Has the Algae Cavalry Arrived?
Posted by Heading Out on May 11, 2007 - 11:51am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: algae, eroei, eroi, South Africa [list all tags]
Editor’s note by HO: There has been the occasional discussion of algae as a possible source of biofuels. The interest in this topic is continuing to increase, and thus, when fireangel sent in this piece, it seemed to me to be appropriate to consider allowing the piece to be posted as a guest post. At the end I will have some concluding remarks (I had mentioned that I would, and this is acceptable), but for now, let me step back and yield the floor.
The last 2 years have seen a major global push towards the use of biofuels. This has included corn, soybeans, sugarcane, sunflower and rapeseed among others. The U.S. Government has mandated an increased usage of ethanol in gasoline, which has resulted in a boom in the construction of corn-to-ethanol plants. The short-sightedness of this policy can be seen by anyone not standing for reelection to the US Senate. Soaring demand has led to a more than 60% increase in corn prices. These price increases have, however, not deterred the ethanol industry, which continues to add more and more corn-to-ethanol plants to the drawing board. While industry estimates vary it is quite likely that we could be using more than 50% of the total domestic corn production to supply less than 10% of the national demand for gasoline by 2010.
Given the relatively low overall yield of corn ethanol per acre, several alternatives have been proposed. These include the growing of soybeans, rapeseed and safflower to produce biodiesel. With some of these crops yields can range anywhere from 3-7 times that from corn ethanol per acre and have several other advantages including a much better EROEI. The one that caught my eye though was the proposal to convert algae into biodiesel. Several posts on TOD have referred to algae as holding more promise for biodiesel production, but I had yet to see any substantive proof of its feasibility. I spent several hours over the last few days researching this and I found some interesting facts that I thought I would share on TOD. The bulk of these findings are based on Dr. Krassen Dimitrov’s work. I invited him to present a summary of his work at TOD but he suggested I do it. He even suggested I “link it’ to me. Talk about not taking credit! My role was to verify his calculations, make a synopsis and add additional information that I learned on this subject. I also communicated with Dr.Briggs at UNH about this and his views are included.
During the oil crisis of the 1970s, Congress funded the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) within the Department of Energy to investigate alternative fuels and energy sources. The Aquatic Species Program (ASP) focused on the production of biodiesel from high lipid-content algae growing in outdoor ponds. These programs also used carbon-dioxide from coal fired plants to increase the growth rate and lipid content of algae. They estimated that under optimum growing conditions micro-algae will produce up to 4 lbs./sq. ft./year or 15,000 gallons of oil/acre/year. Micro-algae are the fastest growing photosynthesizing organisms. They can complete an entire growing cycle every few days. Based on this one can extrapolate that it would take about 10 million acres to produce 145 billion gallons of biodiesel which could supply the entire US gasoline requirements (assuming gasoline powered vehicles could be replaced over time). That is just 2.3% of total area used to grow crops in the US! So why isn’t someone doing something constructive in this field?
There are at least 4 different ventures in the works, including Aquaflow Bionomic, Solio Biofuels, GS Cleantech, and GreenFuel Technologies. GreenFuel seems to be the most advanced in mass commercialization of this technology. GreenFuel Technologies along with De Beers in South Africa (no relationship to the diamond miner) have been making some rather audacious claims on this front. As mentioned here they plan to single handedly make peakists shake in their boots. Greenfield/De Beers plan to produce about 391,000 barrels per day in 5 years. That is no chump change. There are just a couple of major oil fields coming online within the next 5 years which produce anywhere close to that. So Should Chris Skrewbowski start including De Beers in his mega projects list? Not so fast.
According to GreenFuel’s patent application a 1.3 sq. km. plant can generate 342,000 barrels of biodiesel per year. Now, I am not very familiar with km-acre relationship so I had to look it up. I got my wife to double check my numbers as I kept believing I screwed up somewhere. GreenFuel claims to be able to produce 45,000 gallons/ acre/ year. I have converted these to an easy to compare number to that of APS above. So GreenFuel is thus claiming to do 3 fold as well as, the highest estimate under super-optimistic conditions that has never been produced on a large scale. Also, ASP had dismissed closed photo bioreactors has prohibitively expensive but it was not clear what price of oil they were taking into their equation.
