry about nature destroying our refineries down south if we did drill for more oil:

http://www.greencrudeproduction.com/

[Jake_Ellison]

I have by no means learned everything there is to know about the subject, but in the five to ten minutes I've spent on the website you linked to, I found these facts:

1. The website itself is focused on finding a carbon neutral solution, which points to them being ideologues (environmentalists) rather than objective.

2. They are in no way concerned with whether this is cheaper than oil, which currently costs around 44 dollars a barrel, and which would of course be the only concern of every private entity with the capability to explore this solution.

That tells me that they envision the US government in charge of developing this idea.

3. Most of their links (for information) are news sources which are very unreliable in matters of science: The NY Times, The Guardian, some Indian paper.

4. The only link they have directly to a research institute (Arizona State Univ.) turns out to be a very disappointing source indeed: it's a government funded program probably hidden away in the debts of the US Defense Budget, likely a result of the powerful environmentalist lobby in Washington. It is especially despicable that they are using money which we are told goes to the military, for the defense of the country:

The goal of the project, which is backed by a $6.7 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is to develop and commercialize a process to produce JP-8, which is used by U.S. and NATO militaries.

The ASU team in the School of Applied Arts and Sciences will lead an effort to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of using algae as an alternative feedstock resource.

In light of all this, I think it would take some stellar practical results and serious interest from private industry specialists first, for me to pay any more attention to "fuel from algae".

[softwareNerd]

The most important question is: what is the cost per barrel (equivalent) today, and what is the potential cost in the next few years. Since the web-site does not address that head-on, I'm skeptical. Some of these types of business are a way to get government grants or to part investors form their money.

I remember reading -- a while back -- that the costs are quite high. The main costs are fixed-costs of all the equipment in which the algae is being grown, etc.

[KendallJ]

The most important question is: what is the cost per barrel (equivalent) today, and what is the potential cost in the next few years. Since the web-site does not address that head-on, I'm skeptical. Some of these types of business are a way to get government grants or to part investors form their money.

Using Jake's $44/bbl (Saudi oil is in the single digits), that's about $0.10/lb. There are very few (if any) bio-based processes that operate at that kind of efficiency. If the reaction is a catalytic reaction within the microbe to convert something like gasoline into gasoline (which would take away the claim that only CO2 is needed) you might get to that level of productivity. If instead, the bug produces a hydrocarbon as part of it's own internal cellular processes, then I doubt you get to that sort of level of productivity, or that it is currently even within a couple of orders of magnitude of this 0.10/lb level.

[Mammon]

I'm incredible interested in this for economic and personal reasons.

There is a lot of time, research and money going to into bio-fuels at my University. One of the teams I'm competing with in a Business Plan competition is doing these algae-based bio-fuels for their project. So, my curiosity has been piqued.

I disagree with Jake's claim that having a carbon neutral technology is a sign of an agenda. It could be a way of marketing something to a green-obsessed world. But, I'll admit it makes me skeptical. I'll believe these fuels if and when I see them working in my car without having to make expensive modifications and have it all cost cheaper then gasoline (which would become cheaper if something was competing for it's market share). I mean, these things could work and power stuff, but that doesn't make it work economically.

I could imagine these different fuels being used for different things, like powering buildings as opposed to vehicles. Or even being turned into different products. I'll admit the technology for these things are innovative. But innovations should follow legitimate economic needs -- not making people feel good about solving a non-existent problem.

Algae is said to be Holy Grail of bio-fuels for all the reasons highlighted on the website. But, have we not learned lessons from pursuing the Holy Grail about going after such mythic products?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately after watching people drool over the algae project at our school. Here's what I'm thinking in a nut shell -- this entire thing is a bubble. A Green Bubble. All this money being invested in these fuels is going to be lost probably within the next decade or so. I'm calling it right now. Thinking about starting a blog to discuss it more too.

If it's not economically viable, there is no way to force it to be.

