11 ms·

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefacti

by seren 13y ago

> The system runs at around 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit) at a pressure of around 3,000 PSI, combining processes known as hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. I wonder what it the energy ROI of the whole process. It is not mentioned in the article, so it is not sure it is positive.

misnome 13y ago
Right, it was my understanding anyway that it was pretty simple to turn any kind of biological into oil, but the issues were energy efficiency, and scaling the process up.
- VLM 13y ago
  Well, I wouldn't call it simple. The term to google for is hydrocracker or cracker in general (uh, cracker in petroleum chemistry, specifically). For the first 50 years or so from 1890 to WWII they only did it thermally and since WWII its been all about exotic catalysts. Its not viable to thermal crack other than weird situations (Like I don't care if its net energy positive, we need feedstock to produce methane to produce ammonia to produce fertilizer so if you want to eat next winter, get crackin' today said the Kaiser to .. somebody .. in WWI). If its ridiculously expensive to thermally crack and crude is cheap, its simpler to just refine more crude and kill the market price of asphalt by dumping it on the market. So thats how we get blacktop roads, which seems to be a stupid use of valuable crude, yet... So this is a gross generalization but you can't thermally crack as a primary energy source, you've gotta cat crack. Unfortunately catalytic cracking is still something of an art or craft rather than a science because its horrifically complicated. Since day one there has been slow continuous incremental improvement, to the point that in 2010-ish its finally reasonable to finally start cat cracking algae on an industrial scale, or at least kinda sorta. The problem with cat cracking is the catalysts are sensitive to trace contaminants so just pitching in crap from a field is an excellent way to destroy the catalyst. It is almost exactly like how carbon monoxide kills people, in that "stuff" gets stuck in the important parts which jams the whole works up and then nothing works ever again. On the other hand algae grown in glass tubes can have all its inputs controlled to not destroy the catalyst... more or less... plus or minus required trace elements... some of which kill some catalysts... The best HN analogy I can provide is its kind of like 3D FPS games in the early 90s, no one suddenly shockingly invented out of whole cloth "the 3d chip" and that's how we got endless WWII sequels, its more like the smooth and gradual ramp up in performance from 1800s punch card unit record equipment up to the present day, where a phase change or whatever happened in the market in 1990 where suddenly the state of the art in 1990 made 3D FPS video games a reasonable application. But nothing really "new" happened in 1990 other than a century of computational performance gains continued as usual. Its the market that shifted after a certain performance level was achieved. True, you can point to the days before and after the bipolar transistor demonstrated amplification and say the world changed on a certain date. But smooth growth in computer performance or cat cracker performance means there is no such sudden change date for FPS video games or algae based feedstock for hydrocrackers. And thats why we've been hearing about algae crackers as a "new" thing for about two decades and probably have to keep hearing about them being "new" for at least another couple decades because it becomes commonplace for people to run their cars on algae based biofuel. The difference in the situations makes it an interesting HN topic more so than the trivia about someones recent lab experiment.
pjc50 13y ago
The algae->oil part of the process necessarily loses energy, so it all comes down to the process of turning sun into algae. Which is not itself very efficient, but may be cheaply scalable. I think if you just care about renweable EROI and not about storage in convenient petrol form then wind and solar are still the winners.
- awjr 13y ago
  Somebody needs to come up with a better way of converting solar energy into a transportable liquid. I'm guessing this is as good as it gets for now.
  - techdragon 13y ago
    Phonons. Phonon pipelines, phonon tanks... Investors please form an orderly line for me to fleece you go millions. Srsly though. Liquids are extremely good at this kind of density storage trade off, it's the reason petroleum won over electric cars in 1900 ( look it up, electric cars aren't new, we just decided about a. Hundred years ago we liked oil more.)
- VLM 13y ago
  "storage in convenient ... form" If you can't store it, you can't use it, so it doesn't matter how green it is, it won't be used. The ideal transportable liquid fuel is diesel with gasoline a very close second. Some peculiar and temporary engineering and economic issues make gasoline ideal for passenger cars but in a very long run perspective the whole world is going diesel, its just the future has arrived a little quicker for some parts of the world than others. A common sci fi (and tech) theme. Originally the diesel engine was developed by the Diesel bros (no kidding) to run on nut oil not crude oil. The Diesel bros had a political axe to grind about farms having self sufficient tractors much like they had self sufficient ox drawn plows. To say things didn't turn out that way would be an understatement, but there's no scientific reason it won't work that way in the future. The primary problem with nut based biodiesel is you can't scale the production up to reasonable economic levels by shoving entire walnut trees thru a pipeline... but you can pump algae thru a pipeline... So that's the big pix of why people are trying to turn algae into diesel.
dagw 13y ago
it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.
- AndrewDucker 13y ago
  But is it better than turning that geothermal energy into electricity and transmitting it to a battery in an electric car? Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying there isn't a need for oil. Just wondering what the efficiencies are for each route, and whether this process means that we don't even need electric cars any more (doubtful, but I thought I'd ask)
  - brazzy 13y ago
    Yes - if you don't have an electric car. Or if you're somewhere in Siberia at -40 degrees C where a) batteries stop working and b) you're 500km away from a power line.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      If you don't have an electric car, it's probably cheaper to buy one than to pay for the gas made by this method, no?
  - freehunter 13y ago
    It's basically time-shifting. Either you can turn this geothermal energy into electricity and have the consumer charge their car at home over a long period of time (hours) or you can turn it into a full tank of gasoline over a long period of time (hours), ship it to the consumer to fill their tank in a short period of time (minutes). Either way, it takes a long time. The difference is the impact to the consumer of converting it to something useful for them (gas), or having them convert it to something useful (a charged battery). The consumer doesn't notice the gasoline taking a long time, to them it takes minutes.
  - 13y ago
valarauc4 13y ago
As somebody who works in the fuel industry. We easily can keep about 3-5 liters of fuel at ~15,000 psi for injector testing in about ~1kw to 2kw watts of power (with 350F heating). So not super far off.
wil421 13y ago
Gasification is a fascinating process I was just recently aware of. Some guy got his truck to run on a certain type of oak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYGKn12Weu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYGKn12Weu4
- beat 13y ago
  Scalability is a fascinating process, too. But oak trees aren't scalable. There are lots of ways to generate local "renewable" energy optima from waste products. Unfortunately, none of them scale.
  - VLM 13y ago
    There are also practical engineering problems with making a "rolling coke/charcoal oven" reliable enough to last 250K miles with about the same maint as a gasoline car. There are certain economic balances that have to be achieved, if the maint cost is going to be X times a gas car maint and lifespan will be Y times shorter that has certain capital cost requirements which probably are not possible to meet. Also this is something of an enviro-slur but renewable ideas are typically horribly polluting but the small scale types handwave past it. A gasoline engine can output exhaust cleaner in some ways than its input air, especially WRT hydrocarbons in smoggy areas, but a coke/charcoal oven is just beyond filthy polluting, which scales pretty well to one dude and his one car but is a non-starter for 100M American cars. The interstate would be unimaginable.
  - wil421 13y ago
    I believe the guy was only using what was available around him. Oak apparently provided the best bang. Who knows what else that we could use that would scale.

