How can we eliminate fossil fuels?

It's no secret that fossil fuels have a detrimental effect on the environment, but do feasible alternatives exist? In this episode, Marshall takes a look at the possibilities of DIY biofuel.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
smart happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
could we eliminate fossil fuels and all the carbon emissions
that they create? So last week you may recall that

(00:23):
I did a post on Jewel Unlimited, a company that
claims that in two thousand and twelve, they will be
able to produce virtually unlimited liquid hydrocarbons, namely diesel fuel,
using bacteria. The company further claims that they'll be able
to do this at a rate of fifteen thousand gallons

(00:43):
of diesel fuel per acre, and that the diesel fuel
will cost the equivalent of oil if it were at
thirty dollars per barrel. Now, this is miraculous if they
pull it off, and I did talk about it in
my podcast. I also posted it on the blog. And
what was interesting was the reaction to that. Almost universally,

(01:04):
people thought one of two things. Either that the oil companies,
because they want to make billions of dollars a year
in revenue from oil, are going to come in and
crush this effort in any effort like it, so that
none of these uh bacteria generated or algae generated liquid
hydro carbons ever make it to market, or people thought

(01:26):
that this company is lying in order to raise money,
that they are just making up these claims and that
there is absolutely no truth to it. I don't think
their claims are false, because there are lots of companies
pursuing the same kind of activity, either in the bacteria
or in the algae space, and the number of companies

(01:48):
would imply that there really is something there. But the
conspiracy theory thing is kind of interesting if you think
about it, because historically there is a fair amount of
evidence that the oil company do participate in conspiracy theory
kind of stuff. For example, there was the dismantling of
the rapid transit system in Los Angeles. There was prohibition

(02:13):
which many think was put in place not because of
the problems of drinking alcohol, but because of the problems
of making ethanol as a fuel. Things like that do
make you think. So I was thinking about it, and
I was thinking, Okay, let's say that these conspiracy theories
are true. And there were so many people that came

(02:34):
up with this kind of comment that, you know, it
made me think. This is a deeply seated belief in
the United States. So let's say these theories are true.
How could you get around it? What could you do
that would make it impossible for the oil companies to
stop the effort to create liquid hydrocarbons from bacteria or algae.

(02:56):
My thinking took me in this direction. One way to
get around the conspiracy would be to widely publicized instructions
for a fuel production system that any normal, do it
yourself type maker person could easily build in his or
her backyard. Imagine if a system like that existed, You
invest a couple of hundred bucks, and suddenly you can

(03:18):
make your own fuel, essentially for free, in your backyard.
If thousands of people were doing this, there would be
no way to squash that movement, and that would give
small companies the cover they need to grow fuel in
bigger batches, and soon fossil fuels would be a thing
of the past. The funny thing is, the more I
think about this, the more realistic it seems. This might

(03:40):
actually be a project that falls within the abilities of
normal do it yourself folks, and more importantly, the maker community.
Think about the pieces needed to pull this off. First,
we need the ability to grow algae. Now, this is
not a complicated problem. Anybody who's left a bucket out
on the back poor that has rainwater and it has

(04:01):
seen algae grow right before their very eyes. So any
kind of large plastic barrel or an inexpensive above ground
swimming pool can be used to grow algae. Algae like
lots of other plants, produce oil. You know, corn produces
corn oil, soybeans produced soybean oil. So algae produces algae oil.

(04:23):
We next need a way to separate that oil from
the algae. Now this isn't trivial, but it's not impossible either.
You can dry the algae and then you can press
the algae sort of like you press olives to get
olive oil. You can press the algae to get the
algae oil out of it. There's no magic here, and

(04:43):
the sun can do the drying, so it's not like
we need energy to dry out the algae. Now with
that oil, you can do one of two things. You
can burn oil directly in a diesel engine. You have
to do a little bit of modification to heat the
oil up, especially in winter, or it's not gonna flow
properly and it's gonna come up the engine. But when

(05:04):
mr diesel invented the diesel engine, he intended vegetable oil
to be the source of fuel, so this is not
an unusual thing to do to a diesel engine. But
if you don't want to use liquid vegetable oil in
your diesel engine, then you have the option of taking
that algae oil and turning it into biodiesel. This again

(05:26):
is not trivial, but it's also not impossible, and it's
something that just about anybody could do in their garage
if they wanted to. Now, whether you use straight vegetable
oil or bio diesel in a car, you have successfully
grown fuel in your backyard at low cost on your own,
and there really isn't any way for anybody to stop

(05:47):
you from doing this. If we wanted to turn this
into a widespread do it yourself movement, what would we
have to do? What's missing? There's really only two things.
The first is a set of complete step by step
instructions with all the kinks worked out, so that someone
can pick up these instructions and start making fuel in
their backyard without it being a real problem, or without

(06:10):
them making a lot of mistakes, or without anything blowing up,
which is impossible. You can't really blow anything up while
you grow algae and press oil out of it. But
it would be nice to know how to make the
press and what to feed the algae and so on,
so step by step instructions would help. The second thing
we need is good strains of algae that produce a

(06:31):
lot of oil. This, too, is something that the maker
community could grab. Ahold of the discovery and or the
creation of algae strains is something that's fathomable. One way
to do it would be to go out into nature
and gather different strains of algae from different ponds, separated
into its different species, grow them, and see which strain

(06:53):
of naturally occurring algae produces the most oil. It's also
getting easier and easy year for makers to do biotech
at home or in rented facilities because biotech equipment and
biotech procedures have gotten a lot less expensive and a
lot easier. So you could imagine a part of the
maker community going out and trying to create to bioengineer

(07:17):
their own algae strain that produces a lot of oil.
Then it would just be a matter of making these
high oil algae strains available to people so that they
can use them in their backyard algae growing pools. So
just imagine what would happen if this could be pulled off,
If the instructions could be developed, if the processes could

(07:38):
be simplified, if a strain of algae could be found
that produces a really high quantity of oil per cubic
meter of water, then we would be on the cusp
of the elimination of fossil fuels. It's one of the
most important problems humankind needs to solve, and it would
be great if do it yourselfers and the maker community

(07:59):
could make it happened. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page. You can
also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain
stuff hs W. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes.