Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) — ANN ARBOR—It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 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 Phil Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau professor and a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan.
The findings will be presented Nov. 1 at the 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh.
Savage's ocean-going organism of choice is the green marine micro-alga of the genus Nannochloropsis.
To make their one-minute biocrude, Savage and Julia Faeth, a doctoral student in Savage's lab, filled a steel pipe connector with 1.5 milliliters 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's temperature should have just grazed the 550-degree mark before the team pulled the reactor back out.
Previously, Savage and his team heated the algae for times ranging from 10 to 90 minutes. 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 previously 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 reaction," 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 she and Savage cautioned that they couldn't say for sure whether the new method is faster and cheaper until the process is further developed.
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 economical, 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 carbohydrates. The minute method did this so successfully that the oil contained about 90 percent of the energy in the original algae.
"That result is near the upper bound of what is possible," Savage said.
Before biocrude can be fed into the existing refinery system 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 of biofuel production, breaking the record with a biocrude that was 97 percent carbon and hydrogen earlier this year. A paper on this work is currently under review.
Once producing biofuel from algae is economical, researchers estimate that an area the size of New Mexico could provide enough oil to match current U.S. petroleum consumption. And, unlike corn produced for ethanol—which already accounts for half that area—the algae won't need to occupy good farmland, thriving in brackish ponds instead.
The research, "The Effects of Heating Rate and Reaction Time on Hydrothermal Liquefaction of Microalgae," was funded by the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program of the National Science Foundation. The university is pursuing patent protection for the intellectual property, and is seeking commercialization partners to help bring the technology to market.
Abstract: https://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2012/webprogram/Paper280193.html
Savage Lab: http://savageresearchlab.wordpress.com
EDITORS: Watch and link to a video about Savage's work on biofuels at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dvGssEM4bLg#
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Biofuel breakthrough: Quick cook method turns algae into oil

Why the EU should not follow GE path to agricultural Armageddon | Greenpeace International

This week Greenpeace has linked European farmers, decision makers and consumers with American famers and an agricultural scientist to give a picture of what we could expect if we follow the path of US and Argentinean agriculture............
Why the EU should not follow GE path to agricultural Armageddon | Greenpeace International

Video: Grains Shape the Songs of Sand Dunes

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When plagued by whipping desert winds, sand dunes signal their displeasure with haunting moans that reverberate across the arid landscape. Some emit single-note songs while others mimic a jumbled chorus—but no one knew why they sang these different songs until now.
New research published online this week in Geophysical Research Letters finds that the size of sand grains shapes a dune's song.
 Scientists collected sand from a singing dune in Morocco that moans at around 105 hertz (Hz)—or, to a musician, that's G-sharp two octaves below middle C. They compared these notes to sounds from sand collected from a dune in Oman, which produces notes ranging from 90 Hz to 150 Hz (F-sharp to D). By creating mini-dune avalanches in the lab, scientists recreated these desert songs, finding that different layers of sand aren't necessary to produce the moans, as previous researchers contended. They also found that when they sieved the Omani sand so that the grains were similarly sized, the resulting "avalanche" produced a single-note song. The synchronized movement of sand grains, they conclude, produces the famed moaning, while grain size determines the notes contained in the song.
 .sciencemag.org
26/10/12

Νέα θεωρία λέει ότι χρόνος...κάποτε θα παγώσει

Σύμφωνα με τα στοιχεία νέας έρευνας επιστήμονες από το πανεπιστήμιο της Σαλαμάνκας και της Χώρας των Βάσκων έχει αμφισβητήσει τη λαϊκή δοξασία ότι το σύμπαν επεκτείνεται και μάλιστα με επιτάχυνση.

Η νέα ριζοσπαστική θεωρία αναφέρει ότι το σύμπαν θα μπορούσε να επιβραδύνεται (και ο χρόνος φυσικά επιβραδύνεται) – και μπορεί τελικά να παραλύσει συνολικά σε δισεκατομμύρια χρόνια. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι κάποια στιγμή το ρολόι του χρόνου θα πάψει να λειτουργεί, τα πάντα στο Σύμπαν θα πάψουν να κινούνται και όλα μέσα σε αυτό θα παγώσουν για πάντα.

Σύμφωνα με τους επιστήμονες, η σταδιακή απώλεια χρόνου δεν είναι αισθητή από το ανθρώπινο μάτι. Και όπως λένε, όλα θα πρέπει να έχουν ένα τέλος.

"Όλα θα πρέπει να παγώσουν, σαν μια εικόνα, για πάντα”, λέει ο Ισπανός καθηγητής Senovilla.

Οι επιστήμονες έχουν μετρήσει στο παρελθόν το φως που μας έρχεται από μακρινά αστέρια τα οποία έγιναν σουπερνόβα. για να δείξουν ότι το σύμπαν επεκτείνεται με ταχείς ρυθμούς. Αυτή η άποψη βασίστηκε στην ερυθρή μετατόπιση του φωτός από τα μακρινά σουπερνόβα. Έτσι, η αποδεκτή θεωρία βασίζεται στην ιδέα ότι ένα είδος αντι-βαρυτικής δύναμης – γνωστής ως “σκοτεινή ενέργεια” – πρέπει να οδηγεί τους γαλαξίες να επιταχύνονται.

Ωστόσο, οι επιστήμονες που εργάζονται στην τελευταία θεωρία λένε ότι ψάχνουμε για πράγματα στο παρελθόν, που από τότε ο χρόνος έχει επιβραδυνθεί. Κι όπως ο ήχος μιας σειρήνας ενός ασθενοφόρου καθώς μας πλησιάζει γίνεται οξύτερος, ενώ γίνεται πιο βαρύς καθώς απομακρύνεται, έτσι και το άστρο που απομακρύνεται από μας φαίνεται πιο ερυθρό από ότι αν κινείται προς εμάς.

Και ο Senovilla προτείνει ότι η τρέχουσα υπόθεση είναι λάθος – που λέει ότι το σύμπαν επιταχύνεται – γιατί ο χρόνος σταδιακά επιβραδύνεται, ενώ σε μας γίνεται ορατή μια επιτάχυνση του σύμπαντος μέχρις ότου όλα τα αντικείμενα μέσα σε αυτό να εξαφανιστούν.

"Η σκοτεινή ενέργεια δεν υπάρχει και ο χρόνος επιβραδύνεται. Αφού ο χρόνος γεννήθηκε μέσα στη Μεγάλη Έκρηξη και αφού μπορεί να γεννηθεί μπορεί και να πεθάνει, ως αποτέλεσμα της δράσης ενός αντίθετου φαινομένου” συμπληρώνει.

Η εργασία του δημοσιεύεται στο Physical Review D.
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