Algae-Based Biofuel From Fish

That's retarded. If this was remotely viable you could grow high quality food(e.g. shrimp or herring) instead, which people are willing to pay a lot more for than a couple of bucks per gallon and you wouldn't have to waste any effort squeezing oil out of it.

Look, this is stupid.

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!

its not efficient, it takes more algae to cook the same amount of oil if processed from fish higher up the chain, but then again, if the cooking is cheaper than processing raw algae, it could be worth while, and turning electricity into hydrogen is another loss factor, just like the fish, turning one energycarrier into another before actual use, high density lightweight battery storage is the way to go

Solar thermal will forever remain a cute dream that simply stands in the way of doing the right thing and does nothing more than help dreamers cling onto dangerous fossil fuels.

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?

Think maybe you should do your research on solar towers Soylent.

Think maybe you should do your research on solar towers Soylent.

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.

Any good reason to kill all the fish in the oceans seems to be the key here...I think I'm gunna get my old skiff out right now and get me some fish oil to heat my house this winter. This will need to happen to save the trees. Heaven forbid there be nothing left to hug.

I've heard of stupid ideas before, but this one takes the cake .. Is this just another ploy to justify our present 'lets sterilize the seas to protect nature' approach?? What it does say is that the 'algae energy' people are up against a brick wall of economics. When it takes 2 gallons of oil to produce 1 gallon of ethanol (which itself has remarkeably-lower energy content than oil) and its actuall being DONE .. further depleting our food supply .. im then not really surprised to see this wasteful, inefficient, and morally wrong idea put forth.

I can see the bumper stickers now: "Crush a Fish for Mother Nature!"

idiots.

I've been reading about duckweed as a biofuel source and it has several advantages to algae, duckweed thrives on/and cleans many wastewaters, hifg starch concentration, not as poisenous or sufficating to wiuldlife as many algae blooms

The use of fish is an attempt to make open systems more practical but I have my doubts. The closed systems require more capital investment but are just more efficient.

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.

just a test to see if I am allowed to make comments again however, there is a small problem I forsee in that the planet is killing all the fish stocks by simply eating them which will be more of a problem than the oil wells running dry and oh yes, what do you then run the fishing boats on.

If it ever did take two gallons of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol it doesn't anymore...

That's about right, but the byproducts of the process are used to make other products like heating oil.

Bacterial and Fungal cultures for biofuel production would be exponentially greater than fish over volume.

Agreed, eventually they will engineer organisms that will break down any cellulose wastes effective and costefficient, In the meantime, sumbody develope a methode to squeeze oil out of swarms of locusts including the chitine scales, that would be a double edged sword, not producing biofuel from food , but from a feedstock that threatens the food