Algae to solve the Pentagon’s jet fuel problem:
The brains trust of the Pentagon says it is just months away from producing a jet fuel from algae for the same cost as its fossil-fuel equivalent.
The claim, which comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) that helped to develop the internet and satellite navigation systems, has taken industry insiders by surprise. A cheap, low-carbon fuel would not only help the US military, the nation’s single largest consumer of energy, to wean itself off its oil addiction, but would also hold the promise of low-carbon driving and flying for all.
Darpa’s research projects have already extracted oil from algal ponds at a cost of $2 per gallon. It is now on track to begin large-scale refining of that oil into jet fuel, at a cost of less than $3 a gallon, according to Barbara McQuiston, special assistant for energy at Darpa. That could turn a promising technology into a market-ready one. Researchers have cracked the problem of turning pond scum and seaweed into fuel, but finding a cost-effective method of mass production could be a game-changer. “Everyone is well aware that a lot of things were started in the military,” McQuiston said.
Never underestimate the ability of the not-so-sexy solutions–algae grown and turned into fuel, flywheels or pumped storage to help time shift supply to better meet electricity demand, taking simple efficiency steps, etc.–to deliver some impressive contributions to our energy and environmental challenges once we feel sufficient urgency to take them. In fact, I expect algae fuel to play a much bigger part in our future transportation alternatives than the car companies’ (and semi-informed technophile’s) favorite hobby horse, hydrogen.
As for the claim of $3/gallon jet fuel from algae in “just months”, consider me highly skeptical, to put it mildly. I’m sure that the claim is a reference to being able to hit that price point, not real world production in any significant quantity. Even so, it’s one hell of a claim, and it’s either a gross overstatement of what DARPA’s been up to, or it’s a revelation that they’ve pulled a techno-rabbit out of their hat.
I’d remain skeptical for now. DARPA tends to do 90% hype, 10% real and amazing stuff.
This could make the climate change debate moot for oil, if true. Bad news for the Middle East. I can’t wait until such renewable fuels start to depress global oil prices (inevitable at some point on the production curve, I’d estimate 15%-20% of supply).
Now about that black rock we love to burn…
Lou – If they have discovered how to cover the technological part of this, it will, as I think you have pointed out before, provide a means to cover some of our responsibilities on the Carbon front as well, since the algae consumes CO2 to produce what is apparently capable of being turned into oil. Scaleability is the question. If it can be done on a scale to supply the armed forces, all of which use vast quantities, that will help. If it can be expanded to cover a lot more, that is far better. I have seen calculations on the amount of surface required, and it is vast as well using the methodology presented in that case. This would be different from cropland, although not wholly compatible with being wetlands in the environmental sense. And, just our luck, it comes at a time when claims are being made that water resources are getting scarcer – I phrase it that way because I am just not knowledgeable enough to say anything about water resources and not that I am skeptical.
Great article Lou, if it was anyone but DARPA talking about what they were currently producing, I’d say they were out and out lying at this point, but I know they’ve been working on this for a while now – so I’ll say “maybe this is the real deal, talk to me when you figure out how to scale it..”, but wow, this would be a hugely disruptive technology (that’s needed).
This could presumably could be deployed commercially if they meet their goals for the Military ($1 or less a gallon for the oil and $1 for processing into kerosene). Heck if they can do it for what they say now (about $3 gallon total, it’ll be a revolution). We might all need to start saying hello diesel since that is close to Kerosene from a refining standpoint.
One point I wish they would have disclosed is whether they were using saltwater algae (unlimited and cheap water supply) or freshwater based algae (water supply limits all over the place). I hope its saltwater based.
On a downer angle, if this happens in scale (and I’d rather have it than not), it’ll destroy the chances for manufacturing to come back to the US as it keeps petroleum prices going up and make manufacturing cost effective back in the US (back in the summer of 2008 and $140+ barrel of oil Steel became more cost effective to produce in the US than ship from China – and more and more things would become cost effective for local production as the price of oil goes up).
sasparilla: The saltwater/freshwater issue is definitely a key point. On the scale the US uses liquid motor fuel, this is a non-trivial point if we’re to replace any meaningful portion of it with algaehol.
The overall impact on the US economy is really hard to judge. If this breakthrough is real and it hits the claimed price point, then the question becomes how high and how quickly can it be ramped up as we slide sideways into peak oil. I could easily imagine a scenarios (just to pick two) where algaehol ramps up slowly and only manages to take a bit of the edge off the rising, post-peak price of oil and gasoline, or it ramps up pretty fast and finds enough demand that it makes a sizable impact within the US but very little of it is exported because it’s all consumed in cars and trucks. In those cases, I wouldn’t expect algaehol to impact shipping costs much, if at all. Or maybe something entirely different will happen, and I’ll be just as surprised as everyone else–that happens in energy and enviro stuff only about once every 12 minutes…