Friday, December 20, 2013Good morning,
Scientists Manufacture Biofuel from Algae in Minutes. This is the kind of headline that makes environmentalists and alternative energy advocates sit up and pay attention.
It seems like practically every month a story pops up about some whacky idea to create free energy or turn water into fuel or some other bizarre scheme, but the scientists behind this innovation are onto something very real that could have a serious environmental impact.
Thanks for reading,
Your Living Green editor
Email the Editor***A new scientific discovery that takes algae and turns it into crude oil in minutes rather than millions of years could be the end of constant worries over "peak oil."
Engineers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) announced that they have created a process that takes an enriched stew of algae and turns it into crude oil which, in turn, can be made into a usable bio-fuel.
In a press release, PNNL described, "In the PNNL process, a slurry of wet algae is pumped into the front end of a chemical reactor. Once the system is up and running, out comes crude oil in less than an hour, along with water and a byproduct stream of material containing phosphorus that can be recycled to grow more algae."
The press release also noted that "conventional refining" is then capable of taking the man-made crude oil and turning it into usable biofuels. PNNL notes that the man-made crude can be made into "aviation fuel, gasoline, or diesel fuel."
PNNL also feels that its process has eliminated the high cost of other algae-based biofuels processes.
Another exciting development in this new process is that the system works continuously. Other attempts created biofuels in single batches, but this new process works more like an assembly line in a continuously moving and producing system.
The new process also dispenses with the use of toxic chemicals and solvents to separate the energy-rich oils from the algae. The process uses high heat and pressure instead.
Perhaps it won't be long before humanity manufacturing its own oil eliminates the question of whether to drill the earth for it.