Hydrothermal Liquefaction for Renewable Oil?

Sapphire EnergyAlgae-to-energyGreen Crude OilTurnsAlgae Into Oil

Given the theory that fossil fuels were created by former living organisms, it suggests that given enough time, heat and pressure all fossil fuels would be "renewable." So, theoretically, millions of years from now today's organic matter could become oil. It's the time involved in this process that has kept oil from being considered a renewable resource. That, however, is beginning to change.

Scientists are using algae to create abiofuelthat closely resembles crude oil. This's actually not all that surprising given that most of the oil found in shale is thought to come from marine algae that was buried and converted into oil as it cooked underground over time. However, a new process discovered by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to speed up the cooking process so that it can now convert a small mixture of algae and water into a kind of crude oil in less than an hour.

The process, which is called hydrothermal liquefaction, can even be used on other organic material like municipal sewage and be used as a drop in oil feedstock for refineries that process crude oil. Given the rapid time this oil can be created, it certainly calls into question the idea that oil can't be a renewable resource.

One company that's leading the way to grow crude oil is Sapphire Energy, which is working on acommercial demonstration scale algae-to-energy facility in New Mexico. The green crude oil, as its being called, requires sunlight, non-potable water, non-arable land and air to turn algae into oil. It's main energy source is actually carbon dioxide as the algae converts it into oil. In fact, the algae consumes12 to 14 kg of carbon dioxide per gallon of green crude that is produced, so because the process consumes carbon dioxide, ityields a 70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared to using traditional oil as a transportation fuel.

The green crude oil that will be produced from that farm will be chemically identical to traditional crude oil. That will allow the oil to be used in most refineries to be turned into gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. What's remarkable is that the process takes just a matter of weeks as opposed to hundreds of millions of years.

Renewable natural gas: Methane-belching microbes and more
Natural gas, likewise, could be considered arenewable fuel. Biogas, biomethane, or renewable natural gas is produced by organic waste as it breaks down. It is produced in landfills, wastewater treatment plants, commercial food waste facilities and farms. That raw biogas, however, can be collected and upgraded to meet natural gas pipeline quality specifications and then can be used just like the natural gas we get from a fossil fuel well. In fact, companies like

Clean Energy Fuels source renewable natural gas from farms and landfills to be used as a transportation fuel, which it has branded as Redeem. Meanwhile, Waste Management has developed a technology that converts landfill gas into a fuel it uses for its fleet. Finally, some landfills capture methane and use it to produce electricity.

Source: Fool

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