This last alliance of GreenFuel and De Beers which is making it’s stand against the dark forces of peak oil is even convincing the common public that it can do this. De Beer’s has sold shares to the common public (without a prospectus) and 29 franchises to build 91 plants (for 6 Million Rand each). Additionally they guarantee that each plant will produce more than 850 barrels of biodiesel per day.
Let’s examine their claims in light of (pun intended) how much lipid photosynthetic organisms can synthesize.
Photosynthetic organisms (PO), such as algae, transform visible light in the 400-700 nm part of the spectrum - called photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) - into the chemical energy of carbon-containing compounds. PAR varies with latitude, seasonality and geographical factors. PAR in the southwest US is about 105w/s
The energy - in the form of biomass - that can be obtained via photosynthesis thus depends on the level of PAR and the efficiency of the conversion process Q.
Ebiomass = PAR x Q
Photosynthetic organisms use eight photons to capture one molecule of CO2 into carbohydrate (CH2O)n Given that one mole of CH2O has a heating value of 468kJ and that the mean energy of a mole of PAR photons is 217.4kJ, then the maximum theoretical conversion efficiency of PAR energy into carbohydrates is:
468kJ/(8 x 217.4kJ) = 27%
This is the ideal yield on PAR energy that is: (i) actually absorbed by the photosynthetic organism, (ii) in conditions where this organism operates with 100% photosynthetic efficiency (every photon that is absorbed is effectively used in photosynthetic reactions), and (iii) the organism does not waste any energy on any life-support functions, other than building biomass. We will call this efficiency Qtheo.
If 27% is theoretical maximum, then what is most likely? Dr. Dimitrov presents reasonable evidence to suggest that Q is likely to be around 10% at best. While that to some may sound like he is being overly pessimistic, it is my belief that he is in fact being a bit optimistic.
Here are his assumptions,
90% photosynthetic efficiency i.e how well an organism avoids photosaturation ...Q= 24.3
80% conversion of this amount for us..i.e the plant uses 28% energy for its own needs...Q=19.44
70% optical efficiency of the process, which measures optical coefficient, cleanliness and reflection of light from reactor wall..Q=13.60
98% efficiency in coverting biomass to biodiesel.. Q=13.33
98% plant efficiency (2% down time) Q=13.06
I have studied these in depth and I believe that getting anything over 15% is going to be an impossible task in the near future. A more likely situation is that Q will be around 10.
Applying this to PAR of 105w/s/ sq.m or 3.3GJ/yr/sq.m. we get a maximum biofuel energy content of 0.89GJ/yr. Now, biodiesel has an energy content of 0.133GJ/gallon. Greenfuel says that they plan on getting 342,000bbl per year from a 1.3 sq km plant. That is an energy content of 1.47 GJ/sq.m/yr .
The more likely scenario is,
Now, Heading Out pointed out that the PBR design consists of inclined tubes and hence I am underestimating the yields in a given area because of that. Based on their pilot plant I have to agree that he is right. But, when you are talking about miles and miles of these then the vertical height of these individual columns acts as a limiting factor. If you picture another set of these columns behind the first one, you will see that it's proximity to the first one would affect it's access to sunlight. To access sunlight perfectly it would have to be a significant distance away. Hence GreenField cannot improve yields/sq.m by going vertical, except perhaps in its pilot plant.
So if we assume the above numbers are correct the that's 1.2 gallons/sq.m./yr or about 5000 gallons/acre/yr The other 50% is proteins and carbohydrates which would have some food value. Dr. Dimitrov assumes lower price for this portion derived from algae and based on present prices he is right. However I believe that the food and fuel markets are merging. Let me explain my position on this. Higher oil prices will result in higher corn prices (as more is used for ethanol) and this will impact food prices across the spectrum. On the other hand if we have a bad corn harvest and ethanol becomes unprofitable and companies cut back on production , it will decrease supply enough to push oil/gasoline prices higher to the point we start using corn to make ethanol again.
Hence assigning a $2.5 a gallon price on biodiesel and $1.50 on protein and food derivatives we get revenues of $4.8/sq.m/ year. Let's look at the costs of this revenue.
GreenFuel’s PBR design.
The largest cost is of course going to be the construction of the plant. GreenFuel promises to use polycarbonate tubes for its construction, which have installed costs as high as $190/sq.m. However since GreenFuel plans to build at least 91 of these massive plants I am going to give them a lower cost of $150 assuming that they can negotiate huge discounts. Polycarbonate is the best choice as it has excellent PAR transmission but blocks UV much better than acrylic or glass making it ideal for grwoing algae.
