Water Power R&D

imho the current muddle in the central valley of California lends urgency to the idea of accelerated developed of new deep sea desalination technologies I’ve mentioned in previous posts here and here. Deep sea water desalination looks orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to impliment than say spending 35 billion on a 35 mile long pipeline under the delta. According to this letter to the Congress by the American Petrolium Institute–offshore oil & gas would bring $1.3 trillion in new government revenue over the next two decades. A fraction of that would pay for all the water needs of southern California for the foreseeable future using deep water desalination–with money’s left to pay state officials for what not. Heck California might get the underwater desalination plants for free as a condition allowing oil drillers to drill offshore. Sound too good to be true? Maybe. The Obama administration is willing to fund offshore drilling in Brazil. Someday they may think it in the best American interests to allow more drilling offshore of the USA. At that point a deal might be struck with oil drillers to bring fresh deep desalinized water ashore as part of a deal to water algae onshore or drill for oil offshore or both.

but that’s not what this post is about–except tangentially.

Remember I mentioned that Exxon might be interested in getting into offshore water desalination because of their interest in algae oil and their partnership with Craig Ventor?

Listen to the story below about what going on in genetics field–and how it will affect water & power supplies. If you’re ready to move on — then know the significance of the story below is that commercial very large scale algae oil production is coming sooner –much sooner than is currently anticipated.

In the beginning

On July 24, 2009, a small group of scientists, entrepreneurs, cultural impresarios and journalists that included architects of the some of the leading transformative companies of our time (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, PayPal), arrived at the Andaz Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, to be offered a glimpse, guided by George Church and Craig Venter, of a future far stranger than Mr. Huxley had been able to imagine in 1948.

In this future — whose underpinnings, as Drs. Church and Venter demonstrated, are here already — life as we know it is transformed not by the error catastrophe of radiation damage to our genetic processes, but by the far greater upheaval caused by discovering how to read genetic sequences directly into computers, where the code can be replicated exactly, manipulated freely, and translated back into living organisms by writing the other way. “We can program these cells as if they were an extension of the computer,” George Church announced, and proceeded to explain just how much progress has already been made.

New York Times even talked about the symposium given by Church and Ventor.

Church noted that between 1970 and 2005 gene sequencing had taken place on a Moore’s Law pace, improving at about 1.5 times per year. Since then it has improved at the rate of an order of magnitude, or ten times annually.

Within a week or so of this symposium this article appeared entitled Researchers rapidly turn bacteria into biotech factories.

Led by a pair of researchers in the lab of Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics George Church, the team rapidly refined the design of a bacterium by editing multiple genes in parallel instead of targeting one gene at a time. They transformed self-serving E. coli cells into efficient factories that produce a desired compound, accomplishing in just three days a feat that would take most biotech companies months or years.

Remember this is the same Church that gave the symposium with Ventor. At the symposium he was talking about improvements in gene sequencing accelerating to ten times annually before his announcement. However, in this case what he’s talking about here is writing genetic sequences. That is, before they were talking about reading genetic sequences into computer programs.  Now they are talking about writing out gentic sequences from computers back into living organisms. And doing so much more quickly.

The following week two companies–one in Cambridge Massachusetts and the other in Washington State — announced that they had quadrupled the yield for algae from ~5000gallons @ acre to ~20,000 @ acre. According to the Cambridge Massachusetts company:

A startup based in Cambridge, MA–Joule Biotechnologies–today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.

Joule claims that its process will be competitive with crude oil at $50 a barrel.

Seperately a third company called Green Technologies Inc — figured out a way to “massively increase” algae production because “scientists uncovered the elusive and long sought after “lipid trigger” in green algae.”

Escondido, CA, August 04, 2009 –(PR.com)– Sustainable Green Technologies (SGT) a start-up company in Escondido, California announced today that it has discovered a highly effective and low cost way to massively increase algal oil production.

Do they use the new method mentioned by Church? There is no definitive answer to this question. It looks like there might be a relationship but beyond the coincidence of the announcements–there is no proof from the text. But its safe to say that major major advances have been made in both the process and the production of algae oil. That more are likely– are on the way.

Is this just hype? Another article considers this question in a slightly different context.

In terms of methodology used to distinguish viable new technologies from the hype associated with renewables, McDonald said he looked for corroboration. For instance, Aurora Biofuels in Florida announced it had found a way to harvest algae oil using the same methods as waste-water treatment plants. Then a few weeks later the research arm of the Australian government made a similar announcement. “That’s what we are looking for,” McDonald said. “When legitimate organizations make similar discoveries independently that seem to corroborate each other, I think it gives credence to the commercial development and growth of the technology.”

Same could be said when several companies here and there announce radical increases in algae to oil yield –especially when they coincide with broad based technological change mentioned by Church and Ventor.

Remember the crucial take away. Church has created a tool that Ventor will likely use to improve algae to oil yields significantly above the just announced four fold increase to 20,000 gallons@acre. This will be used by Exxon oil to scale commercial quantities of algae oil.

Finally, of note, OriginOil along with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) of the Department of Energy has come out with the first-ever comprehensive algae production model, for the algae oil industry.

Its should be clear that algae oil process will require a lot more water from water scarce places with algae oil ambitions like southern California and New Mexico. What’s not so clear is what kind of water that will be. What’s that? Well, consider, advanced genetics will likely be able to tailor the algae to the kinds of water available.

But the implications of this accelerated genetics go to more than just algae oil’s demands on water.This technology will enable the water reuse industry to create specialized microbes for any water reuse plant.

This article dated July29 from Global Water Intelligence lists the
Top 10 New Water Technologies to Save the World I’m not familiar with some of the companies. But as to the ones that I am familiar with on the list–I would agree. They are world changers. So that reflects well on the rest. These are the technology areas mentioned in the article that would be most affected by Church’s new genetics tools mentioned above. Consider what would happen if you could quickly tailer single cell organisms for a specific waste stream mentioned below in such way as to maximize their yield and minimize any attendant problems.

Bio-polymers from wastewater: bio-polymers are a great natural al ternative to petro-chemical-based plastics; what is more they can be made during the biological digestion of sewage sludge. AnoxKaldnes (www.anoxkaldnes.com) is the leading commercial developer of this technology.

Biogas recovery: the collection of methane from anaerobic wastewater treatment has been a reality for industrial effluents with a high biological load for some years. The challenge is to make it viable for less concentrated municipal wastewater. Leaders in this market are Paques (www.paques.nl) and Biothane (www.biothane.com).

Microbial fuel cells: the next step in energy recovery from wastewater is direct electrical power generation through microbial fuel cells. Emefcy (www.emefcy.com) of Israel is at the forefront of commercialising this technology.

Decentralized wastewater treatment: centralised wastewater systems are expensive to build and use a lot of water. Decentralised systems might remove the need for sewers, and make it easier to recycle the water and energy in the waste. The Lettinga Associates Foundation (www.lettinga-associates.wur.nl) is one of the leading organisations promoting the practical application of decentralized wastewater.

Then there is the kind of experiment you see in many universities that uses microbes to do interesting work. Consider this article about the work of some Penn State Scientists (jointly with Saudi Arabia & China)

Wastewater produces electricity and desalinates water So far the work is just interesting. But what if you could get the microbes mentioned in the article to do a lot more work using the tools mentioned above?

If you find this info to be useful or interesting–kindly ask your webmaster to link to this blog.

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