Syngas, aka Producer Gas, has a very long history preceding the oil era. The technology was used to convert coal into a hydrogen/carbon monoxide mix by heating coal in an anoxic environment and treating it with steam, then piping the producer gas out to customers.
If you've visited Seattle, you can see the relics of this in Gas Works Park on the north shore of Lake Union, where the producer gas was created from coal offloaded from the rail line. The gas was then piped under the lake to the steam plant that is now the HQ of a major biotech company. Seattle Light and Power piped steam from there all over downtown Seattle... well, they still pipe steam all over downtown, or did in the 1990's when I was there, but they dont use coal or producer gas anymore.
So Dies Peak Oil
Carbon Price
Hi IntLibberIntLibber wrote:FYI: anybody thinking any biofuel plant can get rich on trading carbon credits is not paying attention. Since the collapse of the Copenhagen talks and the release of the climategate emails from CRU, carbon credit trading markets have seen these credits tank in value so they are around or less than one cent per ton of emissions.
I'm a developer of one of the carbon trading platforms in the EUETS scheme. Currently EU Allowances (EUAs) are trading at close to €16. Admittedly this is down from a high of almost €30 in July 2008 (before Copenhagen), but is also up from the low of €10 reached in Feb 2009.
Hard work pays off later... Laziness pays off now!
A Spanish effort to make petroleum from algae in Yahoo News today:
Spanish scientists search for fuel of the future
by Virginie Grognou – Thu Mar 31, 2:32 am ET
AFP
"Almost 400 of the green tubes, filled with millions of microscopic algae, cover a plain near the city of Alicante, next to a cement works from which the C02 is captured and transported via a pipeline to the "blue petroleum" factory."
"... at the Bio Fuel Systems (BFS) company."
"In a unit that covers 50 square kilometres, which is not something enormous, in barren regions of southern Spain, we could produce about 1.25 million barrels per day ..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110331/bs ... ntresearch
Spanish scientists search for fuel of the future
by Virginie Grognou – Thu Mar 31, 2:32 am ET
AFP
"Almost 400 of the green tubes, filled with millions of microscopic algae, cover a plain near the city of Alicante, next to a cement works from which the C02 is captured and transported via a pipeline to the "blue petroleum" factory."
"... at the Bio Fuel Systems (BFS) company."
"In a unit that covers 50 square kilometres, which is not something enormous, in barren regions of southern Spain, we could produce about 1.25 million barrels per day ..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110331/bs ... ntresearch
Why is that the idea of a biology that turns CO2 and sunlight into hydrocarbons competing with a biology that turns CO2 and sunlight into O2 bothers me?
When discussing the many ways that humans can destroy the world, bioengineering is the one I am most fearful of.
"If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously. "
- Dr. Ian Malcolm
I just hope they don't mix in any frog DNA.
When discussing the many ways that humans can destroy the world, bioengineering is the one I am most fearful of.
"If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously. "
- Dr. Ian Malcolm
I just hope they don't mix in any frog DNA.
I've said it before, all technologies, with the possible exception of a Bussard Interstellar Ramjet Starkiller, pale into insignificance compared to the possible impact, both for good and evil, of genetic engineering.
But green goo in glass tubes can be made relatively innocuous. You could engineer a cyanobacterial strain to turn the oceans into toxic pea soup, but more likely you would engineer a strain to be totally dependent on some factor in the biofuel manufacturing process. Make 'em thermophilic, for example, so that they only function in tubes heated by the sun.
Or make 'em dependent on lysine.
Ooops, yeah, that might not work.
But green goo in glass tubes can be made relatively innocuous. You could engineer a cyanobacterial strain to turn the oceans into toxic pea soup, but more likely you would engineer a strain to be totally dependent on some factor in the biofuel manufacturing process. Make 'em thermophilic, for example, so that they only function in tubes heated by the sun.
Or make 'em dependent on lysine.
Ooops, yeah, that might not work.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/t ... l-process/Giorgio wrote:The main issue of this technology is still squeezing out the oil from the bacteria. They should start to concentrate their effort on this point.