Company to make a LOT of ethanol via algae secretion

[DU Biggs]

Originally Posted by ByTheLake

why is that significant? Just silly filler words.

haha i was thinking the same thing.....perhaps its easier to believe that a Kangaroo could be trained to ***** out fuel more easily because its "newer"

[MisterMe]

Last week, it was Sapphire Energy; this week, it is Algenol. Both are promising energy from algae. Rather than technical journals, websites associated with popular publications are given as authorities. Both sound like hoaxes.

Can plants produce alcohol? Every bootlegger knows that they can. The issue is one of yield and efficiency. If algae were competitive with yeast in the production of alcohol, then the spirits industry would have switched to the green stuff centuries ago.

[Wolfman01]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Last week, it was Sapphire Energy; this week, it is Algenol. Both are promising energy from algae. Rather than technical journals, websites associated with popular publications are given as authorities. Both sound like hoaxes.

Can plants produce alcohol? Every bootlegger knows that they can. The issue is one of yield and efficiency. If algae were competitive with yeast in the production of alcohol, then the spirits industry would have switched to the green stuff centuries ago.

Where does this kind of thinking come from. That's just like saying that if cars were such a great invention, they would have been invented back in the caveman days. Ethanol from algae is just another progression. Your moonshiners use what's already known, available and plentiful. I highly doubt that they looked at their local pond scum, and thought about the merits of making booze out of the stuff.

[hunchman]

.........if this works then what about the commodity traders?.........how are they going to trade algae?......by the pound or by the barrel full?................there has to be a simple solution so wall street can reap the benefits of this........

[slowinthefastlane]

Originally Posted by hunchman

.........if this works then what about the commodity traders?.........how are they going to trade algae?......by the pound or by the barrel full?................there has to be a simple solution so wall street can reap the benefits of this........

Probably like any other agricultural product on the commodities market (i.e. pork bellies, soybeans, wheat, and frozen concentrated orange juice). How they actually sell them depends on the commodity. For instance, frozen concentrated orange juice futures are sold by the contract in lots of 15,000 pounds (1 contact = 15,000 lbs of FCOJ solids).

[alps]

Great! That means the price of Algae is going to go up!
Stock up now folks.

[Butz]

Originally Posted by logansowner

Well obviously we are going to fail, we should just not try. While were at it, work is hard, so we can just all go on welfare.

welfare

[skylark68]

Originally Posted by alps

Great! That means the price of Algae is going to go up!
Stock up now folks.

Now that's funny.

I was just thinking about how people will feel about burning up poor defenseless algae.

[Inchworm]

Originally Posted by skylark68

Now that's funny.

I was just thinking about how people will feel about burning up poor defenseless algae.

Yep, PETA --> People for the Ethical Treatment of Algae

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by Wolfman01

... I highly doubt that they looked at their local pond scum, and thought about the merits of making booze out of the stuff.

Have you got a lot to learn. Human beings have been producing alcohol as a commercial product for thousands of years. After all, the ancient Egyptians invented beer.

However, it began long before the Egyptians. Animals have a natural affinity for alcohol. Birds and animals don't know how to produce alcohol, but they are most certainly familiar with it. Birds will eat every fermented berry on a tree--or at least try to until they fall down drunk. Cows will eat all of the fermented corn mash in their trough and walk away drunk. Stagger away is a better phrase.

Whether or not you doubt it, if some monkey had fallen into an algae-covered pond or mud hole with even a hint of alcohol, then the monkeys would have cultivated algae in every mud hole in the forest. The entire ecosystem of the forest would be centered around spiked ponds and mud holes.

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Have you got a lot to learn. Human beings have been producing alcohol as a commercial product for thousands of years. After all, the ancient Egyptians invented beer.

However, it began long before the Egyptians. Animals have a natural affinity for alcohol. Birds and animals don't know how to produce alcohol, but they are most certainly familiar with it. Birds will eat every fermented berry on a tree--or at least try to until they fall down drunk. Cows will eat all of the fermented corn mash in their trough and walk away drunk. Stagger away is a better phrase.

Whether or not you doubt it, if some monkey had fallen into an algae-covered pond or mud hole with even a hint of alcohol, then the monkeys would have cultivated algae in every mud hole in the forest. The entire ecosystem of the forest would be centered around spiked ponds and mud holes.

So since monkeys are not cultivating algae, you believe this story is a hoax? Let me ask: are monkeys cultivating corn to feed their affinity for alcohol? You can make alcohol out of any sugar: potatoes, wood pulp or sugar cane. I don't see monkeys cultivating any of it. Yet we humans are making ethanol for vehicle fuel from all of it.

[ForcedTQ]

This story is inconsistent in the information given. It starts out talking about extracting the oil that algae produce from the growing vats and converting it to Bio-Diesel, all the while keeping the algae alive to keep up production volume. This information is fine, and a very good advancement in the Algal-oil production cycle at that.

What I have a problem with is that they state they will be producing ethanol, and give the quantity produced, without giving a quantity produced or even talking about Bio-Diesel throughout the rest of the article. Last I knew you need plant material, "Algae", as a feedstock to produce the ethanol. This would kill the algae as the process (if using cellulosic) breaks down the alagal cell walls and converts it to ethanol.

