The good oil
We are running out of oil right, so what are we to do?
Well a number of science stories might offer some ideas …
First up. For awhile now a number of Russian scientists have being saying that oil (hydrocarbons) is formed under intense pressure in the Earth’s mantle and this is an ongoing process. Most other scientists laughed. Well recent US research seems to indicate that the Russians may be right. However it’s not clear that hydrocarbons formed in this way could make it to the Earth’s crust, where we get at them, without them burning up.
If you don’t buy that here are some other solutions to our fuel woes.
Dow Chemical has teamed up with Algenol Biofuels to develop a 24-acre biofuel plant. The plant consists of lots of bio-reactors filled with genetically modified algae. Dow will pump in CO2 from its factory processes, sea water and the Sun will add it’s bit. The result? Ethanol and drinking water. The 24-acre plant is expected to produce about 100,000 gallons of ethanol a year (and an equal amount of fresh water); which Dow will use as feed stock in it’s plastics producing process. NOTE: I’ve probablly got a few decimals wrong but my back of the envelope calculation says if we took a piece of land about the size of East Timor and covered it with such plants it would produce enough ethanol to replace crude oil (using 2004 crude oil consumption figures).
Not to be out done Exxon”our ships sink in pristine waters”Mobil, have teamed up with Synthetic Genomics to investigate the use of algae to produce HydroCarbons. ExxonMobil will pitch in about US$300,000 million.
Poor old Jule Biotechnologies doesn’t have any big spending partner, yet. But it also has a process that takes CO2 and sunlight which it supplies to an organism (they claim it is not algae) to produce hydrocarbons. They claim that their process has higher yields than algae based process, and that the entire fuel consumed by the US could be supplied from an area the size of the US pan-handle! Their looking for backers so get in quick.
The advantage of algae/organism production of ethanol over ones based on switch-grass, corn or sugar beat, is that no arable (marginal or otherwise) is required. These plants can be set up in deserts, as long as there access to sea water.
