Researchers pressure cook wet algae into crude oil in one minute

November 16, 2012November 16, 20127 Comments

Researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a fast way to turn algae into biocrude oil, a clean substitute for conventional crude oil. Chemical engineering professor Phil Savage and doctoral student Julia Faeth were able to pressure cook microalgae in 1,100-degree-Fahrenheit sand for about one minute, converting 65 percent of it into biocrude.

It’s a revolutionary way to speed up the natural process, given that waiting for dead organisms to decompose can take millions of years. It’s a big improvement over the lab’s own research. Two years ago, the team was able to speed things up to less than half an hour while converting about 50 percent of the microalgae into biocrude.

The researchers have been mimicking the natural process that forms crude oil with marine organisms. Savage and Faeth filled a steel pipe with wet, green microalgae from the genus Nannochloropsis, and pressured it into hot sand. Within a minute, the algae made it to 550 degrees all the way through, and 65 percent of it turned into biocrude…

It won’t be competing directly with dry algae anytime soon. The Michigan researchers used only 1.5 milliliters of microalgae for testing, and still don’t know exactly why they were able to convert to biocrude within one minute. Algae biofuels have huge potential for reducing vehicle carbon emissions and dependency on foreign oil, but it will take a while for any version of algae to make it to gas stations – even if you can cook it in a minute.

But, that’s only a description of early proof of concept processes. If and when Professor Savage and Julia Faeth are are able to ramp up to the smallest pilot plant, they’ll have a clearer picture of the capabilities and costs of their new method.

I wish them well.

NASA climate forecasting is adding salt

June 4, 2011June 4, 2011Leave a comment

Global differences between evaporation and precipitation

Salt is essential to human life. Most people don’t know, however, that salt — in a form nearly the same as the simple table variety — is just as essential to Earth’s ocean, serving as a critical driver of key ocean processes. While ancient Greek soothsayers believed they could foretell the future by reading the patterns in sprinkled salt, today’s scientists have learned that they can indeed harness this invaluable mineral to foresee the future — of Earth’s climate.

The oracles of modern climate science are the computer models used to forecast climate change. These models, which rely on a myriad of data from many sources, are effective in predicting many climate variables, such as global temperatures. Yet data for some pieces of the climate puzzle have been scarce, including the concentration of dissolved sea salt at the surface of the world’s ocean, commonly called ocean surface salinity, subjecting the models to varying margins of error. This salinity is a key indicator of how Earth’s freshwater moves between the ocean, land and atmosphere.

Enter Aquarius, a new NASA salinity-measurement instrument slated for launch in June 2011 aboard the SAC-D spacecraft built by Argentina’s CONAE. Aquarius’ high-tech, salt-seeking sensors will make comprehensive measurements of ocean surface salinity with the precision needed to help researchers better determine how Earth’s ocean interacts with the atmosphere to influence climate. It’s a mission that promises to be, to quote the old saying, “worth its salt…”

Density-driven ocean circulation, according to Gary Lagerloef, is controlled as much by salinity as by ocean temperature. Sea salt makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s ocean, but its relatively small presence reaps huge consequences.

Salinity influences the very motion of the ocean and the temperature of seawater, because the concentration of sea salt in the ocean’s surface mixed layer — the portion of the ocean that is actively exchanging water and heat with Earth’s atmosphere — is a critical driver of these ocean processes. It’s the missing variable in understanding the link between the water cycle and ocean circulation. Specifically, it’s an essential metric to modeling precipitation and evaporation…

Until now, researchers had taken ocean salinity measurements from aboard ships, buoys and aircraft – but they’d done so using a wide range of methods across assorted sampling areas and over inconsistent times from one season to another. Because of the sparse and intermittent nature of these salinity observations, researchers have not been able to fine-tune models to obtain a true global picture of how ocean surface salinity is influencing the ocean. Aquarius promises to resolve these deficiencies, seeing changes in ocean surface salinity consistently across space and time and mapping the entire ice-free ocean every seven days for at least three years.

RTFA. The advance work has been accomplished, sensors and data collection have been tuned. Now the task of collecting data will begin with the launch of Aquarius, this month.

The latest in bed-warmers at Holiday Inns

January 25, 2010January 25, 2010Leave a comment

Standard issue bed-warmer in our family

International hotel chain Holiday Inn is offering a trial human bed-warming service at three hotels in Britain this month.

If requested, a willing staff-member at two of the chain’s London hotels and one in the northern English city of Manchester will dress in an all-in-one fleece sleeper suit before slipping between the sheets…

The bed-warmer is equipped with a thermometer to measure the bed’s required temperature of 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit)…

Florence Eavis, Holiday Inn spokeswoman told Reuters that the “innovative” bed-warming method was a response to Britain’s recent cold weather and marked the launch of 3,200 new Holiday Inns worldwide.

She could not explain why the beds were not being warmed by hot water bottles or electric-blankets, but admitted the human method was quirky.

Holiday Inn are promoting the service with the help of sleep-expert Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Center, who said the idea could help people sleep.

