Green oil.

For some time now scientists and engineers have been attempting to find a way to produce crude oil, as we all know that its simply running out. Much of the effort was directed into using algae, a small cellular ‘plants’ (photosynthetic organisms) to absorb the suns energy as organic chemicals, then convert those chemicals to oil. This was in essence to mimic the process believed to occur in nature. One of the stumbling blocks was the energy consumed in drying out algae, then heating it up and have it decompose into the required oils. Then some one thought of the idea of using a pressure cooker type arrangement and have the oil simply float off the top.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/12/23/green-oil-scientists-turn-algae-into-petroleum-in-30-minutes/

OK so make sense? perhaps not. so we produced an info graphic to explain it using kitchen terms and tools.  It should be noted that it it probably not possible to do this at home because the pressure cooker required is not available for household use, but if you can find one and do some research you are welcome to try.

Green oil production explained with common cooking techniques.

Of course now people will be asking what the energy input output will be aka the EROI. It is about 5 which makes it clearly viable.  The conversion of sweet light crude to all of you favorite petroleum products would be the same and the products you received would be effectively identical.

EROI 5

This could lead to massive geopolitical shifts. Sunny flat paces like Western Australia could become home to massive algae growing operations and become oil hubs of the future.

The middle east could become seen as a nuisance.

Could this be the fate of the middle east once ‘green oil’ becomes established.