by seren 13y ago

misnome 13y ago

Right, it was my understanding anyway that it was pretty simple to turn any kind of biological into oil, but the issues were energy efficiency, and scaling the process up.

VLM 13y ago
Well, I wouldn't call it simple. The term to google for is hydrocracker or cracker in general (uh, cracker in petroleum chemistry, specifically). For the first 50 years or so from 1890 to WWII they only did it thermally and since WWII its been all about exotic catalysts. Its not viable to thermal crack other than weird situations (Like I don't care if its net energy positive, we need feedstock to produce methane to produce ammonia to produce fertilizer so if you want to eat next winter, get crackin' today said the Kaiser to .. somebody .. in WWI). If its ridiculously expensive to thermally crack and crude is cheap, its simpler to just refine more crude and kill the market price of asphalt by dumping it on the market. So thats how we get blacktop roads, which seems to be a stupid use of valuable crude, yet... So this is a gross generalization but you can't thermally crack as a primary energy source, you've gotta cat crack. Unfortunately catalytic cracking is still something of an art or craft rather than a science because its horrifically complicated. Since day one there has been slow continuous incremental improvement, to the point that in 2010-ish its finally reasonable to finally start cat cracking algae on an industrial scale, or at least kinda sorta. The problem with cat cracking is the catalysts are sensitive to trace contaminants so just pitching in crap from a field is an excellent way to destroy the catalyst. It is almost exactly like how carbon monoxide kills people, in that "stuff" gets stuck in the important parts which jams the whole works up and then nothing works ever again. On the other hand algae grown in glass tubes can have all its inputs controlled to not destroy the catalyst... more or less... plus or minus required trace elements... some of which kill some catalysts... The best HN analogy I can provide is its kind of like 3D FPS games in the early 90s, no one suddenly shockingly invented out of whole cloth "the 3d chip" and that's how we got endless WWII sequels, its more like the smooth and gradual ramp up in performance from 1800s punch card unit record equipment up to the present day, where a phase change or whatever happened in the market in 1990 where suddenly the state of the art in 1990 made 3D FPS video games a reasonable application. But nothing really "new" happened in 1990 other than a century of computational performance gains continued as usual. Its the market that shifted after a certain performance level was achieved. True, you can point to the days before and after the bipolar transistor demonstrated amplification and say the world changed on a certain date. But smooth growth in computer performance or cat cracker performance means there is no such sudden change date for FPS video games or algae based feedstock for hydrocrackers. And thats why we've been hearing about algae crackers as a "new" thing for about two decades and probably have to keep hearing about them being "new" for at least another couple decades because it becomes commonplace for people to run their cars on algae based biofuel. The difference in the situations makes it an interesting HN topic more so than the trivia about someones recent lab experiment.

pjc50 13y ago

The algae->oil part of the process necessarily loses energy, so it all comes down to the process of turning sun into algae. Which is not itself very efficient, but may be cheaply scalable. I think if you just care about renweable EROI and not about storage in convenient petrol form then wind and solar are still the winners.

awjr 13y ago
Somebody needs to come up with a better way of converting solar energy into a transportable liquid. I'm guessing this is as good as it gets for now.
- techdragon 13y ago
  Phonons. Phonon pipelines, phonon tanks... Investors please form an orderly line for me to fleece you go millions. Srsly though. Liquids are extremely good at this kind of density storage trade off, it's the reason petroleum won over electric cars in 1900 ( look it up, electric cars aren't new, we just decided about a. Hundred years ago we liked oil more.)
VLM 13y ago
"storage in convenient ... form" If you can't store it, you can't use it, so it doesn't matter how green it is, it won't be used. The ideal transportable liquid fuel is diesel with gasoline a very close second. Some peculiar and temporary engineering and economic issues make gasoline ideal for passenger cars but in a very long run perspective the whole world is going diesel, its just the future has arrived a little quicker for some parts of the world than others. A common sci fi (and tech) theme. Originally the diesel engine was developed by the Diesel bros (no kidding) to run on nut oil not crude oil. The Diesel bros had a political axe to grind about farms having self sufficient tractors much like they had self sufficient ox drawn plows. To say things didn't turn out that way would be an understatement, but there's no scientific reason it won't work that way in the future. The primary problem with nut based biodiesel is you can't scale the production up to reasonable economic levels by shoving entire walnut trees thru a pipeline... but you can pump algae thru a pipeline... So that's the big pix of why people are trying to turn algae into diesel.

dagw 13y ago

it is not sure it is positive. It's certainly very negative. The advantage is you can use things like solar, hydro or geothermal energy to heat the system. Even turning 1000MW of geothermal energy into only 100MW of crude oil can be worthwhile since you can't run an internal combustion engine on geothermal energy.

AndrewDucker 13y ago
But is it better than turning that geothermal energy into electricity and transmitting it to a battery in an electric car? Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying there isn't a need for oil. Just wondering what the efficiencies are for each route, and whether this process means that we don't even need electric cars any more (doubtful, but I thought I'd ask)
- brazzy 13y ago
  Yes - if you don't have an electric car. Or if you're somewhere in Siberia at -40 degrees C where a) batteries stop working and b) you're 500km away from a power line.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    If you don't have an electric car, it's probably cheaper to buy one than to pay for the gas made by this method, no?
- freehunter 13y ago
  It's basically time-shifting. Either you can turn this geothermal energy into electricity and have the consumer charge their car at home over a long period of time (hours) or you can turn it into a full tank of gasoline over a long period of time (hours), ship it to the consumer to fill their tank in a short period of time (minutes). Either way, it takes a long time. The difference is the impact to the consumer of converting it to something useful for them (gas), or having them convert it to something useful (a charged battery). The consumer doesn't notice the gasoline taking a long time, to them it takes minutes.
- 13y ago

valarauc4 13y ago

As somebody who works in the fuel industry. We easily can keep about 3-5 liters of fuel at ~15,000 psi for injector testing in about ~1kw to 2kw watts of power (with 350F heating). So not super far off.

wil421 13y ago

Gasification is a fascinating process I was just recently aware of. Some guy got his truck to run on a certain type of oak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYGKn12Weu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYGKn12Weu4

beat 13y ago
Scalability is a fascinating process, too. But oak trees aren't scalable. There are lots of ways to generate local "renewable" energy optima from waste products. Unfortunately, none of them scale.
- VLM 13y ago
  There are also practical engineering problems with making a "rolling coke/charcoal oven" reliable enough to last 250K miles with about the same maint as a gasoline car. There are certain economic balances that have to be achieved, if the maint cost is going to be X times a gas car maint and lifespan will be Y times shorter that has certain capital cost requirements which probably are not possible to meet. Also this is something of an enviro-slur but renewable ideas are typically horribly polluting but the small scale types handwave past it. A gasoline engine can output exhaust cleaner in some ways than its input air, especially WRT hydrocarbons in smoggy areas, but a coke/charcoal oven is just beyond filthy polluting, which scales pretty well to one dude and his one car but is a non-starter for 100M American cars. The interstate would be unimaginable.
- wil421 13y ago
  I believe the guy was only using what was available around him. Oak apparently provided the best bang. Who knows what else that we could use that would scale.