Next are the land costs. Dr. Dimitrov generously assumes they can get the land for free. If the US starts taxing carbon emissions then maybe there is a remote possibility for getting land for free next to carbon dioxide spewing power plants. I too will give them the benefit of the doubt here but we must remember that this is likely to work against them. Large amounts of land at specific locations with great sunlight and fresh water availability are not cheap.
Next we consider the operational and maintenance costs. These include personnel costs for repair and cleaning and costs for parts and repairs. Assuming 0.03 full time employee's per 1000sq.m, that translates into $1.20/sq.m/yr (assuming total costs of $40,000 per employee, including healthcare and other benefits). These costs were obtained by using the costs for maintaining sun-tracking heliostats such as those used in concentrated solar power.
The costs for operating GreenFuel's plant are likely to be about the same assuming they use neutral buoyancy spheres to clean inner surface. All other costs including administrative, parts and labour, quality testing, transesterification, water, pH control total up to about 0.60/sq.m. These are again the costs for concentrated solar power generation ($0.50) with zero costs assigned to water and pH control. Transesterification costs are assumed to be just $0.10, which is 30% lower than any number I could find from many different studies. Some put this as high as ($0.50). Suffice to say that these costs are extremely low compared to real numbers. Adding it up we get a total cost of about $1.8/sq.m/yr. That leaves gross profit of $3.00. That means at current prices it would take 50 years to just cut even on their investment. That is clearly not feasible. For one thing these polycarbonate sheets take a lot of UV damage and their useful life is almost always less than 15 years (usually 10 years). Also whoever is investing for 15 years would be crazy to want a zero return on their investment. Even if someone had some philanthropic goals it would be inflation adjusted returns of zero. Even making assumptions of 6% inflation (whoever believes the official CPI needs to get their head examined) and zero returns requires oil prices greater than $240 a barrel!! So great we have a technology which will save us once oil prices get high enough, right? That assumption too would be a mistake as at $240 a barrel, polycarbonate costs are probably going to be a lot higher. Ditto for repairs and parts. Labour may be cheaper if $240 a barrel results in massive unemployment.
Also, I would like to point out that going vertical will not affect GreenFuel's costs.
From these calculations it is apparent that the limiting factor is the cost of polycarbonate. Also, if the world tries this on a massive scale it is likely to put immense pressure on the polycarbonate market and hence its price. For a closed system polycarbonate is the best choice. Everything else reduces yields. However if there is something that gives good cost to yield trade off it might be a better idea than GreenFuel's choice.
After going through a few studies done by different institutions I have found that there quite a few technological hurdles which need to be cleared even if costs can be brought down.
1) Low yields (in spite of optimum conditions)
2) Contamination
3) Lack of water in areas with best sunlight
4) Low Lipid content of algae
5) Open small pond method is problematic due to repeated contamination and much lower yields
6) Energy required to constantly move large amounts of algae within the photo bioreactor is likely to be extensive
7) Low yields would also hurt GreenFuel’s potential carbon sequestration credits, should they ever get those
I communicated with Dr Briggs at UNH about Dr. Dimitrov’s work.
His position was
1) GreenFuel is drastically overstating its potential yield. He was not aware of the exact claims as the patent application is incredibly confusing in that area. I was happy to point out the exact points made.
2) However 15,000 gallons/acre is achievable
3) Q=10% is unnecessarily too low
4) More by-product credit needs to be applied for non-lipid content
5) PBR costs may be different than that used by him, but costs need to come down substantially
6) He also made an important point about meat prices which I thought was interesting. He felt that the corn to ethanol boom would result in higher meat prices and that was a good thing as meat is ridiculously cheap compared to fruits and vegetables. Since it takes 10 times as much land and energy to produce a certain amount of calories from meat as from grains, he feels meat should be priced much higher
My remarks,
1) needs no comment.
2) at what cost and how? Can this be done on a mass scale?