All the sleep experts I ever knew in the Edinburgh area were more likely to recommend Laphroig as a sleep aid.

Treelines rising, moving North – in a warming world

August 25, 2009August 25, 2009Leave a comment

Trees around the world are colonising new territories in response to higher temperatures. From the US west coast to northern Siberia and south-east Asia, trees are growing at higher elevations, and at higher latitudes as the climate warms…

The shift is revealed by the first global analysis of treelines published in the journal Ecology Letters.

However, the trees aren’t responding quite how scientists expected. Instead of advancing as summer temperatures rise, the trees’ ability to colonise new areas appears to be more dependent on whether winter temperatures warm…

Treelines tend to form wherever conditions for growth become too harsh. For example, at high altitudes and latitudes, the climate often becomes too cold for trees to survive. At this boundary, a treeline occurs, with forest on one side and shorter, hardier plants such as shrubs and plants on the other.

However, around the world, average air temperatures have risen during the past century. This warming has been most pronounced at high altitudes and latitudes, the exact places where treelines form. So in theory, trees should take advantage of these warmer, more hospitable climates, allowing treelines to advance higher and closer towards the poles…

Crucially, the trees do not seem to be responding to warmer summer temperatures. “We expected growing season warming to be the dominant driver,” says Melanie Harsch. “But we found that it was not, winter temperature was.”

RTFA. Been years since I spent a significant portion of my free time at or above treeline. But, I understand what this is all about.

You should, too.

Global ocean surface temperature warmest on record for June

July 27, 2009July 27, 20091 Comment

The world’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for June, breaking the previous high mark set in 2005, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Additionally, the combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest on record.

* The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the second warmest on record, behind 2005, 1.12 degrees F (0.62 degree C) above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees F (15.5 degrees C).
* Separately, the global ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees F (0.59 degree C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C).
* Each hemisphere broke its June record for warmest ocean surface temperature. In the Northern Hemisphere, the warm anomaly of 1.17 degrees F (0.65 degree C) surpassed the previous record of 1.12 degrees F (0.62 degree C), set in 2005. The Southern Hemisphere’s increase of 0.99 degree F (0.55 degree C) exceeded the old record of 0.92 degree F (0.51 degree C), set in 1998.
* The global land surface temperature for June 2009 was 1.26 degrees F (0.70 degree C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 degrees F (13.3 degrees C), and ranked as the sixth-warmest June on record.

* El Niño is back after six straight months of increased sea-surface temperature anomalies. June sea surface temperatures in the region were more than 0.9 degree F (0.5 degree C) above average…
* Arctic sea ice covered an average of 4.4 million square miles (11.5 million square kilometers) during June, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This is 5.6 percent below the 1979-2000 average extent. By contrast, the 2007 record for the least Arctic sea ice extent was 5.5 percent below average. Antarctic sea ice extent in June was 3.9 percent above the 1979-2000 average.

Just checking in on the weather – since the nutball skeptics tend to skip the bits which don’t fit their religion.

The pilots in the family are as bad as farmers when it comes to being weather freaks. We do a monthly discussion of El Niño/La Niña. Keep Skype in business between Asheville and Santa Fe.

Many Mexican Flu cases were missing an early warning – no fever!

May 13, 2009May 13, 2009Leave a comment

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that could increase the difficulty of controlling the epidemic, said a leading American infectious-disease expert who examined cases in Mexico last week.

Fever is a hallmark of influenza, often rising abruptly to 104 degrees at the onset of illness. Because many infectious-disease experts consider fever the most important sign of the disease, the presence of fever is a critical part of screening patients.

But about a third of the patients at two hospitals in Mexico City where the American expert, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, consulted for four days last week had no fever when screened, he said.

“It surprised me and my Mexican colleagues, because the textbooks say that in an influenza outbreak the predictive value of fever and cough is 90 percent,” said Dr. Wenzel. While many people with severe cases went on to develop fever after they were admitted, about half of the milder cases did not; nearly all patients had coughing and malaise…

RTFA. Understand there will likely be a second wave of the Mexican Flu this autumn. Dunces who didn’t get sick the first time around will presume their God is protecting them and do nothing preventative.

All the seasons of Earth now arrive two days earlier

January 22, 2009January 22, 2009Leave a comment

Daylife/AFP/Getty Images

Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University.

Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cycle of seasons, according to Alexander R. Stine, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science and first author of the report.

“We see 100 years where there is a very natural pattern of variability, and then we see a large departure from that pattern at the same time as global mean temperatures start increasing, which makes us suspect that there’s a human role here,” he said…

The researchers also found that the difference between summer and winter land temperatures has decreased over the same 50-year period, with winter temperatures warming more than those in summer. They found that in non-tropical regions, winter temperatures over land warmed by 1.8 degrees Celsius and summer temperatures increased by 1 degree. Ocean warming has been somewhat less…

“We’re saying that, on top of the long term trend of warmer summer and winter highs, peak warming is coming earlier within the year,” Fung said. “It’s not just the onset of spring, but the peak…”

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