I am Christopher, the Everett Lawn Man, Pease . I have embarked on a mission to bring a change to the state of Washington. This program could replace fossil fuels with Organic grown plants that can be refined as an alternative fuel source within Washington's borders. I am currently auditioning my plan to several members of the Washington State government in hopes to get it started by November 10th, 2008. Now is the time for alternative fuels. This could lead to what I have called the "The Flomatization of Nano Technology".
After reading "Alcohol Can Be A Gas" by David Blume, (www.alcoholcanbeagas.com ),
I saw, in Chapter 8, the potential to make Washington a model state in fuel alternatives and fuel refinement. The abundance of kelp in Washington, with the proper refinement, could satisfy much of our states fuel needs. I am busy growing this plan, so in efforts to inform those who wish to know more about alternative fuels and my plan, I will show several emails that contain my thoughts, and helpful information Through correspondence I have had with various people.
Thanks for reading,
Later ... Christopher Pease
PSGandL, C&D Lawn Service // C&J Hillside
The following is an excerpt (just the first page) from David Blume's book "Alcohol Can Be A Gas". Chapter 8 deals with what crops can be grown as a source for alternate fuels.
This is a list of potential crops outlined in Chapter 8:
1) Fodder Beets
2) Buffalo Gourd
3) Cassava
4) Castor Beans
5) Cattails
6) Chestnuts, Hazelnuts
7) Citrus Fruits
8) Coffee
9) Corn frey
10) Corn
11) Jerusalem Artichokes
12) Lichens
13) Marine Algae
14) Kelp
15) Mesquite
16) Molasses
17) Palms
18) Pi melon (wild watermelon)
19) Prickly Pear
20) Sugar Beets
21) Sugar Cane
22) Sweet Potatoes
23) Sweet Sorghum
24) Tropical Fruits
25) Wheat
26) Whey
The following information is gathered from websites and email correspondence that Christopher found to contain useful information pertaining to Alternative Fuel Sources
World Aquaculture 2008 - Meeting Abstract
414
SEAWEED AQUACULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES: THE PUGET SOUND, WASHINGTON EXPERIENCE, PAST AND PRESENT
J. Robert Waaland
Department of Biology
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195-5325
United States of America
e-mail: jrw@u.washington.edu
This paper discusses the implementation of three different seaweed culture systems in Washington State which is located in a cool temperate region between ~46-49oN. The research has been centered on the Puget Sound region which has high levels of nutrients resulting from tidally driven upwelling of deep marine water.
The United States of Americas seaweed industries traditionally depended on large quantities of wild seaweeds for raw materials principally used as sources from which to extract alginate, carrageenan and agar. Both domestic and foreign sources were used. Most edible seaweeds were imported but small local harvests exist in some areas. To increase and assure the supply of seaweeds, aquaculture methods were adapted to local conditions or invented. In addition, interest in seaweeds as sources of high value specialty chemicals, nutraceuticals and cosmetics as well as biomass for carbon based fuels and chemical feedstocks stimulated research aimed at local aquaculture of certain species.
Early interest (1970s) in Washington centered on experimental open water as well as tank propagation and culture of the cold water carrageenophytes Mazzaella and Chondra-canthus. Both methods were biologically successful but were abandoned when successful culture of Kappaphycus in tropical locations provided a more competitive source.
In the 1980s experimental Porphyra farms using both introduced and native species were developed to cultivate nori. Successful production and marketing of local nori was achieved, but strong public sentiment against new surface aquaculture in populous areas deterred farm expansion plans and led to abandonment of operations.
Oil production embargoes and concern about global warming in the 1970s stimulated interest in large scale kelp cultivation, particularly Macrocystis, for fuel from biomass. Research farms and the processing of seaweed biomass to methane were likewise developed. The rationale was that the huge areas devoted to biomass culture could be found only in marine habitats since arable land for production of terrestrial food crops is in limited supply. Furthermore, seaweed biomass was recognized as a carbon neutral fuel source. Smaller scale kelp farming was tested for specialty food production and for bioremediation to replace or enhance kelp beds and forests. Test farms in Puget Sound successfully implemented aquaculture of the kelps Nereocystis and Macrocystis, but an uncertain market halted further development of the kelp farms.
Recent demand for a high value cosmetic extract from Chondracanthus exasperatus has resulted in a continuing pilot scale tank culture process integrating finfish culture effluent as a nutrient source for this seaweed.
Re: [Biofuel] Fuel from Algae
Keith Addison
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:44:37 -0700
Hi Tim
Friends
I found the thread on algae base fuels interesting. It only discusses oil from algae and biodiesel from algae. Hm, Simon didn't reply. Funny that, how they never reply. :-) Keith wisely points out that the site given does not show evidence of current production. Knowing absolutely nothing about the techniques suggested to turn algae into fuel I cannot comment further... yet here is a site that says they are producing algae based fuels... http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/thescience-biology.html
4. Algenol's prototype production strains are producing ethanol at a rate of 6,000 gallons/acre/year, and are expected to improve to 10,000 gallons/acre/year by the end of 2008. With further refinement, the algae cells have the potential to increase production rates to 12,000 to 40,000 gallons/acre/year in the future.
