20,000 Gallons of oil from one acre of land per year

allenwrench · Intermediate Crude Joined: Apr 23, 2008 Posts: 893

link What's the verdict on this?

TheDude

I think the commenters there need to read R-Squared Energy Blog a bit.
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Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3448 Location: Maine

Sounds like a great idea to me. I think algae ponds would be okay, but the greenhouse pictured in the movie could be a bit pricey.
I think you can make butanol from some kind of algae that you can run a car on quite nicely.
link

It's another form of solar energy.
I wonder how much energy you can get off of an acre of solar panels? Then you can use it to run an electric vehicle.
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bkwillia · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 20, 2007 Posts: 70

Show me. Where is all the oil that his greenhouse is producing? How much did it cost to produce it? How much energy did it take to manufacture the system and how long does it last? How much energy does it take to refine the algae into pure fuel?
The man is quoting a lot of big numbers, but never showed us a drop of fuel. Why? Its all very interesting, but it smells like a dot com scam.

aflurry · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 838

there seems to be a conservation of energy problem here....what are the inputs? sunlight? what is the total amount of energy contained in every photon hitting an acre in one year? subtract for heat loss. divide by the efficiency ratio of photosynthesis. and that's overly generous.

compare this to that of 20000 gallons of oil. if sunlight alone doesn't have the energy, then it's coming from other inputs... soil? nutrients? other fossil fuel inputs? it has to come from somewhere. so what's the cost?

bkwillia · Tar Sands Joined: Aug 20, 2007 Posts: 70

A quick calculation and I get a 15% conversion efficiency from sunlight to oil. This is as good as photovoltaics... That this guy can even quote these numbers is criminal misrepresentation.

pstarr

This is ridiculous. The guy could be making making expensive perfume with that setup, not our primary energy fuel.
This basic structure requires air conditioning and heating equipment, footers and foundations, UV protection, etc. etc. A steel stucture greenhouse cost much more than $100/sq. ft. or more? Where are the energy and dollar cost figures per sq. ft. construction.

The maintenance costs (in energy and money) to pump, heat, cool, purify, cleanse the lipids are what? Let's see numbers.
I did it in another post. Let him do it here.
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smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 6278

pstarr

WisJim

There is a large dairy farm in western Wisconsin that has a methane digester producing methane that is put into the natural gas pipeline. They are using some of the warm water from the digester process to grow algae and are getting up to 60 gallons of oil for biodiesel a day from the algae (according to a friend who took a school group on a tour of the facility). Not much about it on the internet, though. Emerald dairy

ANewHuman · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2007 Posts: 169

You must remember people in this day and age ACTUALLY THINK that food grows out of nothing. They think dirt contains nothing valuable, that you just need to water it and "crap happens".

So when you realize this, it doesn't surprise me people think algae can just grow without anything needed besides water. Factoring in trace minerals, "food/fertilizer" and ensuring correct water temperature is expensive. Trying to maximize growth by supplementing with CO2 (which is what they would need to do to get the most out of this system) would completely DWARF the other costs. People don't realize how expensive CO2 GENERATION actually is. There is no way you can cheaply generate it, and all our waste CO2 is much too hard to capture cleanly (you can't give plants toxic crap mixed with CO2 as it would kill them or limit the reaction).

So I think this stuff will either exist in an unoptimized state, with no CO2 supply, or not at all. Even without the CO2 it is very very expensive, the CO2 and airflow system just throws it out into another league.
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pstarr