Also, like I said, I'm interested in this subject. If anyone has any more links or resources on it, please send it my way!

[Matus1976]

If there is going to be a cheap naturally derived alternative to drilled oil it will probably come from something like this. Collecting and processing plant stock will never yield enough material to create any significant quantities of an oil substitute. But algae or microorganisms if bred and contained in a 3D stock pool could possibly produce enough material as a by product to compete with oil, I'm watching developments in this area with interest.

However, we could all ready make a cheap gasoline substitute if we just used nuclear power to it's full extent. Our light water reactors fission uranium 235 in enriched rods, where there is about 3% U235 and the rest is Uranium 238, which is not fissionable. You can however hit U238 with a neutron and create plutonium 239, which IS fissionable. Thus all the U238 in the world could be fissioned if it is simply used as a shield or neutron absorber for a U235 feedstock. U235 makes up .7% of Uranium, with 238 the rest. Thorium can also be 'breed' into a fissionable Uranium and there is more than 10x the amount of Thorium on the planet than there is U238! Typical US Light Water Reactor plants breed some P239 from U238 and generate perhaps 20% of their energy from this. Plants officially called "Breeder" reactors will actually make more P239 from the U238 than they consume of U235 in the first place, creating more fuel than they use. A breeder reactor can generate over 100 times as much power as a U235 reactor. The US currently has about 120 Nuclear Power plants, thus 1 single breeder reactor could generate as much power as all of our nuclear power plants combined while using the same amount of fuel!

Plentiful nuclear power would make for plentiful and cheap electricity, which could then be used to manufacture synthetic gasoline using the sabatier process and started hydrocarbon thermal forming procedures. The Sabatier process makes methane (CH4) out of carbon dioxide and water vapor, compressing and heating methane in an oxygen free environment makes larger hydrocarbons, once you get a liquid at room temperature hydrocarbon you have a great synthetic gasoline.

Because neutrons must be moderated in breeder reactors to create more fuel, self contained self regulating small nuclear breeder reactors are possible, starting with only a small amount of U235 and breeding P239 out of U238 they can run for a decade with no input and on a small seed of U235. These could be small enough to power towns or even individual houses. If the reactors get too hot, the neutrons are traveling too fast to be absorbed by the U238 and thus do not breed more fuel, creating a negative feedback effect preventing runaway reactions.

Edited December 8, 2008 by Matus1976

[prosperity]

Plants officially called "Breeder" reactors will actually make more P239 from the U238 than they consume of U235 in the first place, creating more fuel than they use

Is this another one of those perpetual motion/infinite energy scam thingies? I thought the algae to gas would be cool, but right now it is way too expensive at an estimated $20/gallon. Still...I was intrigued at the idea of algae being made into gasoline and the long-term potential of really cheap gas. I didn't really pay attention to the carbon-neutral stuff, though I realize the site reeks of ecology/environmentalism ideology.

I heard in an interview once with Rand conducted by Tom Snyder...she was talking about how the Arabs stole U.S. technology. I never did understand the details...of course, this interview was in the 70's...does anyone know the details of how this came about. Obviously at some point these nations nationalized the oil industry and OPEC was formed...maybe we should just take it back if it was stolen.

...which reminds me, I was watching a feature on 60 minutes on Sunday about Saudi Arabia having so much more oil to drill for that it's ridiculous. If that land was really ours, we'd be rich.

[DavidOdden]

Is this another one of those perpetual motion/infinite energy scam thingies?

I think the ratio of technical information to political gee-whiz is low enough that skepticism is warranted: however, unlike perpetual motion, I doubt it's an impossibility, rather it's a technological hurdle to surmount. For example, how many gallons of algal soup is required to produce a gallon of usable car fuel? How many cubic feet of space is required to contain the tubes holding that soup? How many gallons of fuel do we consume annually? How many states would need to be completely turned over to producing algal soup? What is the energy cost to move that volume of fluid through the tubes (not to mention the extraction)? Their argument seems to be "All the other biofuels suck", which does not mean that their scheme is viable. Let's see the details.

