Alternative fuels as a stepping stone to. . .gasoline?

[theunchosen]

This thread is a branch off from http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post101400 that page.

I'm not sure if this is the right forum but it does fall under general efficiency of research direction(?).

Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel | Signtific

This is the fire-carrier article. Essentially the idea is to modify certain deep sea bacteria that convert various volcanic gasses, including CO2, into other things like methane.

What they are hoping is to produce life forms that can do it much faster, or are just hungrier.

My pitch is not that hyrbids are a bad investment because either way if they increase the FE of gasoline cars then they will still do that but their dent in CO2 production won't really matter.

My pitch is this is why several of the large car firms are scaling back research or emphasis on EV and alternatives.

possible, impossible, opinions, comments?

Obviously the bacteria can't consume 100% of the CO2 but certain forms of algae have already demonstrated an ability to consume 80% that is produced by a coal plant, and these designer life forms seem to have the conversion down pat for survival on the ocean floor. . .

..?

[jamesqf]

I think what gets overlooked in all these "bacteria/algae convert CO2 to..." schemes is that it takes energy to do the conversion. That energy has to come from sunlight, and there's only so much energy per square meter to be had. So it's really no different in principle than growing corn or sugar cane and converting it to ethanol, just that the conversion/separation might be more efficient. But no matter what they do, it's still not going to get more than the 1000 or so watts per square meter that's in the sunlight.

[theunchosen]

With the algae that is true, it only functions in sunlight.

The bacteria don't actually require sunlight. They run on Chemosynthesis. Currently these bacteria operate on the ocean floor in no light conditions.

It also has huge advantages because the bacteria is not becoming the fuel as it does in most of the algae situations. Those schemes are really just accelerated petroleum growth techniques, while this is what trees do. They take CO2 and convert it to O2. These creatures take CO2 and convert them to various forms of HCs.

The other large advantage to this technique is it actually helps consume the CO2 you produce. I'm not sure if I buy into GHG CO2 being a problem or not. Nature is incredibly flexible and I can only assume that in producing a vast amount of something nature will allow runaway growth of a plant that devours that(like a free market if there is something to be had for free there will be someone to sell it). But even if CO2 is not a dangerous GHG then its plentifully available in most of the processes we enjoy. So we can make our overall gneration of electricity far more efficient by piping our CO2 through vats of bacteria that convert it to fuel and reduce emissions.

Whichever country is able to get a jump on this first is likely to become not a world leader but THE world leader. The fuel would be conveniently delivered to the surface in near consumable condition and the refineries would not have to transport the fuel as far(plants that produce plenty of CO2 for the process are all over the country so fuel is no longer being shipped from Texas to the various corners of the US its just being shipped around the corner).

The US might not be able to go "off-the-grid" with it but with out own wells we could definitely stop importing it.

If global warming is happening and its our fault removing 20% of global emissions would be one huge step towards stopping it. I don't think its happening but then no one will ever blame us again no matter what.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I think what gets overlooked in all these "bacteria/algae convert CO2 to..." schemes is that it takes energy to do the conversion. That energy has to come from sunlight, and there's only so much energy per square meter to be had. So it's really no different in principle than growing corn or sugar cane and converting it to ethanol, just that the conversion/separation might be more efficient. But no matter what they do, it's still not going to get more than the 1000 or so watts per square meter that's in the sunlight.

But it is still worth the investment, many algae strains are valuable be it for their health effects as food or for their vegetable oil. Also algae can be grown vertically in clear columns within the power plants existing footprint to reduce emissions and as stated above even in existing forms a tank of ocean creatures could remove emissions without any sunlight at all.

The costs of these methods are very small when compared to the overall cost of the powerplant and it is foolish that they aren't implimented at least in part on new construction, even with the EXISTING strains of bacteria and algae since the polution reduction would still be there, any additional uses for the bacteria and the algae would be just an added benefit to compliment the polution reduction.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by theunchosen

The bacteria don't actually require sunlight. They run on Chemosynthesis. Currently these bacteria operate on the ocean floor in no light conditions.

But the energy still has to come from somewhere. It takes a certain amount of energy (the same amount that you got by combining them in the first place) to split that CO2 molecule into C and O2. Those ocean floor chemosynthetic bacteria might be getting their energy from e.g. iron & sulfur reactions, but that only works as long as there's a supply of whatever they need to "eat" and "breathe".

As for growing vertically, that only works up to a point. There are X number of photons in sunlight. The algae in the top inch of the column intercept some fraction of those, the ones in the inch below that the same fraction of what's left, and so on. Eventually you reach a depth below which there's effectively no sunlight available.

[dcb]

And what if we manage to kill all the bacteria first by dumping radioactive waste on them?

[theunchosen]

yes it does take more energy than is available simply within the exhaust gases. I'm not pretending to say its totally free. The ideas I've seen so far are two part. One part is an algae base that the bacteria eat along with CO2 to produce fuel. The advantage of the system is you get the added boost of the algae eating up CO2 during peak production hours.