3) I adjusted theoretical Q to 13 based on some of his comments. But I am reluctant to adjust my base case of Q=10 to higher levels as it seems unrealistic.15,000 gallons (3x our base case yields, with Q at maximum possible) may be possible in areas where PAR is much higher. Also if we are to do this on a large scale we will be utilizing land everywhere and not just in the southwest. Hence average PAR is likely to be a lot lower. If 15,000 gallons can be achieved then too with current prices and using a modest 6% inflation return the plant is likely to be unprofitable. However with those yields at twice current prices things start looking a lot better. Even under our most optimistic scenarios at current prices things do not look too promising. As Robert Rapier's Thermal Depolymerization post showed, costs are more likely to be underestimated than overestimated.
4) I have tripled the by-product credits given by Dr. Dimitrov
5) I have reduced costs of construction by 20%.
6) I am in total agreement with him on this. As the third world countries continue increasing their meat consumption this might happen sooner than we think.
In conclusion it seems that while their intentions may be heroic, GreenFuel and De Beers have promised way more than they can possibly deliver. I am so confident of this that I would love to extend a familiar $1000 bet on this. Unfortunately as seen here, no one can verify how much any of GreenFuel's plants produce at any time.
The future may hold a lot of promise for this technology though. A cheaper replacement for polycarbonate along with setting up reactors in third world countries with more PAR and cheaper labor may make this very realistic.
Maybe we will read something like this in 2025.
“Biodiesel prices rose on the MUMEX (Mumbai mercantile exchange) as India pledged to cut production to balance out the glut in inventories. India’s biodiesel minister was quoted as saying “$600 a barrel is a fair and equitable price.” Saudi Arabia which just turned importer last month is complaining that the high prices are wrecking its fragile economy and threatened to finally start using its Trillion barrel of “proved“ resources to destroy the Biodiesel cartel.”
A small end note from Heading Out. If one reads the patent claims for this process that are referenced above it can be seen that the program considers the use of artificial light as part of the source of the energy input. Given that the plant is being established at a power station, this energy cost may be small, and the land may be available at the plant. There is some information on the plant that is installed in South Africa here and here and the coming US operation here . My apologies that current time constraints have limited my input to this.
Petroleum IS a bio-fuel; it just took millions of years to cook in the great subterranean crock-pot.
Then civilization tapped it to launch humanity to greatest heights.
Problem is we didn’t bother to calculate the required thrust that would take us into
Sustainable orbit.
Now dropping to earth.
Let’s hope the chutes deploy.
P.S. We only get one shot at it every few million years.
Hey not a bad metaphor for a big hairy TOD Troll
your close. just off by a few decimal points.
it's the product of a few hundred million years.
it other words it's as close to certain as one can get that homo-sapian is the only hominid that will ever enjoy this quirk of nature.
Probably the only hominid. In another few hundred million years we will be the oil. I wonder what will be pumping us out of the ground?
a future land version of the cuttle fish or squid if they aren't killed off by the global climate change we have set into motion.
given current emblaming and burial practices and low density distrbution of corpses actual production of human based bio fuel... Oh never mind. :-)
I remember reading somewhere that the current rate of oil generation in source rocks, worldwide, was estimated at between a few million and a few tens of million barrels per year (that's per year, not per day). Most of it migrates to surface and is oxidized in the atmosphere - only a small fraction is ever trapped.
The same article estimated that once oil finds its way into a reservoir it has a survival half-life of approximately 100 million years. It will be destroyed when the reservoir is breached (by faulting or uplift/erosion) or buried to a depth where the oil is thermally cracked to methane and graphite. So TK's estimate of "a few hundred million years" sounds reasonable.
Of course the actual source and reservoir rocks can be a lot older. They could have been in place for half of eternity before the onset of oil generation, which depends on stuff like rifting, subsidence/burial and relative movement of mantle thermal plumes (hotspots) and tectonic plates.
I'd like to post a link so I've been scouring the web for the source article, but it's gone beyond recall. Something to do with AAPG, IIRC. I found lots of other interesting stuff, though :)
However... that estimate has been totally screwed up in the past fingernail-paring of geological time. The culprit is a species of semi-intelligent primate that has evolved the ability to short-circuit this important part of the planetary carbon cycle, throwing the chemistry of the atmosphere seriously out of balance.
The immediate consequences, for the primates and the planet, are far from clear. In the long term, well, species come and go and the planet will probably fix itself in less than one Galactic Great Year. So no real harm done, thank goodness.
