[Curmudgicus]

I could use some input.

I've been running numbers on the cost of alternative energy sources, assuming that our annual oil use of 20 M Bbls is the equivalent of:

12,673,611 GWh energy
5.6 TW power capacity

At the moment I am only modeling plant construction costs, and am avoiding land prices and other ancillary factors. I am not doing numbers on anything that isn't sustainable, so coal and natural gas are not here.

The economies of scale suggested by each industry led me to adopt these prices. Feel free to use higher ones.

Nuclear $1,500KW $8,400,000,000,000
Wind $3,500KW $19,600,000,000,000
Solar $5,000KW $28,000,000,000,000

I did not include cropland bio-fuel because even with oil palms, the total land acreage required at 635 gal/acre/year to replace oil was a greater land area than exists on earth. All other crops had lower yields.

Algae was a little tougher to model. I took Valcent at their word; that their vertical closed loop bio-reactor system could produce 100,000gal/acre/year. That's five times pond yields, and seems feasible.

I used a ratio of crude algae oil having .84 the energy yield of fossil crude. We use 20M bbl oil per day (840 M gal), so that would require a round 1 Billion gallons per day of bio-crude as replacement. 365 B gal/year.

That would require 3.65 million acres. Professional Greenhouse prices are at $25sf plumbed and equipped, so if we use that number per square foot, the bill for a national algae farm that would replace oil would be:

Algae bio-fuel $3,974,850,000,000

Four trillion dollars is a lot of money. Nevertheless that's a LOT less than the next place contender.

Whatever we do is going to take a Manhattan project/Moon shot kind of monetary and technical commitment. At these prices, we are going to get one shot.

I'm going to plant my flag, and say that in exchange for an indefinitely sustainable energy source, one that is a net remover of atmospheric carbon, can be eased into our present infrastructure, and could make the US energy independent again (if not exporting), algae bio-reactors are the best choice across the board.

Feel free to throw rocks.

[Curmudgicus]

Right away - Correction. I used 20 M bbls per DAY, not annual.

Sorry.

[Cashmere]

Let's go with a Manhattan project - we have irrefutable evidence that that actually occurred.

[kpeavey]

By no means am I attempting to bust your bubble, but...

1B barrels/day of algae sourced oil is 50x our current petroleum use. Part of the project would need to include the pipelines to handle this sort of volume.

Lake Erie, 10,000 sqmi surface area =6.4M acres, so the project would need an area about half that, about 5700 sqmi.


By comparison, the State of Connecticut covers 5544 square miles, right about what we would need. Alternately, we would need 8 Lake Okeechobees or about 3.5 Great Salt Lakes.

Such a grand project can be done, look at the Three Gorges Dam project in China.

I would have concerns that the area would not interfere with arable land, we are losing enough as it is to development, erosion, salination and diversion of crops to biofuels. There is also the displacement of humans, livestock, and the natural flora and fauna to consider.

Filling such a lake, or the number of smaller areas which could be commercially processed, would require a severe drain on our fresh water supply.

If such a project could be done with sea water, using an ocean area, there would still be an ecological impact, but I think there would be benefits as well. Take for instance the Mississippi Delta and thos of other major rivers. Fertilizer is already in place-runoff from agricultural lands. Nutrients already flow as a result of erosion. Evaporation is automatically recovered. Plenty of ships will be available as global trade declines as a result of economics/militarism/petroleum decline, and these ships could be converted to service the sea farms. Filling and populating a vast area is at least half done, although we still have to add the algae. A means would be needed to contain the algae lest it gets loose. I have no thoughts about storms/tides to offer.

Just a few thoughts, do with them as you will.

[Curmudgicus]

[quote]1B barrels/day of algae sourced oil is 50x our current petroleum use. Part of the project would need to include the pipelines to handle this sort of volume.[quote]

That's gallons per day, not barrels, which as you say is 42x what we actually use.

[quote]Part of the project would need to include the pipelines to handle this sort of volume.[quote]

True enough. We do have tanker trucks and railroad tank cars until the pipelines get built. If it spilled, not HAZMAT either. Boeing, Honeywell, Continental Airlines, and Air New Zealand have formed a consortium to grown their own fuel this way. The Air Force is underwriting a facility in Houston to do the same. Aviation has reached the wall sooner than the rest of the country, and simply must find a new source of acceptable liquid fuel or perish.

It's a very big job. It is achievable, though. Not a single other alternative that I've seen yields the requisite amount of energy to entirely replace oil at price we could pay.

Once we've eliminated the impossible what remains, however improbable, must be the solution.

[Starvid]

Nuclear $1,500KW
Wind $3,500KW
Solar $5,000KW

I'd say these numbers are totally off. There has been great cost inflation in the power plant sector and the dollar has fallen a lot during the last few years.

So more like this:

Nuclear: $3000-4500 per kW
Wind: $1500-2500 per kW (but remember the very low capacity factor!)
Solar: so bloody expensive no one takes it seriously.

