Companies convert CO2 to auto fuel (AZ)

[jpak]

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/11116.html

NEW YORK, Dec. 1 A U.S. utility company and a pollution recycling company have successfully converted power plant gas to usable vehicle fuel.

The Arizona Public Service Co. and GreenFuel Technologies Corp. said Thursday they converted carbon dioxide flowing from the plants gas stacks to ethanol and biodiesel using algae, reports Platts, a global energy information provider.

The firms announced their success at the Platts Global Energy Awards in New York.

This is the first time ever that algae biomass created on-site by direct connection to a commercial power plant has been successfully converted to both these biofuels, said GreenFuel Founder and Chief Technology Officer Isaac Berzin. Attached to the 1,040 megawatt APS gas plant in Arlington, Ariz., is GreenFuel's Emissions-to-Biofuels algae bioreactor system.

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note: when they use the fuel, that fossil CO2 still gets released to the atmosphere - but it does displace CO2 released from auto petroleum consumption...

[robinlynne]

1. This is great news. We can do wonders if our government would only let us....

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Catchy headline.

Biofuels are a good thing. The plants absorb CO2 prior to being used as fuel.

Another way of looking at biofuels is as a liquid form of solar energy which temporarily sequesters CO2.

[GliderGuider]

3. Yeah, it's good PR anyway

I was excited about algal biodiesel grown using power plant stack gases for a few weeks until I thought about it a bit. Here's how it looks to me now:

A minuscule proportion of the CO2 already being pumped into the atmosphere is used to capture and transform a tiny bit more solar energy in one further cycle though our energy economy, before being finally discharged into the atmosphere as the same amount of CO2 it started out as.

I fail to see how this helps. Oxidizing previously sequestered carbon to power our industrial civilization is the problem, and tweaks to the process are not the solution.

[JohnWxy]

4. I think you are missing the point that the biofuels will replace gasoline which produces more CO2

than the ethanol and bio-diesel this technology produces.

Again, waiting for a perfect solution before we act will doom us to living in a 'water-world' (ala the movie of same name). Ethanol and biodiesel produce less pollutants than gasoline and that's a good thing.

The most complete solution the transportation generated CO2 will be fuel cell cars but they are about 2 decades away from making a significant contribution to the problem. We should not wait till then to start working on the problem.

REcommended!

[GliderGuider]

5. It's a little more complicated than that

The problem is that biofuels don't "displace" gasoline, they are used in addition to gasoline. All the gasoline that can possibly be produced given the global crude oil supply and refinery capacity will be produced and used. For example, China's economy is growing at over 10% per year, and that growth will stimulate automobile sales. Any gallon not bought in North America will be bought elsewhere. Global gasoline and diesel demand is not about to drop off. As a result biofuels will not be used as a replacement for gasoline, resulting in us leaving more oil underground, but as a supplement to permit somewhat more economic growth than would have been possible without them.

Fuel cells are a nice idea, but they always seem to be just a few years down the road. In addition I have my doubts whether they will ever achieve much third-world penetration due to the costs of the cells themselves, new infrastructure, and fleet replacement. Don't forget that the world is a lot bigger (and a lot poorer) than the OECD.

I'm not saying we shouldn't produce biofuels, or that they are somehow a bad idea. The only aspect of biofuels that is really negative is if their feedstocks compete with food, but since we're talking here about algae that doesn't apply. So my position is that we should go ahead with their development, but we shouldn't expect biofuels to be a significant part of any solution to either global warming or oil depletion. What will be a significant player in both areas is destruction of the demand for liquid fuels in general because of price rises and lack of availability due to geological supply constraints on crude oil. Next to that effect, the contribution of biofuels will indeed be minuscule.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. I see it as good primarily because...

the stack gases are have a high concentration of CO2, and thus should be a optimum food source for the algae.

Other than that ... :shrug: