It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to make crudde oil, while scientists have devised a way to create it from algae in minutes
Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. "We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said PhilSavage, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.
Savage's ocean-going organism of choice is the green marine micro-alga of the genus Nannochloropsis.
To make their one-minute bio-crude, Savage and Julia Faeth, a student, filled a steel pipe connector with 1.5 milliters of wet algae, capped it and plunged it into 1,100-degree Fahrenheit sand. The small volume ensured that the algae was heated through, but with only a minute to warm up, the algae should have just grazed the 550-degree mark before the reactor was out.
Previously, Savage and his team heated the algae for times ranging from 10 to 90 mins. They saw their best results, with about half of the algae converted to biocrude, after treating it for 10 to 40 minutes at 570 degrees.
Why are the one-minute results so much better? Savage and Faeth won't be sure until they have done more experiments, but they have some ideas.
"My guess is that the reactions that produce biocrude are actually must faster than thought," Savage said.
Faeth suggests that the fast heating might boost the biocrude by keeping unwanted reactions at bay. "For example, the biocrude might decompose into substances that dissolve in water, and the fast heating rates might discourage that," Faeth said.
The team points out that shorter reaction times mean that the reactors don't have to be as large.
"By reducing the reactor volume, the cost of building a biocrude production plant also decreases," Faeth said, though both cautioned that they couldn't say for sure whether the new method is cheaper.
Current commercial makers of algae-based- fuel first dry the algae and then extract the natural oil. But at over $20 per gallon, this fuel is a long way from the gas pump.
"Companies know that that approach is not ecenomical, so they are looking at approaches for using wet algae, as are we," Savage said.
One of the advantages of the wet method is that it doesn't just extract the existing fat from the algae - it also breaks down proteins and crabs. The minute method did this so successfully that the oil contained about 90 per cent of the energy in the original algae.
Before biocrude can be fed into the existing refineries for petroleum, it needs pre-refining to get rid of the extra oxygen and nitrogen atoms that abound in living things. The Savage lab also is developing better methods for this leg, breaking the record with a biocrude that was 97 per cent carbon and hydrogen earlier this year.
Once producing biofuel from algae is economical, the algae won't need to occupy good farmland, thriving in brackish ponds instead.
Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. "We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said PhilSavage, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.
To make their one-minute bio-crude, Savage and Julia Faeth, a student, filled a steel pipe connector with 1.5 milliters of wet algae, capped it and plunged it into 1,100-degree Fahrenheit sand. The small volume ensured that the algae was heated through, but with only a minute to warm up, the algae should have just grazed the 550-degree mark before the reactor was out.
Previously, Savage and his team heated the algae for times ranging from 10 to 90 mins. They saw their best results, with about half of the algae converted to biocrude, after treating it for 10 to 40 minutes at 570 degrees.
Why are the one-minute results so much better? Savage and Faeth won't be sure until they have done more experiments, but they have some ideas.
"My guess is that the reactions that produce biocrude are actually must faster than thought," Savage said.
The team points out that shorter reaction times mean that the reactors don't have to be as large.
"By reducing the reactor volume, the cost of building a biocrude production plant also decreases," Faeth said, though both cautioned that they couldn't say for sure whether the new method is cheaper.
Current commercial makers of algae-based- fuel first dry the algae and then extract the natural oil. But at over $20 per gallon, this fuel is a long way from the gas pump.
"Companies know that that approach is not ecenomical, so they are looking at approaches for using wet algae, as are we," Savage said.
One of the advantages of the wet method is that it doesn't just extract the existing fat from the algae - it also breaks down proteins and crabs. The minute method did this so successfully that the oil contained about 90 per cent of the energy in the original algae.
Before biocrude can be fed into the existing refineries for petroleum, it needs pre-refining to get rid of the extra oxygen and nitrogen atoms that abound in living things. The Savage lab also is developing better methods for this leg, breaking the record with a biocrude that was 97 per cent carbon and hydrogen earlier this year.
Once producing biofuel from algae is economical, the algae won't need to occupy good farmland, thriving in brackish ponds instead.
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