[vtsnowedin]

My take on this is a bit different. We do not need to replace all crude oil with anything. at least not all at once. What we need is something to fill the gap between a peaked crude oil production level and the demand level. If you accept that oil production will fall by say three percent per year and world wide demand will grow by two percent a year,as good a guess as any, then you need to build five percent a year of alternative capacity and ha ve twenty years to get the job done.

[Starvid]

Solar: so bloody expensive no one takes it seriously.

Yeah, our local airport just went and put in a few megawatts of it..those crazy guys!!

How dare the guys running the project not read this website before doing something serious like actually BUILDING the thing!

It's PR. Call me when you hear of a solar project putting out 10 TWh per year.

It's not a coincidence that it's not a power company that's building the facility.

[kpeavey]

If the algae ponds were arranged in the right orientation, they would make a fine reflective surface for use with a solar thermal tower. The gain would be electrical generation at a considerably lower construction cost.

[Curmudgicus]

I asked for input , and do very much appreciate it.

MattS - thanks for that link. I think that a great deal of what Mr. Clark has to say is spot on. I've lived in Germany, and we he says fits.

The problem of getting to that place is one of "coffin corner." Do we have the energy available to entirely rebuild the US infrastructure to accomodate the lack of that very energy? Pimentel has some things to say about that.

Starvid, I've seen the higher numbers for nuclear as well, and I'm not unhappy to use them. I used the lower number as an estimate for mass-produced generation IV reactors. I can't find any numbers as low as yours for wind. (You're not working for Pickens, are you?) Nuclear is the only renewable I can discover other than algae biofuel that has the potential to be scaled up to the extent necessary to replace oil. I find even the low-ball cost figure to be unacceptable.

Solar is only remotely feasible in thermal installations, not PV. I agree that it's too expensive in any form.

Mr. vtsnowedin, your point is potentially the savior of any changeover program.... IF we can make a long-term commitment to build the replacement and stick to it. I am of the jaundiced opinion that US political and business history argues against that.

Nationally we have proven consistently capable of setting a massive near-term goal and meeting it. The long-view always seems to dissolve into competing self-interests and political back-biting and ends up on the back burner or terminated. Our response to the oil spike in 1974 over the years has been a prime example of that.

I have a concern that every model for our oil depletion scenarios seems to assume uninterrupted international trade and transport. As oil has become scarcer, international tensions over control of the remaining supplies have begun to increase. That's as much at the heart of the War on Terror and the War in Iraq as pure Islamic fundamentalism. If a conflict between nation-states erupts over control of these resources, we'll have to be able to get by purely on what's within our borders until it's over. Don't forget that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was triggered by an oil embargo by the US.

If we continue to drift, drilling within our borders or sliding into coal, the gradual decline will continue and accelerate. The chance of resource wars increases. Atmospheric carbon levels will continue to increase. The people on this website are being proved out as visionary. Now however, it's time to apply that vision and actually build something to solve the problem.

If there is another rational solution out there, fire it up. I'm all ears. I think that 4 million acres of the US Southwest dedicated to algae biofuel is both the best and most affordable answer to our liquid fuel problem.

[MrBill]

I really do not know about your math or your methodology, but let's assume they are somewhere accurate or at least in the ballpark. Are you suggesting ethanol derived from algae bio-reactors?

As vtsnowedin mentions we need a bridge solution in the transition to a new self-sustaining alternative. In this respect $4 trillion is not a lot spread over a decade or two when we consider that at the moment the world spends approximately $6 trillion per year on energy.

The likely environmental impact would likely be less than the damage currently caused in our exploitation of fossil fuels. Algae ponds may even have some useful secondary environmental and bio-diversity uses, although I assume those would be not the primary concern.

[dunewalker]

I could use some input...
Feel free to throw rocks.

Ok. I see you've been a member of po.com for 3 years, yet you still come up with this futile gesture. I'd suggest spending another year reading some of the threads here on carrying capacity/overshoot, then see if you still want to start this thread.

[Narz]

I could use some input...
Feel free to throw rocks.

Ok. I see you've been a member of po.com for 3 years, yet you still come up with this futile gesture. I'd suggest spending another year reading some of the threads here on carrying capacity/overshoot, then see if you still want to start this thread.

If the propaganda hasn't worked in three years what makes you think one more will do? Even if it's true I can't imagine a less fulfilling more depressing way to enter into the apocalyptic age than by reading MonteQuest threads.

Like it or not humans will attempt alternatives so it makes sense to prepare for that type of future (rather than an unrealistic one in which we all stop reproducing and kill ourselves at 23 for the good of the team).

