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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

And this boys and girls:

""Cost is the big roadblock for algae-based fuel," said Douglas Elliott, the laboratory fellow who led the PNNL team's research. "We believe that the process we've created will help make algae biofuels much more economical."

Is why we won't run out of 'oil' at any time. Even at $500/barrel equivalent there is a point where if you must have 'crude oil' you can make it for a price. Of course at that point its a 'renewable resource' which is kind of funny.

I am glad the PNNL guys have gotten this down to a continuous process. The NASA folks who were showing it at Yuri Day a few years ago were still making algae in batches.

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>>Is why we won't run out of 'oil' at any time. Even at $500/barrel equivalent there is a point where if you must have 'crude oil' you can make it for a price. Of course at that point its a 'renewable resource' which is kind of funny.

Well, yes. We won't run out of oil in the ground either. The Earth actually has enough reserves to last us for thousands of years.

When people say we will "run out of oil" what they actually mean is that we will run out of cheap, easily affordable oil (i.e. oil that can be extracted and transported to refineries easily). I mean, do you know what would happen to gas prices if we had to pay $500/barrel?

So yeah, we will probably always use petroleum, since it has a lot of byproducts used in other industries. But using oil as a fuel? That is going to have to stop soon because of price pressure alone.

>I mean, do you know what would happen to gas prices if we had to pay $500/barrel?

Hmm, I truly wonder if we would actually still run around like headless chickens still denying the viability of electric or if we would actually see it as a viable alternative. It seems people will fervently argue a side no matter how glum/impractical/uneconomical the situation is.

Cars, ships, and trains may be electrified, but I don't think planes will ever be electrified. A huge advantage of fossil fuels over batteries is energy density, and energy density is very important for planes.

> Cars, ships, and trains may be electrified, but I don't think planes will ever be electrified.

Since we've already flown electric planes that statement is, in a weird way, actually true. They've already been "electrified."

Planes can absolutely be electrified. We just need to find a more dense energy storage medium than Li-ion/Li-poly batteries. Lithium-air batteries have energy density comparable to gasoline, so they might work if we can figure out how to make them rechargeable. A fuel cell could potentially work as well.

> Even at $500/barrel equivalent there is a point where if you must have 'crude oil' you can make it for a price.

Sorry, but this is just ignorant nonsense. EROEI is what counts here, not raw "profits".

If your $500/barrel price point was calculated using inputs that require total energy investment equivalent to 2 barrels of oil @ $150/barrel... this is a stupid way of burning perfectly good and relatively cheap natural oil in order to get half the amount of expensive, artificial oil. You are basically engaging in a price arbitrage scheme between yesterday's oil market and tomorrow's oil market (and betting your shirt that you can safely surf the wave ahead of the price adjustments).

The only reliable way to make a profit out of this is to secure government grants, subsidies, or some other type of funding that lets you hedge your looses. Wait... PNNL, NASA.... never mind.

Its a way to convert one sort of energy to another. E.g. solar to petro. Its sensible, has a place in our economy, and is not ignorant, though the article didn't make this all clear.

I agree. It might be sensible, but we do not know per the article information.

Doing some very, very rough estimates, I figured we would might be able to take 20 barrels of algae slurry, "cook" them (@ 350°C & 3000 PSI) for a thousand hours and get one barrel of petrol. Little or no mention of other inputs/processes involved.

My point is, we will be able to do this if we have to, but it will not be cheap, and even if we have the money we may not have other resources to do it at large scale. Like... to make it available for all motorists in the world to drive happily ever after. It is more likely that this will be an strategic resource that governments will use to fulfill needs that cannot be fulfilled any other way (like (military) aviation... you cannot just stick a Mr.Fusion in the tale of a plane and go to the infinity and beyond).

My claim is that the energy equation is independent of oil availability. We aren't going to "run out of energy" as some people postulate. Knowing that is helpful sometimes.

You might want to check the EROEI numbers for algae fuels, the NASA paper suggests that they are lower than they are for oil. They make that claim based on lower transportation costs (feedstock is made 'onsite' of the refinery), and a simpler refining process. None of the drilling or pipeline investment but the "farming" aspect (moving the water around) offsets that pretty much.