So why are they talking about the vast quantities of Ethanol that will be produced by this process and not touting the qauntity of Bio-Diesel this process will produce? That is what this process is good for, correct? This does nothing for increasing the production of Ethanol, which is fine, I just wish people would think about the content that they put into the stories they write.

Please don't get me wrong here, I am all for Bio-Diesel and High-Efficiency Ethanol production.

I just do not appreciate inconsistent / irrelevant journalism.

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by ForcedTQ

This story is inconsistent in the information given. It starts out talking about extracting the oil that algae produce from the growing vats and converting it to Bio-Diesel, all the while keeping the algae alive to keep up production volume. This information is fine, and a very good advancement in the Algal-oil production cycle at that.

What I have a problem with is that they state they will be producing ethanol, and give the quantity produced, without giving a quantity produced or even talking about Bio-Diesel throughout the rest of the article. Last I knew you need plant material, "Algae", as a feedstock to produce the ethanol. This would kill the algae as the process (if using cellulosic) breaks down the alagal cell walls and converts it to ethanol.

So why are they talking about the vast quantities of Ethanol that will be produced by this process and not touting the qauntity of Bio-Diesel this process will produce? That is what this process is good for, correct? This does nothing for increasing the production of Ethanol, which is fine, I just wish people would think about the content that they put into the stories they write.

You seem confused, so let me help out. OTHER companies grow algae and then kill it to make biodiesel (they press the algae to squeeze the oil out of it). THIS company (Algenol) is doing something completely different. It is not making biodiesel. It is growing the algae to secrete ethanol. Because the algae, as a living organism, is secreting ethanol, it will not be killed.

I note that when the OTHER companies kill the algae to get the oil for biodiesel, after the oil is squeezed out, the remaining leftovers (i.e., the squished cell walls) are used to make cellulosic ethanol. But that is not what this article is talking about. It is talking about live algae secreting ethanol.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by HoosierRon

... You can make alcohol out of any sugar: potatoes, wood pulp or sugar cane. I don't see monkeys cultivating any of it. Yet we humans are making ethanol for vehicle fuel from all of it.

My point is that algae can't produce alcohol in quantities that make it a viable motor fuel. Yeast, which is another type of plant, is used to produce alcohol in everything from bread to whiskey. Algae, however, is much more abundant than yeast.

Alcohol production is not magic. It takes time to produce alcohol from sugar. The end result is mostly water. That's why the alcohol/water mixture must be distilled to produce alcohol concentrations greater than that of wine. By heating the water/alcohol mixture, the alcohol evaporates at 78 °F leaving most of the water behind. Supposedly, Algenol's process does not use sugar as its starting point. [Remember, its selling point is that Algenol does not use food to produce fuel.] The algae must produce its own sugar. Even if the process worked, then it would take longer than yeast to produce a lower grade mixture. Because the process relies on sunlight to drive photosynthesis in algae, Algenol would require massive amounts of land to produce alcohol in industrial quantities.

You are free to believe what you want to believe. If you believe that algae can produce alcohol more efficiently than yeast, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you. It is priced to move.

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

My point is that algae can't produce alcohol in quantities that make it a viable motor fuel. Yeast, which is another type of plant, is used to produce alcohol in everything from bread to whiskey. Algae, however, is much more abundant than yeast.

Alcohol production is not magic. It takes time to produce alcohol from sugar. The end result is mostly water. That's why the alcohol/water mixture must be distilled to produce alcohol concentrations greater than that of wine. By heating the water/alcohol mixture, the alcohol evaporates at 78 °F leaving most of the water behind. Supposedly, Algenol's process does not use sugar as its starting point. [Remember, its selling point is that Algenol does not use food to produce fuel.] The algae must produce its own sugar. Even if the process worked, then it would take longer than yeast to produce a lower grade mixture. Because the process relies on sunlight to drive photosynthesis in algae, Algenol would require massive amounts of land to produce alcohol in industrial quantities.

You are free to believe what you want to believe. If you believe that algae can produce alcohol more efficiently than yeast, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for you. It is priced to move.

Here is a story about the use of blue-green algae (which generally is no longer considered algae) being used to cheaply and efficiently make sugar. Science marches on.

New source for biofuels discovered


Left: Two rod-shaped, wild type cyanobacteria. Note the conspicuous absence of any cellulose or sugars on the surface of these cells. Right: A genetically altered cyanobacterium that produced highly visible cellulose (marked by cellulase coupled with an electron dense gold marker). Credit: Brown and Nobles, the University of Texas at Austin

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

“The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels,” says Nobles, a research associate in the Section of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
...
Other key findings include:

-- The new cyanobacteria use sunlight as an energy source to produce and excrete sugars and cellulose

-- Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars)

-- Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input

They recently published their research in the journal Cellulose.
...
“The huge expense in making cellulosic ethanol and biofuels is in using enzymes and mechanical methods to break cellulose down,” says Nobles. “Using the cyanobacteria escapes these expensive processes.”
...
Brown and Nobles are now researching the best methods to scale up efficient and cost-effective production of cyanobacteria. Two patent applications, 20080085520 and 20080085536, were recently published in the United States Patent and Trade Office.