Algae-Based Biofuel From Fish
September 1, 2009 by Miranda Marquit
Image source: ValleyFoods.je
Right now, when biofuel is produced using algae, cultures are grown and then processed into fuel. But the process is expensive and difficult. Now a company in Texas, LiveFuels, Inc., hopes that it will be able to change all that. The idea is to create a biofuel based on the oils from the fish that eat the algae.
LiveFuels plans to make use of natural food chains in order to get biofuels. Gas 2.0 reports on the facilities used by the Brownsville company:
The company-who develops renewable algae-based biofuels-has a test facility in Brownsville, TX. At the location they have 45 acres of open saltwater ponds which will be used for optimizing the algal production.... LiveFuels plans to grow a mix of regional species in low-cost, open-water systems. The algae will be "harvested" with filter-feeding fish and other aquatic herbivores.
The idea is that the fish can harvest the algae, grazing on it, and then those fish can in turn be processed for the biofuel base. This is a different approach from current algae-based biofuel processes that may have some merit. After all, something similar is being done in Greenland, where sharks caught in fishing nets are being processed as biofuel.
It will be interesting to see whether this process saves on costs and creates a more cost-efficient biofuel.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Nov 13, 2008 |
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Everyone has to realize that we have to use Thermal-Solar to make heat and electricity, then use that abundant and free energy to liquefy hydrogen for vehicles.
Regardless of what we do our energy usage MUST COME DOWN, public transport, mass transit, stay-at-home jobs, whatever.
This fish for algae fuel is dipwank stupidity!
It's extremely mature tech. It's just metalized glass reflectors, heliostats, pumps, steam turbines, molten salt thermal storage, heat exchangers; the usual stuff. There's miniscule headroom for improvement in there and the math isn't anywhere close to working.
"Sun power is now a fact and no longer in the 'beautiful possibility' stage... It will have a history like aerial navigation. Up to twelve years ago it was a mere possibility and no one took it seriously." - Frank Schuman, 1910.
The guy built a big parabolic through-array; it was a cute idea but the economics just didn't work. In the 70's and 80's the DOE took a lot of really smart people gave them a chance to make it work. The best idea they could come up with was a slightly updated version of the same parabolic through-array built by Schuman before world war I. It still blows chunks.
The worst design they managed to come up with was the 'solar power tower' design with a bunch of heliostats focusing the sunlight on a central tower. The economics were so awful that even in the desert of California, one of the indisputably best places in the world for solar energy the power tower design wasn't even worth operating because the operating and maintenance cost for the heliostats was more than the power it could produce was worth. It has the dubious distinction of being one of only two powersources worse than solar photovoltaics(the other being space solar power).
We're going to have to relearn the lesson that solar thermal sucks every 30 years or so aren't we?
I have. The only place you can make any money building them is where they offer 500% subsidies like Spain. This still ignores the fact that they need to be balanced with fossil fuels or by overbuilding by a factor of ~3 for winter; dumping the surplus energy as waste to protect the grid in summer.
I can see the bumper stickers now: "Crush a Fish for Mother Nature!"
idiots.
If it ever did take two gallons of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol it doesn't anymore. Even corn ethanol is able to generate more energy than it uses and no one (except a few farm lobbyists) are banking on corn ethanol.
The big future for biofuels is not really fuels at all but as chemicals to replace the petrochemical industry. The ability to catalyze reactions that replace petroleum as a single source of many feed stocks is increasing all the time. It's hard to do that with solar and nuclear.
I can't fathom what growing algae in the desert has to do with sterilizing the seas.
That's about right, but the byproducts of the process are used to make other products like heating oil.