The Housemate Sessions go Mellow

I edited four more of Housemate D's songs today. They are very mellow. I'll just put up two of them here.

For other installments in The Housemate Sessions, click my Music subject.

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First Instance of "Large-Scale" Algae Farm

Solix Biofuels, a long time member of my algae watchlist, inoculated their newly-completed algae ponds with microalgae on July 16. Production of algae oil should be in full-swing by the end of summer. They predict they will produce 3,000 gallons of oil per acre by the end of this year. This is the first time I know of that the phrase "large scale" has been applied to an algae farm demonstration.

Another company, the non-profit CEHMM in New Mexico, plans to start selling algae oil off its own open-air pond on September 1.

These developments, along with recent advances by Origin Oil and Exxon's announcement of their $600 million investment in algae farming in partnership with geneticist Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics means things are moving along for this source of second-generation biofuel. Stay tuned!

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This Takes All The Fun Out Of It

. . . but also saps credibility of Exxon-funded climate change deniers.

Though they have worked through the American Enterprise Institute to fund global warming doubters, spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 at the AEI and other organizations on such propaganda (see previous link), and still fund global warming doubters after stating in 2008 that they would cut such funding, these goons have now announced that they will sink $600 million into algae research for growing fuel oil. Apparently, they have been investigating alternative energy in private for years. After considering many possibilities, they have decided that algae is the best course to pursue. And this $600 million commitment, if it is true, sure does outweigh their denials of the need for alternative fuels.

Update: Business Week has an article describing Exxon's attitude on this.

Maybe it was this pressure from the Rockefellers and other shareholders that caused Exxon to change its tack.

In this new venture, Exxon is working with Craig Venter who genetically engineers algae for optimal oil production, and has even created algae that secretes its oil so that the oil does not need to be harvested from the cells.

So I guess I gotta add Exxon to my algae watchlist. The climate is changing indeed!

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Palin Reality TV: I Called It!

I first suggested a Palin reality TV show back on 11/17/08 in a comment on this post at the former Mudflats location. Now Levi Johnston has mentioned it. You know it would be huge. It's all she ever wanted anyway. And I called it. Most of politics is thinly veiled reality TV, attracting narcissists with no shame. The veil is thinnest of all with Palin.

So how about some show title suggestions:

Trailin' Palin
Much Ado about the Shrew
No Taxes, Just Taxidermy
Tantrums and Tangents: The Calculus of Raising Trig
Speaking in Tongues
The Maverick Matriarch

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China Could Kick Our Butts in Algae

. . . if we don't get our act together. China is investing heavily in algae farms, powered by wind, to sequestrate their voluminous CO2 emissions. I was just saying the other day that wind could power algae farms in southwestern United States. I've also said that I think a lot of the elements for successful algae farming do exist -- someone just needs to bring them together for the right kind of farm. If China beats us on this thing, I'm gonna be seriously pissed.

Like nearly all algae ventures, China's is in development stages and is a few years away from commercial production. So they are not necessarily way ahead of us.

Meanwhile, Buffalo Bill from the last entry wants to make sure his own government is not funding algae farming. I'm gonna guess he doesn't mind his government having funded installing the third most corrupt government in the world in Iraq because that's serious patriotic wartime freedom stuff. So maybe he won't mind if our own Pentagon gets into algae farming. After all, tanks and jets need fuel too!

The closest thing our country has to a commercially operating algae farm, that I know of, is this farm run by the state-funded Center for Excellence in Hazardous Materials Management in New Mexico. They bill this as a commercial demonstration farm. I presume this means that, while every algae company has a small bioreactor that demonstrates their process, this farm will demonstrate it on a larger, more commercial scale. It's due to start production in September, and I'm looking forward to it.

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Algae Exec Stuffs Fox News' Willard

I have not been following Cody Willard, but he looks to me like another failed attempt, like Tucker Carlson, to make conservatism look youthful and cool while actually being just a whining chump.

So here's this short segment from Fox News' Happy Hour (also viewable off this page) where they introduce algae, "that same stuff you try to keep off the inside of your fish tank," as some funky new kind of energy source -- as if they have not already had a bald algae executive on their show.

There is a lot in the video. The CEO of Origin Oil, Riggs Eckelberry, says that getting oil out of algae is ten times more expensive than getting it out of a seed. I had not known of this drastic discrepancy. It is probably a big reason why algae is not already a source of fuel oil. But Eckelberry claims that his company has found a new way to extract oil that cuts this cost significantly.

