The new AvGas - Green Gold

Greebo

Greebo

N9017H - C172M (1976)
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Retired Evil Overlord
This is officially really cool ****!
http://www.leftlanenews.com/green-crude-fuel-of-the-future.html#more-7582

Gasoline from algae.
Unlike the production of ethanol, Sapphire's production process doesn't use land for fuel crop instead of food crop and virtually eliminates any emissions in the creation process. The end product is a green liquid that is virtually identical to gasoline.

And just to silence any naysayers, Brian Goodall — an employee of Sapphire Energy — just completed a cross-Atlantic flight in a plane powered by the company's biofuel.
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Interesting... and it's not even dated April 1st. :D

I think green algae represents the largest photosynthetic biomass on the planet... and it sure grows quickly. Probably also very easy to manipulate genetically for maximum efficiency.

Another thought: biofuel as a by-product of waste water processing...!
This has a lot of potential.


I'm having a hard time finding any details on this flight mentioned- anybody know what plane it was, was it an avgas/pond scum mix, etc?
 
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It was the Virgin 747 flight

http://sapphireenergy.com/press_release/1

“Any company or fuel that hopes to solve the biofuel conundrum must be economically scalable – and that requires conforming to the existing refining distribution and fleet infrastructure,” said Brian Goodall, Sapphire’s new vice president of downstream technology. Goodall led the team responsible for the highly visible, first-ever Virgin Atlantic “green” 747 flight earlier this year. In addition to a three-decade career in the petrochemical industry, he is a corporate inductee at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
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Pond scum, eh? So lawyers are finally good for something! :D
 
So, how many years will this get tied up in eco-impact studies etc by the powers that be?
 
OK I have a question. Greebo's quote says the green liquid is like Gasoline, Then how did a 747 fly with it in the tanks? i Thought 747's where Jet Engines.

Dave G.:blueplane:
 
Shipoke said:
OK I have a question. Greebo's quote says the green liquid is like Gasoline, Then how did a 747 fly with it in the tanks? i Thought 747's where Jet Engines.

Dave G.:blueplane:
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Jet engines can burn almost any low viscosity fuel (in theory).
 
Pi1otguy said:
Jet engines can burn almost any low viscosity fuel (in theory).
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The old military planes with both piston and jet engines (P2V Neptune for instance) only carried avgas to prevent fuel mismanagement. The jet will burn avgas but not as efficiently as jet fuel, so I was told by a former crewman.
 
I read an interesting analysis of various "green" production methods -- cellulosic and algae based products had a 36:1 yield -- for every one unit of petro input, you get 36 units of comparable (on a BTU basis, IIRC) output. (Corn-based ethanol was 1.5:1, FWIW)

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
I am curious if this "green fuel" is flammable? I assume it is, but can you imagine the survival rates of accidents if the fuel was less flammable than todays Avgas?
 
tdager said:
I am curious if this "green fuel" is flammable? I assume it is, but can you imagine the survival rates of accidents if the fuel was less flammable than todays Avgas?
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The big danger with gasoline is the vapor... it's pretty volatile stuff, giving off vapor at fairly low temps, and the vapor ignites very easily- hey, you could prolly run a low-compression engine with that stuff! :D

I'm curious, too, about the volatility of this green sludge stuff... I guess if it behaves like gasoline in the engine, it's probably equally dangerous when spilled or vaporized.

Even so, it's biodegradable- a major plus.
Imagine a mega-tanker spill of this fuel vs. a load of petro-crude... it would obviously have a negative local impact temporarily, but eventually it would clean itself up. Spilled crude just doesn't go away.
 
rottydaddy said:
Even so, it's biodegradable- a major plus.
Imagine a mega-tanker spill of this fuel vs. a load of petro-crude... it would obviously have a negative local impact temporarily, but eventually it would clean itself up. Spilled crude just doesn't go away.
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Crude oil does eventually "go away" through dissipation, weathering, and chemical breakdown -- eventually.

Is the product of the algae any different? Probably not. I don't think the refined fuel product is necessarily any "greener."

But it does have promise as a renewable, potentially unlimited energy source.
 
I don't know if its cleaner to burn or dispose of, its definitely cleaner to refine tho.
 
Greebo said:
Oh you're just impatient! ;)
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LOL!
I'm not an engineer, but a renewable energy source just makes more sense from an engineering standpoint.
And there's potential profit in such ventures, too- there was a time when very intelligent people thought gasoline would never amount to much.
They also thought automobiles were a fad, and heavier-than-air powered aircraft would never be of any practical use. :rolleyes:
Progress requires imagination...
 
This is the first biofuel proposal that makes any sense at all. It is criminal to take up land to make fuel when there are hungry people. This works in 3D culture, and as someone already pointed out, using unicellular organisms will increase efficiency, and they are easily subjected to genetic manipulation. Oil is simply captured sunlight. Nothing on earth is as efficient at capturing sunlight as algae.
 
I used to run some 100LL in my P model misubishi and in my Cheyenne to clean the black smudges off the cowls...worked great...Operations manual gives the limits on how many gallons etc....
 
Algae produces the same sort of plant oil (in a higher quantity per cell weight since no cell wall is needed for support) as other plants (this is a fatty-acid ester of glycerol). There are a few problem with algae yet- growing in ponds- a wild strain can overgrow your genetically engineered strain (if regulations will let you grow a GE strain in a pond). Also, only the top of the pond gets light so oil production deeper in the pond is reduced.

Growing the algae in a 3-d matrix isn't cheap- it is fairly capital intensive- at least as much as bioreactors. You get many of the same issues of sterility needed as a bioreactor used to grow up certain pharma products. The wild algae that is trying to contaminate our ponds and bioreactors is simply more fit to grow rapidly- our strains will need to sacrifice some growth for oil production.

What they flew was probably the same sort of biodiesel as you'd get from soy or corn except it came from algae. I've heard of a few companies that are working on cracking the plant oil to the hydrocarbons we are more familiar with, and maybe that is what they flew.
 
Neal Howard said:
If only someone would come up with a way to cheaply mass-produce butanol (straight-chain n-butanol, see the wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel). Butanol would be much better than ethanol as a gasoline blending ingredient.
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One problem with butanol is that it is fairly toxic to organisms. I'd be surprised if you could get the 10-12% you get from ethanol (again- toxicity limits the amount of ethanol you get).

Although not as bad as ethanol, butanol can hold a surprising amount of water (we used it as an extraction solvent looking for pharmaceutical compounds). This is bad for an engine that flies.

From the wiki article cited:
If the limit is exceeded by running the engine on pure butanol or a gasoline blend with a high percentage of butanol, the engine will run lean, something which can critically damage components.
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This is essentially lean of peak operations. The engine may not run well but I don't think you'll damage it.
 
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