[vtsnowedin]

To throw in another rock.. or two.... I've been watching the algae farm they started in Texas this April, no word yet on any production there or storm damage from the recent hurricane. we need to see if they can actually scale up to usable production and actually extract the lipids from the harvested algae and refine it into bio-diesel.
Then there is the problem of what to feed the algae?? All the research talks about available land being adaquate and using waste water (sewage) to feed nutrients to the algae along with bubbling CO2 into the ponds to enhance growth. I have yet to see an analysis of how much sewage this would take per acre per year and a summary of how much sewage and or animal manure is available at a reasonable distance to the proposed pond sites. Plenty of sewage available in Boston or Washingto DC but your not going to pipe it to Arizona. If you grow your green goo with commercial fertilizers and run the pumps on coal fired electricity you may be just converting fossil energy not harvesting new solar energy.
As to the goverment getting their HOOTA and commiting 200 billion a year to saving us. Dont hold your breath. More likely they will wait until a fledgling industry has a fingernail hold then artificialy drive the price of oil down and bankrupt them to benifit ADM or some other large contributer.

[dunewalker]

Like it or not humans will attempt alternatives so it makes sense to prepare for that type of future.

If your assertions were true we'd see some major results by now, as a reaction to Jimmy Carter's energy speeches of the 1970s, or to Robert Hirsch's report, which came out a few years ago. Both were funded by the federal government, both were official recommendations (Hirsch's research concluded that successful mitigation of peak oil required a 20 year head-start).

[Starvid]

Starvid, I've seen the higher numbers for nuclear as well, and I'm not unhappy to use them. I used the lower number as an estimate for mass-produced generation IV reactors. I can't find any numbers as low as yours for wind. (You're not working for Pickens, are you?)

I guess you mean generation III reactors? Gen IV is still a long way off.

No, I'm not working for Pickens, but I'd sure like to do! I think his is a great plan.

Anyway, the wind numbers are low because wind capacity factors are low. For example you need 3-4 kW of wind to get the same annual output as 1 kW nuclear. This means you have to multiply the cost for wind by 3-4 to make it comparable with nuclear.

This gives nuclear comparable wind costs of $4500-$10,000. These numbers are very rough.

[Starvid]

Like it or not humans will attempt alternatives so it makes sense to prepare for that type of future.

If your assertions were true we'd see some major results by now, as a reaction to Jimmy Carter's energy speeches of the 1970s, or to Robert Hirsch's report, which came out a few years ago. Both were funded by the federal government, both were official recommendations (Hirsch's research concluded that successful mitigation of peak oil required a 20 year head-start).

Democracy is a reactive form of government. I've met cabinet members who've said that while they are aware of peak oil they can't do anything until the public sees there is a problem, or they will be voted out of office when they institute impopular things to battle peak oil.

[Curmudgicus]

I'll take the viewpoint that I have not been flamed, as that's reserved for elsewhere on the site.

Dunewalker has raised the point that this subject is fully covered elsewhere on this site. It certainly has been talked about quite a bit, but most of the blogs about it are now obsolete information.

I began looking for jet fuel alternatives in '04; the lack of any other than South African Fischer-Tropsch fuel drove my company out of business. Since that time enormous development in chemical engineering of bio-fuels, much of it funded by the air force underneath the radar of both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

A JP-8 from biofuel has been developed that is good down to -60 degrees C. What's needed is a plentiful and cheap feedstock.

Richard Branson is running some aircraft on oil palm derived bio-Jet-A. At 635 gal/acre/year using cropland to produce it is not a rational long term solution. Jatropha yields even less.

David Briggs Biodiesel group at UNH originally advocated ponds. The federally funded pond trials did not work, and shut down. Ponds don't work very well.

Since then, several companies have developed closed system "bioreactors" that massively increase the growth potential, keep it contained, harvest it continuously, and prevent contamination from undesirable competitive variants. If you haven't seen an example yet, try this link.

http://cc.pubco.net/www.valcent.net/i/m ... index.html

http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecotech.asp

None of these things were true even 18 months ago. Much of the bio-fuel from algae information on this site predates that.

The yield per acre for an ethanol farm from algae is a fraction of the oil yield and is less energy dense. The leftover solids after oil extraction can be fermented for ethanol though.

Langley's airplane didn't fly, and never could have. Orville and Wilbur's could. SOLVE the problems.

[vtsnowedin]

[smilie=5geezer.gif]

David Briggs Biodiesel group at UNH originally advocated ponds. The federally funded pond trials did not work, and shut down. Ponds don't work very well.

. SOLVE the problems.

Actually if you read there final report open ponds worked well enough that they thought that was the way to go. They achieved 50gpd/mm with an overall of 10gpd/mm. There 1998 cost estimate was that algae oil biodiesel would cost about twice as much as diesel cost then. Where are we now?
I notice that the startup plant in Texas uses a defunct shrimp farm thereby saving them the cost of building any ponds much less green houses. They(the federal funded researchers) thought they were achieving 5% efficency from the available sunlight. I wonder what vertigrow claims? I don't see any vidio of them harvesting any algae from there plastic tubes nor of them processing as much as 100gals. of veggie oil from it. Dosn't mean it can't be done but I would like to see it done. It would be like watching Lindburg land in Paris.

[Curmudgicus]

Here's a piece that CNN did on Valcent a little while back.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hioZ7C6 ... re=related