[Matus1976]

Is this another one of those perpetual motion/infinite energy scam thingies? I thought the algae to gas would be cool, but right now it is way too expensive at an estimated $20/gallon. Still...I was intrigued at the idea of algae being made into gasoline and the long-term potential of really cheap gas. I didn't really pay attention to the carbon-neutral stuff, though I realize the site reeks of ecology/environmentalism ideology.

I'm not sure if your referring to the breeder reactor thing, or the algae soup thing. Breeder reactors are definitely not pseudoscience, the physics is pretty straight forward and actually the first fission reactor was a breeder reactor. The Carter administration largely pushed against them for fear of creating a 'plutonium' economy so the US does not have breeder reactors. But Japan and France both use them, but to a degree more limited than they are capable.

[Jake_Ellison]

...which reminds me, I was watching a feature on 60 minutes on Sunday about Saudi Arabia having so much more oil to drill for that it's ridiculous. If that land was really ours, we'd be rich.

If that land was ours, we would probably have already turned it into a natural reserve, or have found some other bogus reason to preserve the sand untouched, as we have done with the oil fields that are ours. Thank God those lands are outside the Global Warming ideologues' reach, and at least someone is willing to drill for the oil and sell it to us.

It would be nice though if Saudi Arabia was just a bigger version of Norway.

[John McVey]

Is this another one of those perpetual motion/infinite energy scam thingies?

No. The fuel in normal reactors is U235, with U238 sitting there for the ride. What a breeder does is make use of the U238 in addition to the U235. The phrase 'making more fuel than it consumes' is easy to take a bit too literally, when the reality is more along the lines of a massively increased degree of efficiency in use of material dug out of mines. Given enough time, even a breeder will run out of fuel - it is just that the said time is much longer than for a non-breeder.

I thought the algae to gas would be cool...

The technology is real, and most likely does what it is claimed to do (which will be what is used to bamboozle the public). SoftwareNerd gets the points for pointing out the right answer. The killer with these kinds of projects is the enormous capital costs, working out to very high capital charges per unit of fuel produced. There is another thread on the forum on a similar project and I was able to spot how dubious the claims were just from a few moments of promotional video. I was too generous at the time - later I did some calculations and then thought, naaaaaaahhhh... I could see just from those short shots that there would be enormous expense just in the totality of all the PVC fittings, never mind all the rest that would go into it. I spoke to my boss (a marine biologist) and she additionally noted that there are other problems with algae in enclosed vessels that the untrained wouldn't suspect, such as gas exchange balances messing about with fluid chemistry. They could be overcome, but again it would work out to be expensive capital-wise.

...which reminds me, I was watching a feature on 60 minutes on Sunday about Saudi Arabia having so much more oil to drill for that it's ridiculous. If that land was really ours, we'd be rich.

I've heard contrary stories, about how the Saudis are massively overstating their reserves. But anyway, the point does remain that we aren't going to run out of oil any time soon as even were the normal oilfields to run dry there are still viable other sources that don't require esoteric technologies, such as Canadian shale, and after that there are the further possibilities as Matus identifies. Our fuel crises are political in nature, and you're right about there being dubious ideologies at work here.

JJM

Edited December 9, 2008 by John McVey

[Steve D'Ippolito]

I usually hear it as Alberta tar sands and Colorado oil shale--though for all I know Canada has a load of oil shale as well. Supposedly Colorado has possibly 2 trillion barrels of oil in shale but it would have to bring $70 per barrel to be worth the trouble.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Also, even with non-breeder reactors, we don't consume even half of the U-235 in a fuel rod (I've heard numbers as low as 5%) before the fission products "poison" the reaction. We remove the fuel rod and dispose of it. The remaining uranium could be separated out and put back into a reactor, but we don't.

