June 12, 2008: Algae

[footfootfoot]

"Chaohu Lake... IS PEOPLE!!!

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

"Chaohu Lake... IS PEOPLE!!!

Big Soylent ha-has to you sir...

[xoxoxoBruce]

China may have the last laugh.

As Boeing prepares for more biofuel test flights, the airframer is focusing its efforts on accelerating the development of algae-based energy sources. The rapidly growing raw material could potentially be converted into large amounts of fuel without taking away from food supplies. Algae does not reuire freshwater to thrive.
Boeing is focused on “next generation” alternatives fuels, not palm oil or ethanol-based fuels, as a company spokesman explains,“We saw a spike in rice prices. Those are things we don’t want to compete with.”

“[Algae] provides a lot of the good qualities that are needed to ensure that aviation biofuel needs are met in a sustainable way,” says Darrin Morgan, who oversees strategy development and execution for Boeing’s sustainable biofuels program. Morgan and Boeing director of environmental strategy Billy Glover will co-chair a steering committee of the Algal Biomass Organization, a nonprofit that promotes and advocates for the development of commercially viable transportation fuels.

In order to achieve that viability, Algae-based fuels need a supply chain Morgan says, adding such fuels are in the early stages of development. The organization aims to accelerate the development of such power sources. Having successfully completed its first part-biofuel powered flight, Virgin Atlantic is hoping a trial can be performed using algae as a biofuel source next year.

Boeing and Virgin Atlantic used a 20% mix composed of babassu oil and coconut oil on one of the carrier’s GE CF6-powered Boeing 747-400s on the test performed earlier this year. In the meantime, Jatropha-sourced biofuel will power the next Boeing test flight in partnership with Rolls-Royce. One RB211 engine will use the alternative fuel during an Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 flight in the fourth quarter. Continental Airlines has not identified what type of fuel it will use in its test flight. In partnership with Boeing and GE Aviation, the demonstration will be in the first half of 2009 using a next-generation 737 with CFM International CFM56-7B engines.

Aside from proving that aircraft can run on biofuel, the test flight helped create demand from within the fuel supply chain, spurring the creation of new fuel types, Morgan says. “The fuel used in the [test] flight came about because we asked,” he says.

[spudcon]

So, next we'll be buying pollution products from China to fuel our economy. I'm assuming people in this country won't allow us to drill for our own pollution products?

[SPUCK]

Great now even the airliners will smell like french fries..

[spudcon]

snip" The United States still has a vast lead in carbon dioxide emissions per person. The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons." snip
!9.4 tons per person per year? per minute, per lifetime? Is that CO2 counting exhalation? And who's been here measuring my CO2 anyway. If I can make 19.4 tons float in the atmosphere, I don't think we have an energy crisis anymore. I think this is just more nonsense, trying to make America look bad because we succeed more than any other system out there, and have been for 200 years.

[Imigo Jones]

Originally Posted by spudcon

snip" The United States still has a vast lead in carbon dioxide emissions per person. The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons." snip
!9.4 tons per person per year? per minute, per lifetime? Is that CO2 counting exhalation? And who's been here measuring my CO2 anyway. If I can make 19.4 tons float in the atmosphere, I don't think we have an energy crisis anymore. I think this is just more nonsense, trying to make America look bad because we succeed more than any other system out there, and have been for 200 years.

Since the thrust of the article was on annual national totals, spudcon, it might be assumed that the per capita figures were annual, too, but that sure seems like a lot. I don't disagree that much of the world likes to do what they can "to make America look bad because we succeed," but let's see what the numbers seem to mean:
19.4 tons/year = 38,800 pounds / 365.25 days = 106.23 pounds/day

Since this is carbon dioxide, not pounds of solid coal equivalent or something, it seems preposterously high. Let's see what the figures would mean if applied to an 80-year lifetime:
19.4 tons / lifetime = 38,800 pounds / 80 years = 485 pounds/year = 1.33 pounds/day

That seems more like it--good catch, spudcon. (I wanted to give you a gold star, but the closest thing in the smiley list is the Vietnamese flag.)



It's be nice if the Times appended a clarification to the online article sometime soon.

I sure wouldn't doubt, though, that relative to the other nations listed, the U.S. per cap average is really, really high, as suggested by the numbers, lifetime or whatever. Much of this production represents an amazing benefit to the whole world, and the rest of the world doesn't seem to say, "I love you," enough. They might be grudgingly thinking it every now and then, like when another pop tart springs out into the world from Disney like Athena from the head of Zeus.



A star is born--from the minds of Imagineers--to benefit an impressed mankind.