Then, instead of asking how this relates to the "food vs. fuel" problem with biofuels, or energy security, or global warming, Cody Willard (you wonder if his name was derived from William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody to evoke connotations of the wild west and Ronald Reagan in the susceptible minds of conservatives) wants to make sure he's not paying for it with his taxes.

Eckelberry says his company is not government subsidized. It is just a technology company that wants to sell products to algae growers. It's the algae growers that can and do receive some government subsidies. Willard balks at this, and Eckelberry reminds him that traditional oil companies have received government subsidies too. Willard balks at this too. (And I balk at this, but do any of us really know what the world would look like if there were no government subsidies for anything? Ideologue's projections are always over simplified.)

Wild Bill Cody says, "Google didn't need help. Twitter didn't need help."

Eckelberry shuts him down with, "Who created the Internet?"

Ka-blam.

Also, twice in the segment, Willard says, "It's penny stock. Don't buy it just because you saw it on our show." I can understand not wanting to buy in to the algae sector just yet. But I'm not sure that penny stock in a company with possibly one of the major keys to success for this industry deserves such an emphatic "don't buy" statement either.

And then Willard asks if he can cook with the oil from algae. As if this has not been brought up before in every algae discussion . . . as if people are not already stealing used cooking oil from restaurants to turn into biofuel . . . what a doof.

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Night, On our Porch

At night the insects are like maracas intent on torture, and the sound of traffic looms close, as if the interstate has sidled up the hill like a snake. You can hear frogs too, and at least one quick owl's shriek.

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First, the Bad News

Greenfuels Technologies is the first algae company I've been following to bite the dust. They had been running some promising demonstrations at fossil fuel burning power plants, including the Redhawk plant in Arizona and Big Cajun II in Louisiana, showing how CO2 emissions can be diverted through algae incubators and recycled into oil which could be made into transportation fuels.

This letter from their then-CEO describes some of the problems they were facing in 2007. The algae incubators at the Redhawk plant produced algae more quickly than expected, and the algae was not harvested fast enough. This lead to overpopulation of algae which cut off sunlight in the incubator and killed the algae. The incubator was shut down for retooling. Another technical problem was that their new harvesting technology was found to be twice as expensive as initially projected.

It now looks like Arizona Public Service, which owns the Redhawk plant, will continue its own efforts to recycle CO2 using algae.

Greenfuels had also been working on an algae incubator to recycle gases from a cement-making plant in Spain.

The troubles at Greenfuels are probably just a hint of the challenges being faced by many algae startups around the world. Algae evangelists like me (evalgelists?) make blog postings that celebrate algae as the cure for the world's energy problems. But if algae is so great, then what's the holdup? Or is it too good to be true?

For one thing, algae is not attracting venture capital yet. This article recognizes the potential in algae but says that algae growing technology does not promise to yield profits soon enough to warrant venture capital investment at this time.

This report from the Algae Biofuels World Summit touches on many other difficulties involved in growing algae, removing water from it, and extracting oil. There is the debate of whether to grow it in open ponds or in enclosed incubators -- one speaker favors open ponds because he says none of the prototype enclosed incubators run by the various algae startups would work on a commercial scale. But, with open ponds, there is the problem of water evaporation, and the report goes on to say that this, rather than land availability, is the most limiting factor in large-scale algae production.

Other challenges facing the algae industry are genetically engineering algae strains that produce optimal yield; working with the government to develop means of regulating this hybrid industrial and agricultural business; and finding the best ways to separate algae from water and oil from algae in the harvesting stage.

And while one might think the current economic stimulus package might benefit the algae industry, the problem is that there are no shovel-ready algae projects. So this round of stimulus might contribute nothing to algae.

The good news is that algae research is indeed progressing. Origin Oil claims to have a very efficient way to distribute nutrients to algae in the growing stage without agitating the algae (agitation apparently slows algae growth), and an inexpensive way to extract oil in the harvesting stage using electromagnetic waves and pH adjustment of the water. The algae cells are cracked open and their oil floats to the top of a settling chamber, water remains in the middle, and broken algae mass collects at the bottom.

And, in New Mexico, the Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management expects to be producing algae oil commercially, on a small scale, by September 1. They will be growing their algae in open ponds and hope to produce 5,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. One quote in the article says that, on 5,000 acres, the 25 million gallons produced could provide half of the Diesel fuel needed by that state in one year. Probably these optimistic projections will not be reached, but if the project can demonstrate feasibility in algae farming, that will mean a lot. It will also create 165 well-paying high-tech jobs. This is the only algae project I know of expecting to produce oil for sale regularly in the near future.

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