In other words nuclear power as it is operated today is *incredibly* wasteful--the refusal to "breed" plutonium and the refusal to actually use up the U-235 that we aren't using to breed plutonium with makes it staggeringly wasteful.

[Matus1976]

Also, even with non-breeder reactors, we don't consume even half of the U-235 in a fuel rod (I've heard numbers as low as 5%) before the fission products "poison" the reaction. We remove the fuel rod and dispose of it. The remaining uranium could be separated out and put back into a reactor, but we don't.

In other words nuclear power as it is operated today is *incredibly* wasteful--the refusal to "breed" plutonium and the refusal to actually use up the U-235 that we aren't using to breed plutonium with makes it staggeringly wasteful.

Good point as well, additionally, nuclear 'waste' is a non-issue, much of it is fissionable, as you point out, convertible to a fissionable fuel as in a breeder reactor, and the rest of it can be accelerated through it's nuclear decay chain by using it as a neutron absorber creating more heat and power in the process. Ideally, nuclear fuel need not leave the reactor until it's converted to lead or iron.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Now the accelleration you mention, I was unaware of. I was aware that *most* (by volume) waste that wasn't wasted fuel was low level stuff--e.g., tongs and gloves that were used to handle 'hot' items and had become weakly radioactive as a consequence, and the really nasty stuff (fission products) would decay significantly in a few centuries. Thus the "problem" was much smaller than it was made out to be. (One solution I had heard was mixing the hot stuff with sand and fusing it into glass blocks--ought to be fairly impervious for long enough to decay to levels not ridiculously above background.)

[John McVey]

I usually hear it as Alberta tar sands and Colorado oil shale--though for all I know Canada has a load of oil shale as well. Supposedly Colorado has possibly 2 trillion barrels of oil in shale but it would have to bring $70 per barrel to be worth the trouble.

Shale, tar sands - oh well, my mistake. I was also thinking in terms of cheap nukes on site lowering that effective cost requirement. There would also be that in the future oil would rise up to around the viability level as the standard fields are exhausted, then stay there with much lower volatility than today's oil prices.

(One solution I had heard was mixing the hot stuff with sand and fusing it into glass blocks--ought to be fairly impervious for long enough to decay to levels not ridiculously above background.)

Synroc. It's not mixed with sand, it's mixed with titanium-based starter minerals and put through a process that incorporates the waste into new mineral structures themselves. It's supposed to be a real rock (albeit synthetic), not just entangled in glass.

Another solution being worked on by the French is a type of reactor that burns up waste somehow. I don't know what the status of that project is.

Incidentally, there is a passage on the alleged waste problem in Julian Simon's Ultimate Resource 2. He cites research by someone who has actually run the numbers and demonstrated that it truly is well over-blown. Again, it's politics, not science, that is the problem.

JJM

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Basically the damned environmentalists. Again.

First they make up a problem caused by the way we do things now. Acid rain, CO2-caused global warming. Then any solution that would actually work is opposed.

And there goes my blood pressure ; too bad it can't be used for power generation.

[01503]

The environmentalists want the human race wiped off the face of the earth. Or at the very least, sent back to the Stone Age.

The environmentalists would make us all drink Kool-Aid, but unfortunately Kool-Aid is a made by a big evil corporation! Damn it! Foiled again!

[prosperity]

Good point as well, additionally, nuclear 'waste' is a non-issue, much of it is fissionable, as you point out, convertible to a fissionable fuel as in a breeder reactor, and the rest of it can be accelerated through it's nuclear decay chain by using it as a neutron absorber creating more heat and power in the process. Ideally, nuclear fuel need not leave the reactor until it's converted to lead or iron.

So, if used properly and efficiently, the "natural" end product of a nuclear reactor is iron or lead?

