OK this goes back a few years but I worked on a project for a very innovative supercritical CO2 extraction machine (no, not for cannabis although that is a use) and had a talk with a number of potential customers, one of which was a algae fuel project in Florida. They had issues in extracting the hydrocarbons out of the algae.
We did a small extraction proof-of-concept test run that very effectively pulled the hydrocarbon from the algae in a water solution (the key to this machine was extraction of nonpolar molecules from a aqueous solution, which is pretty much breakthrough shit) but once we had positive results and rough costs, the company quit talking with us. Like, here's the solution to your issue, it'll cost less and be far more efficient, and they just fucking ghosted us.
I wondered why until I remembered they were funded by a consortium of oil companies. Oh yeah, they don't WANT a lower-cost, high-efficiency solution. Right.
(We also ran a test of a sample of the stuff from a Canadian oil sands tailings ponds and achieved remarkable results--we not only extracted nearly all of the hydrocarbon waste from the water, but the CO2 acted to precipitate the clay in the water as well, leaving remarkably clean water--only to have the oil consortium shut our next test down. Seems if they have a resolution to their tailings pond issue, they'll have to spend lots of money and clean that shit up--and there's a huge amount of shit in these ponds--but if they don't have a solution, they can keep getting Canadian gov permits to run these ponds and not spend any money. We had the same issue when we proposed supercritical CO2 treatment of fracking fluids: nope, not interested and don't want to look at your test results.)
This is how we run our world: fuck the environment and people, I need my quarterly profits to maximize shareholder value.
Nah, just need to use renewable carbon free energy in all the support infra: shipping, manufacturing, harvesting. It's possible, every piece of it has a solution that can be used, but no one has all of them in place on a way you can go deploy right now.
This is why I laugh at libertarians who proclaim the free market will solve our environmental problems. The free market favors the cheapest solution to any problem, not the cleanest.
The problem is that oil companies are run by men in their sixties and seventies who know they’re going to be long dead before the oil wells run dry and the coasts are flooded. They have no intention of sacrificing their current profits for future innovations.
The algae boom emerged at a time in the early 2000s when it seemed like the world still needed to run on some sort of liquid fuel...... funding led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy, with Chevron and United Airlines contributing as well.Those two things are very much related. Electrification of airplanes will be difficult, so creating a bio-fuel ecosystem for them, to supplant the existing fossil-fuel system, is still important.
It accelerates the carbon cycle. Rather than CO2 hanging out in the atmosphere, the algae extract it from the atmosphere and convert it into hydrocarbons. Essentially you’re taking a process that would take millions of years to occur naturally and compressing it to…I dunno…weeks? Months?
Those things don't fly, they're just so ugly the ground repels them!
OK this goes back a few years but I worked on a project for a very innovative supercritical CO2 extraction machine (no, not for cannabis although that is a use) and had a talk with a number of potential customers, one of which was a algae fuel project in Florida. They had issues in extracting the hydrocarbons out of the algae.
We did a small extraction proof-of-concept test run that very effectively pulled the hydrocarbon from the algae in a water solution (the key to this machine was extraction of nonpolar molecules from a aqueous solution, which is pretty much breakthrough shit) but once we had positive results and rough costs, the company quit talking with us. Like, here's the solution to your issue, it'll cost less and be far more efficient, and they just fucking ghosted us.
I wondered why until I remembered they were funded by a consortium of oil companies. Oh yeah, they don't WANT a lower-cost, high-efficiency solution. Right.
(We also ran a test of a sample of the stuff from a Canadian oil sands tailings ponds and achieved remarkable results--we not only extracted nearly all of the hydrocarbon waste from the water, but the CO2 acted to precipitate the clay in the water as well, leaving remarkably clean water--only to have the oil consortium shut our next test down. Seems if they have a resolution to their tailings pond issue, they'll have to spend lots of money and clean that shit up--and there's a huge amount of shit in these ponds--but if they don't have a solution, they can keep getting Canadian gov permits to run these ponds and not spend any money. We had the same issue when we proposed supercritical CO2 treatment of fracking fluids: nope, not interested and don't want to look at your test results.)
This is how we run our world: fuck the environment and people, I need my quarterly profits to maximize shareholder value.
Grrrr...
Nah, just need to use renewable carbon free energy in all the support infra: shipping, manufacturing, harvesting. It's possible, every piece of it has a solution that can be used, but no one has all of them in place on a way you can go deploy right now.
Boats, planes and emergency vehicles. I choose not to be in an ambulance that stops to recharge on the way to the trauma ER.
Don't get me started with pyrolysis...
The idea is to offset any CO2 emissions by absorbing CO2 during photosynthesis. As with all biofuels, a lot depends on how it is produced.
Cellulosic ethanol has a long way to go before it's economically viable, too.
This is why I laugh at libertarians who proclaim the free market will solve our environmental problems. The free market favors the cheapest solution to any problem, not the cleanest.
The problem is that oil companies are run by men in their sixties and seventies who know they’re going to be long dead before the oil wells run dry and the coasts are flooded. They have no intention of sacrificing their current profits for future innovations.
The algae boom emerged at a time in the early 2000s when it seemed like the world still needed to run on some sort of liquid fuel...... funding led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy, with Chevron and United Airlines contributing as well.Those two things are very much related. Electrification of airplanes will be difficult, so creating a bio-fuel ecosystem for them, to supplant the existing fossil-fuel system, is still important.
In the words of Al Franken, they caught the last chopper out of Saigon
I guess Exxon would rather pay its executives enough money to afford yachts than do anything about the looming environmental apocalypse.
I’m old enough to remember when BP re-branded itself as “beyond petroleum” for about 2 weeks. Whatever happened to that?
This pisses me off and I didn’t even work on this project
It accelerates the carbon cycle. Rather than CO2 hanging out in the atmosphere, the algae extract it from the atmosphere and convert it into hydrocarbons. Essentially you’re taking a process that would take millions of years to occur naturally and compressing it to…I dunno…weeks? Months?
Or even carbon negative, depending on how quickly the fuel is produced and consumed.
Map of all the world's oil wells. (Probably not including those little ones people have in their backyard in Texas.) https://uploads.disquscdn.c...