Is it a hoax? the contact phone number suggests an area code of Florida (Lee, Collier, and Monroe Counties). might there be someone on the list nearby who can pay them a visit to learn more? Their website is quite informative, good PR job. Hey, that doesn't mean it's all lies, it means it's a good PR job - the best don't need
to tell lies. Lots of info there. Their project is in Mexico, that might be more worth a visit.
Anyway, this is about ethanol from algae, which is a quite different matter from oil from algae and biodiesel from algae. Ethanol from algae has little in common with the oil route, mainly in that it all exists, it's all done, no need for smoke and mirrors. People have been making ethanol from algae for about a hundred years,
there's no production problem and no technology problem, and there's plenty of scope for development.
Note that unlike the oil from algae projects, Algenol uses seawater or brackwater, not fresh water - the process produces fresh water as a co-product. Ethanol comes from marine algae, from the sea, not from
ponds. Algenol's a bit different, I'll come back to Algenol. It's something of a subset, let's look at the main picture first, which is marine algae. Or rather, as an introduction, let's first have a look at what David Blume says about biodiesel from algae:
Algae and biodiesel
"There has been some discussion about producing biodiesel using algae in constructed ponds. Algae can convert sunlight into fats more efficiently than trees under the right conditions. But the capital
and operating costs are much higher than they are for land-based crops.
"As I detail here, marine algae is a rich resource for alcohol, much more productive and cost-efficient than algae produced for biodiesel. In the long run, mixtures of alcohol that contain 1% biodiesel and
cetane-improving chemicals made from biomass will very likely be the diesel fuel of choice, This means the market for biodiesel will be limited to its use as a lubricant in these fuel mixtures.
"Under these conditions, algae-produced biodiesel may be at a distinct financial disadvantage compared to biodiesel derived from nuts or castor beans; we already produce enough vegetable oil in our currently inefficient ways to make up the 1% lubrication additive we need."
That's from "Alcohol Can Be a Gas! - Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century", David Blume, 2007, p154. You'd have to read the book to learn how he justifies his conclusions about the future of diesel fuel (he makes a good case). <http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com?bid=2&aid=CD99&opt=>
The book has a section on Marine Algae and on Using Marine Algae for Alcohol, very interesting. Marine algae means seaweed, laminar algae like kelp. China, Japan and Vietnam lead the world in marine algae
production, of course, and not only for food, it produces a wide range of products. They grow it in coastal farms which can produce large quantities.Marine algae is hardly grown in the US, it's mostly gathered from the
wild. Blume wants the US to start farming it. "Kelp cultivation provides jobs, food, alcohol, fertilizer, high-value industrial substances, and methane," he says. He foresees an energy return on alcohol production from algae mariculture as high as 15 to 1, "with virtually no fossil fuel used in the process, since methane (natural
gas) production from kelp is a proven success."Like all farming I guess there are two ways of doing it, using
sustainable, environmentally benign methods, or the inevitable disaster of industrial resource extraction that Big Ag calls farming. David Blume's an organic farmer and a permaculturist and he constantly emphasises sustainability, so read on, this isn't Big Oil in green drag.Blume proposes marine algae farming as a potential solution to the dead zone problem, for one thing, and again he makes a persuasive case - use the excess nitrogen run-off that's killing the sea in the dead zones to raise marine algae, he says: the kelp also cools the
water, oxygenates it and absorbs dissolved CO2.
Blume writes: "Do you think I am proposing an outlandish scheme? In looking at kelp for methane production, the American Gas Association, hardly a wild-eyed utopian group of tree huggers, estimated somewhere
near 23 quads (23 quadrillion Btu) a year of methane from kelp just from the California Coast.106 If the kelp was first fermented to make alcohol and the remaining mash was then fermented a second time for methane, to be used primarily for alcohol plant energy, about a third of that energy would be recovered as alcohol. This might be almost 90 billion gallons of fuel from the California Coast alone.
