In a forest of tubes eight metres high in eastern Spain scientists hope they have found the fuel of tomorrow: bio-oil produced with algae mixed with carbon dioxide from a factory.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.
“We are trying to simulate the conditions which existed millions of years ago, when the phytoplankton was transformed into oil,” said engineer Eloy Chapuli. “In this way, we obtain oil that is the same as oil today.”
Every day some of this highly concentrated liquid is extracted and filtered to produce a biomass that is turned into bio-oil. The other great advantage of the system is that it is a depollutant — it absorbs the C02 which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
“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,” or almost as much as the daily export of oil from Iraq.
And how, may I ask does algae get turned into refinaeble oil?
Actually, the Spanish did not “discover” this.
MIT did.
“Microalgae: a green source of renewable H2 – research paper from MIT”
http://oilgae.com/blog/2007/02/microalgae-green-source-of-renewable-h2.html
MIT Algae Photobioreactor
#1 Sargasso
Heat, pressure and time.
It’s never been a problem to produce bio fuels. That’s easy. The tough part is doing it without a net energy loss.
Wonderful stuff, that gasoline.
Oil, coal, natural gas are the fuels of the future: organic, biodegradable, cheap and plentiful, a gift from God.
Me in my M5…..
FUCK YOU, I’M SAVING THE PLANET.
They invest all that money and time to produce…(wait for it), oil.
Nothing better, I agree, lets drill baby drill, and become a net oil exporter, a rich country.
I thought the fuel of the future was burning religious fundies?
Fuel from phytoplankton is a process having almost nothing to do with geologic production. I hate pop science almost as much as I hate religious fundies. You know hate: its how love expresses itself on a grander scale.
Sinclair Oil: Your dinosaur logo should be a single cell.
CO2 is not a pollutant.
#7 Watch out, lightning might strike your personal methane reclamation unit, proving once again there really isn’t a fuel (fool) shortage.
If they make this cheap, then environmentalists will oppose it, as their primary concern is not CO2, but serving the religion of less consumption.
http://sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110323135635.htm
This is a good article on the subject.
I’ll be dead when it gets perfected, so I don’t give a shit.
Yes… Lets take a step backwards to a smog and soot filled world were the rivers are aflame with our pollution and there are no fish left to eat, where the soil is dead from our waste, where the amount of money you have is no guarantee that the medicines will help you at all.
That’s the future we can expect if we take this oil slick path into tomorrow.
This specie doesn’t deserve to survive…
Amusingly enough, this Dantesque vision of the future, worthy of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Sons, come to you from a descendent from Alicante, Spain, where my paternal grand-father hailed from.
When the Spaniards were shooting each other, my grampa decided that he was not going to join entier side and he headed for Montréal. He dodged the draft, and the bullet.
#14 Oddly enough, back when we had smoggy skies and rivers aflame, we had plenty of fish. Not so much these days.
As for the algae based oil, it’s like fusion. An idea that’s been around for a long time, but commercial viability is always just “a few years away”. I’ll believe it when I can buy it at the local Chevron station.
Oh, and it’s not a “depollutant” as far as CO2 goes. The CO2 will get released when you burn the oil. It IS “carbon neutral” in that it’s the same CO2 formerly emitted by the cement plant, rather than newly unearthed CO2 from an oil well.
I wish them good luck~!
#16 If may not be a “depollutant”, but the cement plant will still get a tax deduction.
The advantage of getting oil from algae is that them Muslims rulers can go back to living in tents like the people they rule over instead of living like princes in vast palaces funded by the world’s oil consumption. Also less money for the terrorists.
#15–PeePod==Saturn Eating His Son has NOTHING to do with any vision of the future. Its all about the corruption/evil of tyrants in power. So much so that a father/king will eat his own young to prevent losing his throne.
I stood for a good while (30 minutes==very long for me) in awe in front of this picture thinking it really captured the horror of the Greek Myth. ((DAMN!!–the Greek Mythos is complex/revealing/complete.)) Then 20 minutes later I was blown away by the even superior but lesser known rendition by Rubens.
Things mean what they mean. No Mr Potato face switching parts willy-nilly in your ignorance.
Excellent!! Fossil fuels, Oil and Coal are fuels of the past. The future is renewable clean sources if energy.
The fact that a filthy oil company investing in it suggest merit in the process. My fear is these tools will smother it because it may be too easy to replicate.
#3 – all fuels are a net energy loss! The trick is making the energy loss come from sunlight rather than the same fuel you are trying to produce