The novel "Galapagos" (Kurt Vonnegut RIP) suggests that the primates' large brains are an unsustainable mutation that will die out when the primates destroy their own habitat, as usually happens with virulently invasive species.
My Mom-In-Law is a retired sedimentologist who has consulted with various govts such as Oman. I recall her saying that some of Oman's oil was as much as a billion years old, and very heavy as a result. A hundred million here, a hundred million there and pretty soon you've got some real eons on your hands :)
PS someday maybe I'll tell the story of how the Libyan govt smuggled her in for a consult before the travel ban was lifted. She got to meet the Colonel himself. Crazy woman!
I recall her saying that some of Oman's oil was as much as a billion years old
Interesting - one thing I forgot to mention in my note is that oil can be sourced, trapped, and then remobilized by faulting at depth, allowing migration along the hydrdynamic gradient into other reservoir rocks. But this article seems to support your MiL's recollections...
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1322300
Gives a good explanation why we haven't detected any signals from other intelligent species in the galaxy.
Any guesses what would be the halflife of a civilisation after development of the radio?
I am not so sure their intentions are heroic. From this link posted above (also discussed last month in a DrumBeat):
I smell a rat.
They said they would address the accusations, but I haven't seen anything about it. The last article I saw was this one, which wasn't very reassuring:
“our current production on the pilot plant is 144 000 litres in 24 hours – we’re running the plant 25 days a month, it is all consumed locally, and we have 50-million litres of diesel on our order book per month”.
Ima thinker Billy Sol DeBeers is gonna catch a few million stupid dollars with this deal.
No full scale production plant even built yet and they're selling franchises? You're right, this is quite odiferous.
As someone who covered Wall Street for 20 years, let me say that every boom brings out hustlers, and sometimes the hustlers are very very good at what they do. They often look more credible than honest folk.
That being said, there is much hope for a bio solution to our energy needs. Work is being done at the University of Illinois, suggesting we can get 3 gallons a day of oil from pig poop, per pig. You heat the pig poop under pressure.
We have 100 million pigs in America. If every pig does his patriotic duty, we get 8 million barrels a day. That is more than one-third of our (now declining) consumption.
Solutions there are many to this energy "crisis." Technical solutions will be found. If commercial, they will be implemented. The hard part of life is getting people to cooperate, ending wars, crime etc. Now, those are problems.
Dude, just think about that for more than 30 seconds, and you'd realize how ridiculous it is. The laws of thermodynamics hold, even for pigs. You don't get anything out of them that you're not putting into them.
For disposing of pig wastes, fine, it may be worth doing. But as a scalable energy source? Read up on that turkey parts plant, and get back to us.
You are right about scalability, but it is an interesting way to deal with manure.
Iron Creek Hutterite Pig Manure Methane->electricity, in production since 2001.
Biogas in Aberta
My dad had 500 feeder pigs until I was 5 years old, all I remember is they poop a lot.
They may poop a lot, but I seriously doubt it's 3 gallons of oil a day per pig.
CLOSE THE LOOP, PEOPLE!!!
If you take out energy from pig poop, you are taking energy from somewhere else.
The feed, the water, the farm implements, the diesel trucks to haul said pigs and poop. Building the collectors, and all the other infrastructure.
Cheap energy is cheap because we are burning fossil sunlight. There will be no energy bonanza from algae, pig poop, turkey guts, switchgrass, or any other solar budget energy scheme because the amount of sunlight we can capture and turn into the liquids which drive our drive-in shopaholic lifestyle will be insufficient.
STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty.
The next paradigm shift in science will revolve around holistic thinking. Too bad this shift may come too late to save the narrow, fix-the-problem-in-front-of-me-ignore-the-problems-the-solution-causes mindset people and their cheerleaders from the dieoff.
Bravo!! Your's is the first comment I've seen (by anyone, anywhere) that doesn't arbitrarily ignore inconvenient facts in order to promote a pet idea. Thank you!!
It is not "reserves". It is not "production". It is cycles that matter.
It all has to go all around.
But I disagree that there is no energy bonanza. There is 1kW/m2, everywhere, all the time. That is way much more than whatever we need. And not only in the Earth, but in a 1.5e11 m sphere.
We just need to figure the cycle.
