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bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
If you want to keep burning fuels, making synfuels doesn't appear as if it will make sense any time soon, because of the energy cost. It's a lot cheaper to make biofuel from algae grown in open raceway ponds as proven at Sandia NREL in the 1980s (yes, I have been posting sentences similar to that here for decades) because you get the energy for making the hydrocarbon chains from the sun. Clean water is hard to come by, but algae doesn't need clean water to grow in; it can be contaminated, brackish, etc.
But the oil companies are some of the biggest lobbyists, so they are going to get their way. For a moment there I thought they were going to dominate solar power, which would allow them to remain relevant going into the future; they can easily afford to sponsor regulatory capture which would make them the de facto winners in the space, but they are choosing to ride petroleum into the future because it's the cheapest source of energy, so there's simply more profit to be made there. And they have never cared about externalities, so why start caring now? The owners don't live downwind or downstream from refineries, and if they do, they can afford to move. It's cheaper than cleaning up.
In order to protect their monopolies on liquid fuels, the oil companies will certainly steer us towards synfuels as much as they can when petroleum becomes nonviable. They are compatible with their existing distribution networks, and don't require the massive amounts of land that biofuel from algae would. There is plenty of land that's not really useful for anything but energy farms (whether solar, algae, or both) but it would be a hassle to acquire it for energy production and there's money to be made without all that hassle, and nobody in charge cares that profiting from it involves destruction of the biosphere we need to live.
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byNarrowband ( 2602733 ) writes:
Algae generated biofuels probably also help with another issue: converting CO2 to O2. In the early days of the space program, algae tanks were hypothesized as a real option for space stations to scrub CO2 and produce breathable oxygen, because various algae varieties do so much more efficiently for their mass than most plants.
Frankly there's probably room for that alongside a whole lot of other energy tech. The main complication I see with renewables at the moment is they seem to be offering Megawatts
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
Algae generated biofuels probably also help with another issue: converting CO2 to O2.
It's true that most of the oxygen we breathe is released by algae, but biofuel from algae does little to produce more net breathable oxygen, because the carbon taken from the atmosphere (and split from the oxygen) is released and recombined with oxygen again when the biofuels are burned. It's possible that some of the captured carbon will wind up in soil, but the goal is always going to be to turn as much of it as possible into fuel. For example, you could separate the lipids and make them into diesel fuel,
byphantomfive ( 622387 ) writes:
How much do biofuels cost? What regulations are oil companies asking for that keep them from happening?
byMacMann ( 7518492 ) writes:
How much do biofuels cost? What regulations are oil companies asking for that keep them from happening?
I doubt the oil companies are concerned about biomass fuels taking away their profits.
First, petroleum is used for more than fuel. I could not find how much money is made with non-fuel petroleum products but I did find that about 15% of the crude ends up being used in ways that are not fuel. If biomass fuels start to become popular then I expect they will still find ways to make money.
Second, it is rare to see pure ethanol or vegetable oils used as fuel as both have problems when the temperature drops to
byCyberax ( 705495 ) writes:
It's a lot cheaper to make biofuel from algae grown in open raceway ponds as proven at Sandia NREL in the 1980s
No, it's not. The acquaculture yields and its complexity are just not worth it. It's far easier to use regular agriculture.
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