绿色石油新工艺30分钟藻类变原油.docVIP

Green Oil: Scientists Turn Algae Into Petroleum In 30 Minutes 绿色石油新工艺：30分钟藻类变原油 Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are claiming success in perfecting a method that can transform a pea-soupy solution of algae into crude oil by pressure cooking it for about 30 minutes. The process, called hydrothermal liquefaction, also works on other streams of organic matter, such as municipal sewage. And the crude oil created is lightweight and low in sulfur and can be “dropped in” to refineries that process fossil crudes. 美国西北太平洋国家实验室（Pacific Northwest National Laboratory；下简称PNNL）的科学家宣称，他们成功完善了一种将藻类转化为原油的新工艺，方法是对藻类原料进行30分钟的“高压蒸煮”。这种工艺名为“水热液化”，也适用于其他有机物流（如城市污水）的处理。由此产生的是轻质低硫原油，可加入处理化石原油的炼油炉，得到进一步的提炼。 “It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher, ” said researcher Douglas Elliott in a statement. “In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.” “这有点像使用高压锅，只不过我们所采用的压力和温度都要高得多，”研究员道格拉斯·艾略特（Douglas Elliott）在一份声明中说，“从某种意义上说，我们复制了地球在几百万年中将藻类转化为石油的过程。只不过我们大大加速了这一过程。” It only makes sense that scientists should be able to figure out how to turn algae into crude oil. After all, most of the oil that we drill out of the ground was formed by algae and other sea-borne flora that piled up at the bottom of the ocean over millenia, then got compacted and heated over eons and transformed into petroleum. 科学家找到藻类变原油的途径是早晚的事。毕竟，我们如今从地下开采出来的大部分石油，都是由藻类和其他海洋植物形成的，它们先在海底堆积几千年，然后再经过亿万年的高温高压，最终转化成石油。 But figuring out how to do it economically is a challenge. A half-century ago researchers were growing algae on the roof of M.I.T. More recently, ExxonMobil raised the hopes of the algae-to-oil crowd in 2009 when it forged a research venture with Craig Venter’s Synthetic Genomics. If Venter (who was first to decode the human genome) could find or engineer an algae strain adept at naturally creating oils, Exxon would fund d