I’m more convinced than ever that liquid fuels from algae will be a major component of our energy and environmental future. A good reason why I say this is alluded to by the article, Engineers Strive To Make Algae Oil Production More Feasible:

Compared to soybeans that produce 50 gallons of oil an acre a year, some algae can average 6,000 gallons — but it’s not cheap to produce. Current algae growing methods use ponds and bioreactor columns, and algae float around suspended in water. Harvesting such a moving target systematically requires using very costly inputs like centrifuges and electricity. Even with these best technologies for algae growth and production, the end product biodiesel is expensive at about $56 a gallon.

Yuan, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at K-State, thinks it will be five to 10 years scientists before understand the fundamentals of large-scale algae production sufficiently that cost can be reduced to the target of about $5 a gallon.

“It will take that much time to really understand the fundamentals of large-scale algae production and to establish pilot projects,” he said.

Both Yuan and Pei, professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering at K-State, think food production land should not be used to produce algae for fuel. The two are studying the feasibility of large-scale algae production in the ocean and how to engineer the production systems.

A few observations:

• Algae-based liquid vehicle fuel at $5/gallon in five to ten years will be an enormous bargain. The odds are very good that in that time frame we’ll be enduring higher and much more volatile oil prices than we’re experiencing right now, so any technology that can deliver virtually zero net carbon fuel at a stable price of “only” $5/gallon will be more attractive than [politically incorrect metaphor]. Again, we can’t look at just peak oil or climate change in isolation, if for no other reason than they aren’t isolated from each other in the real world. They will interact, sometimes in distinctly inconvenient ways, regardless of whether we choose to see those interactions ahead of time.
• Reducing the cost of production is a relatively tractable problem. For example, the steps needed to get from where we are now with algae biofuels to that magical $5/gallon price point are much simpler (to over simplify things a bit) than are the steps needed to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles a commercial success. Hydrogen is up against some inflexible constants, like the amount of energy needed to create, compress, transport, and dispense the fuel. (And that’s making the very generous assumption that the astronomical cost of fuel cells that operate in the environmental conditions we subject motor vehicles to can be brought under control.)
• All of this points to something I’ve been saying for some time: We’re about to see a fragmentation and specialization of transportation technology. For a long time in the US cars and light trucks (SUV’s, minivans, and pickup trucks) have been almost universally powered by gasoline, with larger trucks being diesel. We started to fragment the market with the introduction of flex fuel vehicles and hybrids, and to a very minor extent with natural gas vehicles and battery electrics.[1] Expect to see this mix of vehicles and fuels to become far more diverse in the coming years. If nothing else, we’ll see millions of US households with one ICE vehicle (possibly a plug-in hybrid running on algae-derived fuel) and one full-on electric.

[1] According to Table 6.1 of the Transportatoin Energy Databook, in 2007 the US had 695,766 alternative fueled vehicles on the road, including 275,426 CNG, LPG, or LNG, 364,384 E85 (which includes on those E95 capable vehicles actually run on E85), 55,730 electrics, and 223 hydrogen.

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