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/

Per wikipedia, EROEI for tar sands is 3:1, and they're profitable. :( EROEI for biodiesel is 1.3:1 - and substantially replacing petroleum would take a lot of farmland. So until there's a biodiesel process that ups the EROEI (this algae process might be it), we're stuck.

By contrast, global oil production is around 20:1. It used to be 100:1, back in the 1950s.

"We aren't going to "run out of energy" as some people postulate."

Why?

Because we have ways of making energy that have enough fuel for 'forever' [1]. Solar energy is just nuclear energy where the reactor happens to be 1 AU away and only useful when the planet is blocking access to it.

[1] in the literal sense forever here is 1000's of years, the exemplar is a either a breeder reactor (demonstrated) so thorium reactor (proposed)

Your original claim was that because of economic laws ($500/barrel argument) we will never run out of petrol. (ergo, will be able to find a way to violate laws of physics, because we want to).

If you now want to change your argument and discuss why and how is this technology going to solve our energy problems, I am all ears.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm guessing I worded it poorly.

First, a nit pick, I said "oil" (not petrol) but petrol is a product made from oil and mentioned in the article so its not a big deal.

My claim is that we can make "petrol" out of the air if we want [1]. It does not violate any laws of physics (or thermodynamics). Using petrol to make petrol this way is not effective since the translation leaves you will less petrol than you started with. Using power supplied by a nuclear reaction (as an example) to make petrol this way will convert locally generated nuclear power into transportable "chemical" aka "petrol" power. As most of the energy in the fischer-tropsch process is heat you can use concentrated solar just as easily. the electrical energy used is primarily in running the cooling pumps. Given that "oil" (and from oil, petrol) can be made out of renewable feedstock (CO and H2), I claim we won't ever "run out".

The economic principle I was alluding too was substitution, where an equally effective good at lower cost replaces a good at higher cost in the market. If petrol is $10/liter, cars powered by electricity will replace cars powered by petrol. That is an economic substitution of equal function at a lower cost.

On the Algae process. At least the NASA version required much less heat and cooling the the fischer-tropsch process and in the NASA case no arable farmland (you can grow algae in clear tubes bolted to the sides of buildings if you want). Providing yet another alternative to acquiring long chain hydrocarbons that are more cost effective to create than using a nuclear reactor connected to a Fischer-Tropsch reactor. The challenge of algae systems has been capturing a low marginal cost of additional oil from a process that was not continuous (you want to make a gallon you pay the cost of running the cycle for 1,000 gallons regardless). If however you can make a gallon for the marginal cost of producing an extra few gallons of algage scum, then you can amortize your costs more effectively and carry less risk. Both of these things encourage adoption and production.

Is that clearer? And for the record I don't think I've changed my argument at all here, just filling in the bits which you might have missed.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process

Ok, I get what you mean. I was aware of the Fische-Tropsch process, though I would lie if I say I understand how it works. In the proper context, I understand why you are excited about this new technology hinted in the article.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I do not think either of these will fix the energy problems we are facing. I do believe Fischer-Tropsch could play a part on the solution, and this new technique would be even better at it. Namely, a EROEI neutral-ish way to concentrate a diffuse energy source into a highly packed storage medium for strategic purposes (i.e. transportation, since carrying around the fuel is kind of a hard requirement)

EROEI only matters if this is your only source of energy. At $500/barrel it would make sense to use solar power for the energy intensive bits. Nothing says your conversion plant has to run day and night.

You say that like solar power is free. To calculate the EROEI, you have to include the energy from solar.

Not free, but much cheaper than $500 for each 1.7 mwh, or barrel of oil. Solar is already cheaper than that even in cloudy Britain. EROEI is sort of irrelevant to the question of whether we'll ever "run out of oil." It might be that we'll stop using oil as a primary energy source, but that doesn't mean it'll go away.

EDIT: You might recall that the point you dismissed as "ignorant nonsense" was that we would be able to produce oil at $500/gallon, not that we would use it as a source of energy.

I think you might be referring to someone else.

Ah, I was, sorry.

Thanks for answering the question I was going to ask.

However, if you move the process out into the desert and use concentrated solar power to provide the heat then you have a solar power process running at 50% efficiency to produce a stable portable store of energy, which makes a lot more sense.

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