Still, it'd be nice to hear those three little words every now and then.

Maybe they do try to tell us, but our "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" chant drowns out their tender, attractively accented whispers. One has to admit, in any case, that a lot of American production and consumption is a colossal, screeching waste of, of, everything. I hate to see a jillion rampantly materialistic Chinese surpassing that as a whole, or start to approach it per capita.

[HungLikeJesus]

That data seems to be tons/person/year.

Here's CO2 emissions data for about 40 countries for 2002, along with GNP per capita.

[spudcon]

So, HLJ, how does that graph have credibility, given what Imigo computed of 106.23 pounds per day per American. That figure will be higher yet, if you consider children too young to have access to CO2 emitting equipment. But still, even 106+lbs a day is ridiclous.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's not what you personally produce. It's your share of all the power plant's output, your share of all the motor vehicles, trains and planes, your share of all the concrete production and construction. It adds up to nearly 20 tons per person, per year.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

your share of all the concrete production and construction.

We all know China has a lot of construction going on, but check out this graph of concrete use in 2007 by country. This is not per capita, but overall. Based on this data.

[onetrack]

I've never had it fully explained to me yet (but maybe Al Gore can produce the explanation - he does that well, with glib answers for most things that are difficult to explain) .. how Carbon Dioxide, which is a heavier-than-air gas .. can climb to sufficient stratospheric heights, and in sufficient quantities, to act as a global warming agent .. ??

Note the simple explanation on the following site .. and I quote ..

CO2 gas is 1.5 times as heavy as air, thus if released to the air it will concentrate at low elevations.

http://www.uigi.com/carbondioxide.html (it's towards the bottom of the first text box ..)

Now, I notice on the following, MI university, glib GW site .. no mention ANYWHERE of Carbon Dioxide being 1.5 times as heavy as air .. and concentrating at LOW ELEVATIONS .. ??

Global Warming Horror .. http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm

Maybe I missed something in science class?? .. maybe it was when I was asleep?? .. or maybe when it was I was too busy admiring how shapely, and how long, the legs were, on Miss Snorks .. ??

[glatt]

Air gets mixed up by wind.

See the "Cloud Wake" IOTD.

[spudcon]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's not what you personally produce. It's your share of all the power plant's output, your share of all the motor vehicles, trains and planes, your share of all the concrete production and construction. It adds up to nearly 20 tons per person, per year.

I think I see how this works. We(theUS) put 20 tons of CO2 per year per capita in tha atmosphere, while China, which has a very huge population, are, for the moment, is charge with only 2 tons per year per capita. What about the actual readings per country?

[Imigo Jones]

Originally Posted by spudcon

We(theUS) put 20 tons of CO2 per year per capita in tha atmosphere, while China, which has a very huge population, are, for the moment, is charge with only 2 tons per year per capita.

spud, from the Times article I was excerpting above:
The average American is responsible for 19.4 tons. Average emissions per person in Russia are 11.8 tons; in the European Union, 8.6 tons; China, 5.1 tons; and India, 1.8 tons. . . . [Earlier] In 2007 China’s emissions were 14 percent higher than those of the United States.

You engineers might smirk, but I like simple "story problems" to recast the numbers . . . :
1
Chinese population / U.S. pop. = 1,322 million (2007 est.) / 301 mil = 4.39
Chinese per cap emissions (tons) / U.S. = 5.1 /19.4 = 0.2629
Pop. ratio X per cap emissions ratio = 4.39 X 0.2629
= 1.15, or close to "14 percent higher" in article

2
(Chinese pop. X per cap emissions) / (U.S. pop. X per cap)
= (1,322 mil X 5.1 tons)/(301 mil X 19.4 tons)
= 6,742.2 million tons / 6,014.0 mil tons
= 1.12, or close to the "14 percent higher" of the article.

CO2 gas is 1.5 times as heavy as air

Even at 1.5 times as heavy as air, it's hard to fathom that each American is "responsible" for 106 pounds per day. I don't disbelieve it--it's just astounding. I totally understand that this is the average of all industrial processes, construction, transportation that occurs--still just astounding!

[Future side research project: How much CO2 per day does the average adult produce simply from respiration? Is it even 1 pound?]

But 106 pounds a day. Really, somebody's wasting a lot of fossil fuels, building stuff, etc. in a way that I would not approve and would never make use of. [Yahoo email smiley with halo not available for linking anymore.] This is not counting distant roadways, schools, and such for the common good. Speaking of cooking with concrete, not sure that all dams (China's, infamously) are really for the common good. Air Force One and presidential candidates criss-crossing the country every week or every day--take a train, you wasteful egomaniacs!



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