Scientists Produce ‘Bio-Crude Oil’ in Less Than 60 Minutes

In the past few years, I have worked with a company that was trying to “extract” fuels from plant materials. In the process here, the scientists have used algae as their plant material to produce a bio-crude oil. What is amazing is that scientists do not see how oil could be produced in a small amount of time in nature. According to evolutionists, natural processes always have to take millions of years. But here, scientists are able to use natural things to do it in an hour. Why can’t nature do it just as efficiently? Add the elements of a warm earth and a catastrophic global flood and why couldn’t petroleum be produced in a matter of months, weeks or even hours? I have made some comments in blue. (The article mentions some photos. If you would like to see them, please go to the link at the bottom of the page.)

 

Scientists Produce ‘Bio-Crude Oil’ in Less Than 60 Minutes

Dec. 18, 2013 11:30pm Liz Klimas

The natural process of turning organic matter into crude oil takes millions of years, but scientists recently revealed a method that takes less than 60 minutes. (Why do they always have to lead with a big assumption? On a planetary scale, God could easily have used the creation of the earth and time to develop plant life followed by a global flood to create the world’s oil supplies. Only our limited minds make us think that these natural processes have to take so long. In 2013, scientists discovered that slip zones between geological faults could create gold deposits in a matter of days.)

Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory engineers used an algae mixture to produce the “bio-crude oil.”

“In the PNNL process, a slurry of wet algae is pumped into the front end of a chemical reactor,” the news release about the research stated. “Once the system is up and running, out comes crude oil in less than an hour, along with water and a byproduct stream of material containing phosphorus that can be recycled to grow more algae.” (All the ingredients in this experiment are available in nature – wet algae and a chemical reactor. The reactor could be pressure, heat and various chemicals such as phosphorus. God gave these men and women the ability to come up with this solution, so naturally He could engineer it here on earth as well.)

Scientists have refined a process that uses an “algae slurry” to produce a biofuel. It’s now a method they think could be more effective than other existing processes. (Image source: YouTube)

Producing biofuel in this way is not a new concept. But working with the Utah-based biofuels company Genifuel Corp., the researchers believe they developed a more cost-effective method of producing the fuel by streamlining the process. (One advantage God has in His process is that He does not have to worry about cost and efficiency. The scientists are trying to find ways to eliminate cost in order to make the process viable.)

Cost is the big roadblock for algae-based fuel,” Douglas Elliott, a laboratory fellow with the government research team, said in a statement. “We believe that the process we’ve created will help make algae biofuels much more economical.”

The news release stated the biggest saving step was working with a wet “algae slurry” as opposed to dried.

“Not having to dry the algae is a big win in this process; that cuts the cost a great deal,” Elliott said. “Then there are bonuses, like being able to extract usable gas from the water and then recycle the remaining water and nutrients to help grow more algae, which further reduces costs.”

An algae mixture (left) is sent through a chemical reactor and within an hour is transformed into crude oil (center). This oil is then refined to a usable biofuel (right). (Image source: YouTube)

Another step that the lab made more efficient was how they extracted the fuel from the algae. Instead of using a hexane solvent, the team developed a method that broke up most of the algae into liquid and gas fuels, according to the release.

Here’s a list of what the process produces:

• Crude oil, which can be converted to aviation fuel, gasoline or diesel fuel. In the team’s experiments, generally more than 50 percent of the algae’s carbon is converted to energy in crude oil — sometimes as much as 70 percent.
• Clean water, which can be re-used to grow more algae.
• Fuel gas, which can be burned to make electricity or cleaned to make natural gas for vehicle fuel in the form of compressed natural gas.
• Nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — the key nutrients for growing algae.

As a whole, James Oyler, the president of Genifuel, said this “hydrothermal liquefaction process” could make biofuel “that is cost-competitive with established petroleum-based fuels.”

(H/T: Reddit)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/18/scientists-produce-bio-crude-oil-in-less-than-60-minutes/