Waste == Food.

Let's not cut our noses to spite our face. If we get twice as much energy from the same amount of coal, this is a good thing.

While we should be doing everything possible to mothball all coal plants, that is perhaps a few years down the line yet. In the mean time if we can use the CO2 from them to fuel our cars, we are a LOT better off.

How can this be bad?
The coal will be burned.
Why not use the food (CO-2) for good?
Power plants are the most reliable source to feed a continous production of algae and reduce pollution.

This doesn't take any carbon out of the atmosphere. You get more bang for your buck by generating energy from the same carbon source twice, but unless you're sequestering the CO2-fed algae, it all ends up back in the atmosphere. It doesn't matter whether you consume it as bio-diesel or burn it as biomass.

umm... sorry to be the one to say this, but you could try reading treehugger more if this is the first time you've seen this concept.

For example:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/algatech_and_gr.php

Fair enough...one slipped by the goalie. Score one for you. I hadn't heard of a power company itself, as opposed to an independent biofuel producer doing this sort of research. Better?

Cheers, M

The reason this is bad is because it still takes the carbon out of sequestration as a rock and puts it in circulation. It matters little that we use it twice before it ends up in the atmosphere.

The fundamental problem is that we're taking carbon out of sequestration in a stable form and putting it in circulation. The only fix is to put it back into a stable form and sequester it again, and the only stable form that I know of that won't have people demanding it be burned again is limestone.

I think it has potential to increase energy output as in...
capture the carbon and do the algae thing and put th output from that into another power plant and capture the carbon to grow algae... ETC.. On and on. The question is. What else is required?

This is GreenFuel's model -- using CO2 from power plants for fuel. It's not such a new idea...

Fossil fuels will be in use for a while longer whether we like it or not. And it will be a very long time before we find good ways to sequester CO2 effectively. I personally think the switch to CO2-free energy will happen before "clean coal."
So in the meantime, lets get more energy per pound of CO2 we release.

The thing about pumping the CO2 sequentially between algae farms, getting multiple use out of it, it that it basically just becomes solar farms of a different sort. We already make solar power with PV (20%) or solar thermal (40+%) more efficiently than any plants. So the only good reason for using this algae over using the same land for solar farms, I think, is that we can more easily take the resulting energy (a liquid fuel) and use it to power vehicles. Presumably we could do the same using electricity from solar farms, and with the right chemistry it could be more efficient than algae can manage. But algae is a very good start.

plants need CO2 to grow.
Without it the trees will die!!!

Yes, it does come out of the ground and after reuse end up in the atmosphere but because we used it twice (assuming all things equal) we saved on pulling an equal amount out of the ground for the second use so effectively, we are halving the amount pulled out of the ground and this is a VERY good thing. I'd rather we didn't pull it out of the ground in the first place but this is still a good thing.

Other benefits, a lot of Nitrogen goes up the stack too (in the form of NO I believe). Algae loves this stuff, splits out the nitrogen and uses it (so you don't need to fertilize it) and spits out oxygen. (NO is also known as smog).

The down side to this is that algae produces more lipids (the bit with oil in it) if distressed, ie hungry, ie short of nitrogen. I've no idea what the right balance is there.

Another reason to tie algae productions to coal fired plants is that to be really productive, algae needs to be warm (> 100 degrees) and at constant temp. Coal fired plants produce excess heat in abundance.

And of course every thing must have a downside. We'd be better off using that excess heat for something else. Remember steam tunnels delivering hot water and heat to cities (like NY). Ok me neither but I visited Bucharest, Romania a few years ago and was quite impressed by the fact that everyone had two water mains, a hot one and a cold one and no-one had their own water heater.

-P

I think it would make sense to build biofuel plants next to the powerplants, because besides the abundance of CO2 they also produce massive amounts of heat that goes unused (ends up in a gradier or a big body of water anyways). This warm water doped with emissions could be the ideal growbed for algae even in the colder climates - just add sunlight. Still it would't be sustainable. Algael fuels would only be carbon neutral, if all the CO2 was taken from the atmosphere. But still it would be better if we could use the waste from the plants for further benefit. And maybe in the future use the algae technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and tur the biomass into forms that permanently keep the carbon - like building materials etc.

Algae is a good source for fuel, it can also be grown in literal wastewater. It cuts down on the emissions from the coal and power plants as well...

Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bAzW2Lf_FM

Coal accounts for more than 50% of US electricity production. Anything that reduces emissions per kWatt hour is a good thing.

this is soo coool you guys are sooooooooo smart

This was mentioned over thirty years ago by a science fiction author writing non fiction. Jerry Pournelle wrote about this in his articles for Galaxy (or Analog, I forget). I believe that it is also in his book A Step Further Out.