"STOP BEING SCIENTIFICALLY OBLIVIOUS!!! You must include ALL the knock on effects. You must include ALL the energy inputs, including the food the farmer eats while sitting in his airconditioned John Deere, the cost of the clothes he wears, and the gasoline he burns to drive over to the south-forty"
That's fair enough Cherenkov, but I want the same thing done with the fossil fuels....
Count the steel in the rigs, the pumps, the pipe, all of it.....count the computers that are used to hunt for the oil, the man hours in computational time world wide, the food it takes to feed them....count the aircraft carriers and the patrols by the fighter planes and rader carrying AWACS....count the supertankers, the steel, the men, the portage facilities to onload and offload the oil....the refineries, the tractor trailers and railcars, the cost of excavatign the storage tanks down at the 24 hour bright white lit retail store, the pumps, the concrete pads and giant steel canopies that would not be needed if folks were not out there pumping gas in the rain....
And even with that, I know I have left out at least HALF the items needed to keep the oil flowing from the desert to the customer.....
Count fair and square and see if the worshipped holy oil is still so superior....
That old saw may have fooled people once, but no matter how much the oil industry apologists repeat in an attept to kill any alternative in it's crib, people are starting to take a closer look at that whole argument....
Oh, one more thing.....and this is strictly a personal observation....if your final argument is always going to be to try to scare somebody with that dieoff hysteria, that one don't work anymore either.....we're all gonna' die, it's how you want to live that matters. I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs. And that's the point of fossil fuels - we are taking fuels that have been stored over hundreds of millions of years by slow natural processes and using them now. We didn't have to account for the creation, burial, and conversion of vegetable matter to fossil fuel because it all occurred before we even existed. THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?
Biodiesel is an attempt to recreate the same process in a few weeks or months that nature took millions of years to do. This requires INPUTS, Roger. Inputs of energy, material, etc. There IS a cost to homo sapiens to CREATE biofuels.
The fact that you totally fail to understand this is demonstrative of how disconnected from reality you actually are. Go back to cheerleading for KSA, Roger. At least there you didn't sound like you were completely scientifically illiterate.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
GreyZone,
You have indeed been moody for the last couple of days....cheer up! :-)
"The cost has been factored in, Roger. That's what the market does - factor in costs."
My, how the worm has turned! On a board that lives and breathes to prove that the market is a complete failure (otherwise, how could we still be at these low oil prices right as we come onto the catastrophe?) you suddenly become a "market guru", ala CERA?!
The market had trouble remembering three days ago, and it suddenly factors in a century of sunk cost and externalities?
Allow me to ask you simply to ask yourself if you really believe that the current price of oil reflects a century of military protection, port and road building, refinery construction, pipeline construction (including the eminent domain that allowed property to be purchased on agreeable terms), construction of retail outlets, pumps, tanks, not to mention the funding poured to the universities to assist the industry in research in drilling......
Greyzone, do you really believe that? That there are no externalities, all the costs are reflected in the price? Do you really?
If you do, after considering your position carefully, then we simply will have to agree to disagree. Because I most certainly in no way believe it. If I did, I would not be here. Why would I be concerned? The price would reflect all, and look at the price...still the cheapest gas in most of the world (excepting some oil producers themselves!), and flat over the last year, I would assume the price run up has been currency weakening on the U.S. dollar and a bit of war premium (we are still at war, by the way, as a war time price, the current price is STEALING THE OIL)
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIENS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, ROGER?"
But was there a cost in setting up the infrastructure to extract, move, refine, redistribute the oil? Is there now a cost in attempting to police the system that gets the oil to us? Is there a cost in dealing with the carbon and other byproducts of said production and use?
Your position does not seperate oil from any other potential energy supply. Allow me to take the same sentence:
"THERE WAS NO COST TO HOMO SAPIANS IN CREATING THE SUN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YET, GREYZONE!
Thus, solar energy is free! All you have to do is develop a way to capture and convert the energy! How is that different from oil, except that it is distributed over the surface of the Earth and it's cleaner? Oil did NOT gather and refine itself. And due to it's distribution, it has brought massive costs in foreign policy and human suffering.
By the way, on a more personal note: There are a short list of posters here at TOD whom I hold in enough regard to give them the allowence of calling me ill informed or ignorant, and based on the quality of their work, I will accept it and attempt to review my position and find my error.
It is a short list, and no offense GreyZone, but no post of yours has come near earning you a place on it. Do not assume that because I defer to some I defer in the same way to all.