[Matus1976]

Now the accelleration you mention, I was unaware of. I was aware that *most* (by volume) waste that wasn't wasted fuel was low level stuff--e.g., tongs and gloves that were used to handle 'hot' items and had become weakly radioactive as a consequence, and the really nasty stuff (fission products) would decay significantly in a few centuries. Thus the "problem" was much smaller than it was made out to be. (One solution I had heard was mixing the hot stuff with sand and fusing it into glass blocks--ought to be fairly impervious for long enough to decay to levels not ridiculously above background.)

The problem still is much smaller, most of these elements undergo alpha, beta, or gamma decay, which most regular shielding will stop. Alpha and Beta become extreme dangerous if they are breathed in or ingested. Not very many produce natural neutron radiation, and when they do the energy is low.

Even so, any unstable element can be accelerated through it's radioactive decay chain by hitting it with other high energy particles.

From wikipedia on "Transmutation of elements"

Artificial transmutation occurs in machinery that has enough energy to cause changes in the nuclear structure of the elements. Machines that can cause artificial transmutation include particle accelerators and tokamak reactors as well as conventional fission power reactors. Nuclear transmutation is considered as a possible mechanism for reducing the volume and hazard of radioactive waste.

Transmutation of transuranium elements (actinides) such as the isotopes of plutonium, neptunium, americium, and curium has the potential to help solve the problems posed by the management of radioactive waste, by reducing the proportion of long-lived isotopes it contains. When irradiated with fast neutrons in a nuclear reactor, these isotopes can be made to undergo nuclear fission, destroying the original actinide isotope and producing a spectrum of radioactive and nonradioactive fission products.

Basically the longer you leave an unstable element in a reactor where it's bombarded by nuetrons the more likely it will decay, eventually becoming stable at either an isotope of lead or iron.

So, if used properly and efficiently, the "natural" end product of a nuclear reactor is iron or lead?

Yup =)

The decay chains end in stable isotopes of lead or iron because those are the most tightly bound nuclei. You can't get any more energy from fission or fusion.

[John McVey]

For the hell of it, I did the sums on what could be produced with algae. Here's what I calculated. Feel free to stick it in a spreadsheet and play around.

The peak direct insolation on Earth is 1000 W/sqm, but that's for direct and 24hour shine. In a sunny country on Earth with lots of land to convert to algal fields, such as Australia or the US southwest, it is about 400w/sqm average across the whole 24hour period, not including cloudcover and the like. If the capture rate is 100% (unrealistically high) then that means our facility can provide 34,560kj per square metre per day.

If we take this fuel in the form of diesel (average molecular formula C12H23), which has a heat of combustion of 7,856kj per mol, that means 4.39 mol per square metre per day. That formulaic average translates to a molecular weight of 167 grams per mol, so we'd be producing 734 grams per square metre per day. The specific gravity (density) of diesel at room temperature is about 0.85, so we're producing 863 mililtres of diesel per square metre per day.

Our facility is producing diesel as equivalent to post-crude and post-refinery costs, and before distribution and taxes. That is approximately 75% of the retail price, which means at $2 / gallon the present wholesale untaxed and unsubsidised market price for diesel is about 50 cents per litre. To be competitive, Our facility has to have an out-the-door-price to match, so, our gross revenue is 43.2 cents per square metre per day. If the average cost of capital is 15% (unrealistically low), that means the capital cost must be at or less than $2.88 per square metre.

Now, looking at those pretty pictures and videos of pipes and glasshouses and pumps etc, can you honestly tell me that the construction cost is ever going to be anything remotely that low? Note also that this figure assumed some pretty unrealistic levels. In the real world they'd be much worse, meaning that the maximum capital cost per square metre has to be even lower. The enclosed bioreactor methods simply will NOT be viable for a product as comparatively inexpensive as fuel. That technology is for extremely high-value substances, such as specialty chemicals or vitamins.

