About a year ago or so, I posted a thread about "Hydro Thermal Carbonisation" or HTC.

HTC is a method in which the natural creation of fossil coal is accelerated in a industrial process that takes just a few hours.

The idea is not new, but when a scientist of the german Max Planck Institute discovered a simple and efficient proccess to do it in 2006 it was News anyways.

His technique convertes biomass into coal with almost 100% CO² efficiency in about 12h. (all biomass not just high-energy plants)
In cooperation with the scientist and utilizing the findings, a small company (founded by engineers and scientists) has recently developed a working "HTC-Reactor" for non-stop conversion process)

Now this company has developed a process to simulate the natural creation of fossil oil in a similar process.

The Company claims that they have now discovered a similar process that transforms maritime biomass (algae) into bitumen & the chemical mix of compounds usually found in crude oil. They called it Hydrothermal Oil or HTO.

According to their press releases their HTC-"Generators" work profitable and they have already developed several high quality byproducts.
As the first generation of their Generators is being build and presented at huge expebitions like the "Hannover Messe 2008" they work on building a HTO-Reactor.

And perhaps soon, oil can be cooked at a local algae farm... what do you think?
It sounds too good to be true, but perhaps the solution to our problems is simply industrializing a proccess that happens by accident over a period of thousends of years (the creation fossil oil).

(Don't be suprised if you haven't heared about this... it is really new and I have only read about it in scientific german magazines and press releases... but it is not a fake)

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I don't much like it. If they were to make fuel from waste material I'd be okay because we only need landfills for landfill purposes. Considering the amount of oil we go through every year, it would only be a matter of time before harvesting algae for it would prove damaging.

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It sounds pritty cool, can you send me a link so I can read up on it

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First of all:
Hydrothermal Carbonisation works with waste materials... all biomass not just corn or weed. So you could carbonize the corn plant after harvesting the corn.
So it has absolutly nothing to do with the the ethanol debate...

Second:
I think algae could easily be farmed in costal areas.
As far as I know, there are mayor enviromental issues about massiv algae populations due to polution. If these would be harvested in a profitable way, it would be good for the oceans health.

Considering that local algae farming is possible and being done (for food supply) I don't see the issue.

Well like I said, it is hard to find news about this especially on english... because it is pretty new and I doubt the company in question cares allot about PR. (A group of enginieers getting together aren't to much concerened with such things it seems)
And the Scientist who originally discovered this is more concerned about fighting climate change & the food crisis with this technology than dealing with energy concerns.
(Hydrothermal carbonisation can be used to create fertile soil (terra petra) or to remove CO² from the atmosphere)

What I could find in english is this:
Hydrothermal Carbonisation
A stroke of Genius

Sorry it's really hard to find anything in english.... when I googled this thread was 3rd... the wiki entry is totally different in english (much about ethanol) and so on... seems that there is not just a language gab but a technological gab... getting the feeling that there are absolutly different technologies discussed on both sides of the pont.

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