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from from freedom
Of course there are externalities, Roger. But the cost of creating the raw fuel was never a cost to homo sapiens. There is a cost to creating the raw biofuels. This cost entails doing everything that nature did in those hundreds of millions of years. Now you get to add that cost onto refining, and all the other externalities that already exist for fossil fuels.
You either do not or refuse to understand that. Why? God alone only knows. Your analogy about the sun totally misses that prehistoric plants converted that sunlight into kerogen, which was then, through natural processes, converted to petroleum. This is a major cost that biofuels incur. Then biofuels incur every other cost that fossil fuels have as well, including transportation, refining, sales, etc. Remember the topic, Roger? It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it. Benjamin at least had the honesty to apologize for being wrong. You, on the other hand, sit here trying to look right about biofuels when even the original poster has walked away from those absurd claims.
Finally Roger, I do not care whether I am on any list of yours. The fact that you didn't even check the data before agreeing with it, cheerleading it because it supported your position, is why I don't care. The fact that you are unwilling to recognize that you were flat out wrong and admit it is another reason why I don't care. I simply want to make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
"It is biofuels from pig manure, with which you were heartily in agreement until BenjaminCole found better data that refuted it."
The nature of my "hearty" agreement was this statement:
"I have as much faith in pig manure as I do in the oil industries string of shiit......"
I will stand by that, given that I have 0% faith in the oil companies string of shiit, less with each passing day if that were possible.
As far as biofuels from pig manure, cow manure, chicken parts, hog by product, human manure in the form of sewer gas, waste methane from landfills, or any other source of free methane and waste, I have tried and tried to figure out why I would be against any of the above. I cannot. Can you find anywhere at anytime that I have said I felt they were the answer to the world or the U.S. energy problem? I don't think so, but your welcome to try (I always appreciate a dedicated reader!)
I still think that animal waste and byproduct should be captured when possible and used for methane, rather than releasing raw methane into the air. As I said, the greenhouse gas capture alone would be worth it, the energy is just a byproduct. And yes, before you begin again to set up straw man arguments to knock down, I am well aware that the net energy will be negative, the pigs, cows, chickens, etc have to be fed, watered, and the sun has to shine on their back, but again, I am talking about capturing byproduct since I am still (perhaps wrongly), convinced that people are going to keep eating beef, chicken, pork, etc. for as long as they possibly can.
Now, you go on to a lot of insinuation and useless insult about "my position" and your new found duty to "make sure that other readers see you for what you are and that your uninformed posts do not always go unchallenged."
If you are going to attempt to insult as to "what i am", by all means, please define. If you are going to say that what I posted was uninformed, demonstrate in what way. Again, I stand ABSOLUTELY by my belief that methane recapture does work, has always worked and will always work, and that of course we should be all for it. If you differ then that's your right.
What we seem to be confronting more here is a willingness to attempt to scream down anyone who does not share the hystrerical rantings of those who for some reason want to believe that there can be no solution to anything, and by browbeating attempt to force others into the same pathetic defeatism, or off the board, which ever they can achieve. This is generally the messiah complex writ large, the guy who stands in public with the "world is coming to an end" sign. Again, that's a persons right. But in the known history of the world, I have never heard of one of those defeatist prophets of doom coming up with any real solutions to anything.
The sad part is, newcomers may mistakenly judge those concerned about real, serious energy issues and real potential solutions by these types of mad ramblings if that is all they see here. The whole issue has been turned into a clown show of late by what has been nothing short of outright hysteria, to the point that any educated person can see it as comedy. This combined with the neo-primitivism of the radical greens occupies space that could better be used to discuss real possibilities for change. Will some of the ideas put forth by those who propose real ideas be wrong? Of course. That's the danger of proposing something other than hysterical defeatism. I have been wrong on MANY occasions, and will be again. So, if the goal is to make someone cry uncle, I have been wrong and caught myself out more times than anyone else has caught me out. (On methane recapture, I am not sure I have been proven wrong just yet, I still think it's a good idea :-)
But, it must be admitted, GreyZone, that if a peculiar kind of victory in which you insult, scream down and drive off all differing opinions, then the victory seems to be coming your way. When I first came here a year ago, the spectrum of discussion was wide, and the catastrophist hysteria had not yet taken hold. I was even able to recommend some friends I know personally to come here. Those days are gone, and that is an error I can no longer afford to repeat.