"The remaining two-thirds of the energy as methane would provide all the alcohol plant process energy plus a huge surplus of gas/electricity. That's roughly half of the transportation fuel the
U.S. currently uses per year."--from: Marine Algae: Using Marine Algae for Alcohol, "Alcohol Can Be a Gas", p157 Blume says what could help spark such developments is higher oil prices, and thus the end of cheap supplies of a range of industrial chemicals from oil that can also be derived from seaweed, along with
other valuable products.Meanwhile, there doesn't seem to be anything there that isn't doable now on the small-scale backyarders' level, if you happen to have a bit of coolish ocean coast handy where you can harvest some kelp without wrecking the place (it grows very fast). Quite simple techniques for conversion to sugar, then process as usual. Worth a look.I'm impressed by David Blume's book. I said so before - I also said I'd review it for us, but these things take time. Anyway I just wrote the review, see next. You can get the book here, highly recommended: <http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com?bid=2&aid=CD99&opt=> Back to Algenol. They're looking at a different niche, the CO2 spewed out of power plant smokestacks. One of the biodiesel-from-algae
projects that had folks yelling "Biodiesel from algae is here now!" a couple of years back also explored that niche, but judging from all the subsequent silence the biodiesel algae are probably still sitting in their original pilot project smokestack and haven't travelled much, same as all the other biodiesel algae. Algenol's ethanol from algae scheme seems a better prospect, or at least their approach does, should Algenol itself turn out to be not all they claim. This isn't kelp mariculture, not big laminates, it's specialised, using saltwater blue-green algae. They assure that their specialised strains of blue-green algae are human toxin-free, and that they cannot survive outside the special environment they're raised in (pools on the land, not in the sea). We've heard all that
sort of stuff before and it didn't always work out that way. They also say it uses "unproductive land", which can mean a lot of things (the industrial jatropha agrofuel folks also claim that, eg). So this project probably needs some vigilance, but I don't think they're to be damned in advance, there's probably a good chance they'll do what they say they're going to do. So far it looks good, but then a project at this awkward pre-commercialisation development stage usually does try to make it look good. Probably not a hoax anyway - wait and see, with interest, IMHO.
Best
Keith
Cheers
JTD
On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Keith Addison
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hello Simon
Check out this site , re biodiesel from Algae in New Zealand ,..now ! .
<http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/technology.html>http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/technology.html
Simon.
Thankyou. Not the first we hear of Aquaflow.
But why do you say "now!" Simon?
That link only says they've "established that the company is likely to be able to produce, at commercial scale, a viable biofuel", it doesn't say they've succeeded yet.
Aquaflow produced a sample of algal biodiesel about a year ago, and a month ago they announced success harvesting wild algae in bulk, with biofuels production expected to follow "in the next few months".
There's a link on that page to their FAQ, did you read it? <http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/FAQs.html>http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/FAQs.html
It says they "demonstrated proof of concept in December 2006"; "We anticipate that we wil require six months or more to reach a working platform upon which to build a commercial operating prototype"; they
expect economic assumptions will be validated "In the next 12 to 18 months".
By all accounts they're not yet producing biodiesel from algae - maybe soon, hopefully, but not "now".
If I'm missing something maybe you'll point it out, but otherwise, why do you say "now!"?
PetroSun announced in March that its commercial algae-to-biofuels plant would go online on April 1, at least one news source announced (on March 29) "First Algae Biodiesel Plant Goes Online", though it hadn't yet, and now it's two months later and nothing more has been heard about it, and there doesn't seem to be any further news at their website.
And so on. We've been hearing that "biodiesel from algae is here now!" for more than three years, and it still isn't here. Well, these things take time, but why is it that the subject of biodiesel from algae seems to obscure the essential difference between "now" and "sometime soon"?>
Can we have a reality check please? Discuss algal biodiesel developments all you like, please feel free, but the next time somebody somehow feels compelled to blurt out "biodiesel from algae is here now!" would they mind first getting a solid answer to the question: "Where can I buy some?"?
Thankyou.
Best
Keith
__________________________________
If you'd like to read more email correspondence regarding Alternative Fuel, you can view them in this PDF.
To: Luke Esser, Chairman, WSRP
Scott Ward, RSLC President
Carrie Cantrell, Director of Communications and Policy, RSLC
I am putting together a different program that I would like some help in getting it to the State of Washington for the upcoming gubernatorial election on November 4th. It have a format that is to be:
"A 5 year Directional Program for the State of Washington".
This program is not an idea that came up 3 days ago. I have been putting this together since the year 2000. Its first introduction would have been when Mr. Rossi would have been inaugurated. But with a triple "recount" in the 2004, he did not become Governor and it was postponed until his re-nomination in 2008. This program relates to everything from traffic congestion to labor and income potential, to a major change of the fuel sources in our vehicles and the airline industry. This program is going to became a major change in my small engine machine that has been named, "The Flomo II". Its fuel source could be hydrogen, natural gas or propane.
Have been looking through David Blumes book, where I found that he had a list of close to 25 different plants, that, with proper refining and marketing, there can be a major change in our foreign oil need. I have a list that I need to find out where in the US continental, these plants can be grown, harvested, refined and then trucked to stations and then pumped to the automobile. (Peter Graves has a copy that was given to him almost 2 months ago, to be forwarded to Mr. Rossi, for him to read and see the potential.)
The potential can be seen in my web site titled PSGandL.
Later ... Christopher Pease
PSGandL C&D Lawn Service // C&J Hillside