The alternative to bioreactors is an open-air lake system. Now, to have an output of say 100,000 litres (5,000 barrels) of diesel per day, that means processing 115,832 square metres (and at whatever depth) per day. A respectable ratio of amount processed per day to amount total is 1:15, so a healthy lake system would be 1.74 million square metres, or 174 hectares (about 430 acres). That alone will cost several million dollars to construct. On top of that is the processing plant and all that paraphernalia, costing millions more, and further still are the variable operating costs. The output will bring in a gross revenue of $50,000 per day, or $18.3m per year. If the all the variable cots are say 75%, leaving 25% to pay for capital charges, that's $4.5m per year to cover those charges. If the average cost of capital is still 15% that means the maximum supportable capital cost to set up this facility is around $30m. Such a thing might - just might - be doable... but recall that we were assuming some unrealistically high average insolation power inputs and collection efficiencies. As I've said before, I don't doubt the technology, but I'd be casting a very skeptical eye on the promoter's numbers.

JJM

[John McVey]

I had a quick hunt around. Apparently, the best research on algal sourced fuels at the moment is leading towards 15-20,000 gallons per acre per year. That's a pathetic 51 mililitres per square metre per day, less than 6% of average daily insolation. On our 100kl diesel open-air lake system that means the maximum permissible construction cost can only be $2m tops. Even a trippling of that wont cover the cost of building the lake system. It that is the best that can be done then forget it.

JJM

[KendallJ]

It that is the best that can be done then forget it.

Exactly.

[prosperity]

I had a quick hunt around. Apparently, the best research on algal sourced fuels at the moment is leading towards 15-20,000 gallons per acre per year. That's a pathetic 51 mililitres per square metre per day, less than 6% of average daily insolation. On our 100kl diesel open-air lake system that means the maximum permissible construction cost can only be $2m tops. Even a trippling of that wont cover the cost of building the lake system. It that is the best that can be done then forget it.

JJM

Yikes. If what you say is accurate, then it doesn't sound like such a good idea.

Edited December 13, 2008 by prosperity

[John McVey]

Gah, I couldn't stop thinking about it today.

Yikes. If what you say is accurate, then it doesn't sound like such a good idea.

What I said isn't accurate. I left out one thing that makes things worse, but also made an error that makes things appear substantially worse than they are.

What I left out of calculations for the bioreactors was consideration for gross margin. Including it at a plausible rate of 25% (retail shops get up to 50%, factories as little as 8%) gives a gross margin of 10.8 cents / sqm / day, rather than the gross revenue of 43.2 cents. The major error was to fail to then multiply that by 365 to get yearly gross figures. The gross margin is then $38.39 per sqm / year, which at a capital cost of 15%pa is then a maximum permissible construction cost of $263/sqm, or over $1m/acre.

That's assuming 100% efficiency. Using the present research's 20,000 gal/acre/year, which is a solar yield efficiency of 5.94%, the maximum permissible construction cost comes down to $63,123 per acre (ie one has much less money to spend). At that rate, the maximum permissible price tag for setting up a facility that has an output of say 100,000 gallons of diesel per day is $115m and would take up 1826 acres plus the processing plant's area. The economic conclusion I had still remains the same, interestingly. I still doubt that bioreactors could achieve that, and that a lake system that size might yet though still wouldn't give much change from $55m and thus leaving $60m with which to build a petrochemical plant of that capacity.

I'm not sure it is going to be doable at the present rates of efficiency (and at present prices of oil), but it could be if the research into higher yields pans out (and the price of oil goes back up). For comparison, solar panel yields are circa 20%, and better for the more expensive models. At $1.90/gal pre-tax for diesel and $30,000/acre to build lakes, if the solar yield efficiency from algal biodiesel were to reach 10% then the lakes take up 1085 acres and there is approx $83m left over to build the plant besides the lakes, and at 20% the lakes take up 543 acres and there is approx $99m left over. You'd have to ask a petrochemical engineer whether a 100,000 gal/day plant could be built for those kinds of figures (I suspect it can, at least for the biggest of the three), but still, let the research roll on, both into the solar yield efficiency and the operating costs efficiency - just not using government grants, please.

JJM

Edited December 15, 2008 by John McVey