Disadvantage is you have to feed the bacteria, but the algae can pretty effectively manage that without much attention.

The point still remains, if you can convert your exhaust gases into consumable fuel for low cost low maintenance you would be a fool not to. The system's beauty is its passivity. You pump exhaust across it and just make sure the algae gets sun and it takes care of everything else for you. drain the tanks filter them separate the aqueous layer off, refine slightly , done.

You went from producing electricity to producing electricity and a substantial chunk of petrol.

[theunchosen]

Originally Posted by dcb

And what if we manage to kill all the bacteria first by dumping radioactive waste on them?

. . .coal ash?

The normal filtration of particulate matter has to be done before you can dump it into the environment with these guys but also their natural systems forced them to eat various oxide compounds. The proposed ideas are still floating whether or not it would be feasible to tailor them to digest NOx and SOx as well. The bonuses are you don't have to feed them as much, but if you get out of kilter with concentrations you could whipe out half your batch(not enough food).

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by theunchosen

You pump exhaust across it and just make sure the algae gets sun and it takes care of everything else for you. drain the tanks filter them separate the aqueous layer off, refine slightly , done.

The problem, though, is the way you've got it set up makes it look like a "magic wand" to eliminate CO2 emissions from power plants, which it isn't at all. Say you've got a 100 MWatt coal-fired plant located at latitude 45, with 50% thermal efficiency. Then even if your algae did their photosynthesis with 100% efficiency, you need to devote about 800,000 square meters of land to them in order to capture enough sunlight to reconvert 100% of the CO2. Real photosynthesis is much less efficient Photosynthetic efficiency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia so you'd need about 12-15 times the area, say 10 km^2 per 100 MWatts of generation.

And what if we manage to kill all the bacteria first by dumping radioactive waste on them?

Not an easy thing to do, for example see here: Deinococcus radiodurans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Not to mention the minor :-) lapse of logic in thinking you'd need to remove CO2 from nuclear power plant waste...)

[theunchosen]

The algae aren't the CO2 devourers. . .the bacteria are.

Its their food. They eat non-stop and they can do it in the dark. They do require secondary nutrition like we do, various compounds so that they can self-replicate, but they don't need them in anywhere near the amounts they need sugars.

The algae are just supplimental nutrition for your bacteria.

I know its not a magic wand, but life is pretty close to magic. We may be relatively certain how it works but we have 0 ability to make it happen. We might know exactly how plants convert CO2 to O2 but we can't from scratch manufacture something that does it like they do. In that sense it is magic.

What we can do is manipulate bacteria that already devour nitrogen, sulfur and carbon compounds(in the dark) and dump out sugars and oxygen to instead dump out HCs. Its not really magic at all, its what your body does in reverse. You intake O2 and sugars and return CO2 and water. Bacteria use the CO2 and other compounds and run in reverse.

Yes of course energy has to come in somewhere. Thats the heat from the coal plant and supplimental energy in the form of algae. That said the process obviously also won't convert 100% of the CO2 it consumes to fuels. Most of the compounds the bacteria absorb will go to producing more bacteria and the leftovers will be sloughed off as HCs.

Its still a far superior technology to anything else even on the map. Converting the grid to solar or wind or nuclear or some combination will take a very long time and come at immense cost. Re-vamping our current power output facilities to additionally consume CO2 and produce small amounts of fuel in the process is much easier.

The people behind the idea are also proposing that these bacteria could be installed in CO2 laden areas. This would cause an immediate reduction in CO2 levels in and around cities and highways, because those locations are still producing CO2. If you drop bacteria farms along the highway they can passively clean CO2 and provide fuel to a more local refinery system and avoid shipping it across the country to get it refined.

It's not magic, but like solar it doesn't have much of a legacy cost. It's somewhat expensive up front, but in the long run its cheap. The other advantage is once you get some of the bacteria you can just let it multiply until its meeting your CO2 output instead of having to buy more.

And yes its not currently available because the bacteria die off too quickly to maintain a population.

Having said that, there is no other fuel system that could easily step into our current fuel delivery infrastructure. Hydrogen, EV, and other fuel cells all require a massive overhaul of every single filling station in the US. They also require every single car to be refitted with a new fuel system. So far none can match the ease and convenience of using a liquid non-compressed fuel when refilling the power-pack. Hydrogen filling can only go so fast before the lines get warm and you risk detonating a substantial fireball, fuel cells have the same problems, and batteries take a long time to recharge as well. If the idea is to use pre-filled canisters/cells/batteries then everytime you fill the batteries will have to be inspected to make sure you aren't dumping off junk. Also each station will have to have a veritable warehouse of canisters/cells/batteries.

If there is even a fraction of a chance we can make a bacteria convert CO2 to fuel even at just 1-3% its worth it. Why spend money on something that will force an enormous initial investment and then also force an infrastructure investment? Thats why I hesitantly applaud alternative fuels because its money that could be spent making this technology more of a reality.