In my own case, I take responsibility for what I say. That is why I sign my posts. I would not feel it is responsible to say things and be unwilling to take credit or blame for my own words.
But there is a down side to that. Since I do acknowledge coming here, the concern is growing that simply by participating in a forum that has moved off to the radical edge of the sprectrum, one is contributing to the madness by simply being here "egging it on", than perhaps some of us should allow your camp to have it's little victory and move on. A person could stay, just to prove they are willing to, but I do not feel that my ego really needs the boost of arguing with those who are arguing with only the point of shutting up all opposition.
But, it has been fun and educational, and from the best here I have learned much, and made some fascinating new connections! :-)
And, as the old proverb goes, "one shoould listen also to even the dull and ignorant for they too have their story".
As far as biofuels, I am in an interesting problem there. Those who support biofuels see me as an enemy because I have grave doubts about that being the way to go, and those who are rabidly anti-biofuel see me as an enemy because I have not yet proven to my own satisfaction that they are completely without value. The old moderate's problem, as they say "out in the middle of the road, where all the dead animals lay." :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Actually Roger, I enjoy factual debate. I challenge Robert and he answers with facts. I ask Alan a question and he answers with facts. You might take a lesson from them, Roger. Or you might not.
If you find disagreement to be "insulting" then you have a thin skin. I have not called you some of the names that have been thrown around here. I simply identified that you are ignorant of facts OR willfully ignoring those same facts. I have not even suggested which it is, leaving that open to you to rectify yet you refuse to correct any of your own errors instead going off on wild tangents yet again. Same old Roger.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
Better idea....since you are the one who is finding so many "facts" that I may have supposedly stated in error, you correct them, and I'll learn....have at it! :-)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
(that one is from a post by Khebab, not me, by the way....:-)
Um....yeah, sure.
I remember your first post. I remember it because it was a "Goodbye, Cruel TOD" post. Indeed, I assumed that that was why you chose the username you did. "That's it, I'm out of here, 'cause you guys are a bunch of doomer losers."
It was on February 13, 2006, and it was a rant against Deffeyes and other peak oilers. You said you were forced to "disavow and disown the so-called 'peak oil' movement."
So, more than a year ago, you were just as disgruntled as you are now. You're looking back at a glorious past that never existed.
Dude, you're starting to remind me of those Creationists who claim they used to be evolutionists who have since "seen the light." But if you check, they never really believed in evolution. They just like to say they did, because they think the conversion adds weight to their position.
Leanan
Well, that wasn't my first post, I have been here over a year, and that one was in August, so I had posted many previous to that (I don't know if they got lost in one of the upgrades....my first post was, by own dating, concerning the war in Iraq and Qatar, natural gas, and the U.S.'s declining strategic position.
The one you reference Leanan, was the "Dr. Deffeyes sets a date" string in which Deffeyes declared "Stone Age by 2025"
Now how was any intelligent person to react to that!? How insane was a sentence like that from one of the leading "voices" of the peak movemen?
Deffeyes words were used, by the way, over and over again by those who only wanted to make fools of anyone concerned about energy issues.
You win the point, But I fault myself for overreacting. I was completely outraged by Deffeyes words, and still think he did huge damage to the concept and words "peak oil".
But I fault myself for overreacting
(the only thing that allowed me to accept it was the realization that he is an old man, and was saying things he did not understand. We will all be there someday, if we live long enough.)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom
Quite agree, when we are part of the loop it all works. How far we can push that loop is another question. Right now our loop is in a state hyperbolic.
Well, actually, the pigs don't poop as much as the article I read indicated. After e-mail conversing with the actual researcher, a Dr. Zhang, it turn out we can get only one-third of one liter per pig per day. Some pigshit reporter was off by a factor of 50 or so.
We have to feed the pigs anyway to raise them for slaughter. A good idea is to feed them potato mash, taken from a ethanol plant running on potatoes. You get really good vodka this way too, but also ethanol. The pig poop helps fire the plant.
Okay, I am hugely red-faced at overestimating the pig poop solution based on some sloppy reporting. Maybe we will freeze in the dark after riding our bicycles home in the cold sleet.
The ethanol plants here are either integrated directly with a feedlot or the biproduct is sold to feedlots.