Algae into Biodiesel

Don't know about this system, but i believe algal photobioreactors can work at about 15% efficiency (in terms of photosynthetically active radiation). However, to use up all the CO2 you'll need a lot of bioreactors, and they may be quite pricey. And I'm not sure you get a huge advantage by having high carbon dioxide -- some, but not huge.

I've now thought about this a little more, and it seems a bit crazy. To use up all the CO2 from the powerstation you basically have to put in as much energy as combustion took out. So you are building a solar algae station capable of making algal biodiesel as fast as a coal fired power station can burn coal -- which is incredibly fast. And at 8% efficiency (full spectrum) you need to be intercepting many gigawatts of solar radiation, and thus covering many square kilometres of surounding country (which is probably not desert, since that's not where they build coal fired power stations).

And after all that you're still putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The obvious alternative is to take half that surface area and cover it with good photovoltaic cells. Then you don't release any carbon. And you have a system thats a lot less likely to break down than a few square kilometres of bioreactor.

Another alternative is grow the algae without the colafired plant, burn them for fuel, and sequester the carbon dioxide in a nearby salt aquifer. That's expensive, but it has the advantage of actually pulling the carbon dioxide *out* of the atmosphere and putting it back in the ground.

(Biofuel thought for the day. It used to take a fifth of US farmland to feed the horses that farmed the rest of it. Today it would take only a tenth of Illinois to produce all of the state's electricity through biomass generated electricity.)

So it's just a PR gag for the owners of coal burning powerplants?

I think its a way for people with neat bioreactors to try and get capital. It may be that there's an advantage in feeding the algae with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, but I doubt its that great -- and probably doesn't offset the costs fo growing your algae near power plants, rather than in a place chosen for sun and cheap land.

Incidentally, looking at this it seems that a GW station produces on teh order of 50 kilos of CO2 a second. That seems rather low; but then there are a lot of seconds in a thorty year operating life time...

The benefit of using algae is the cost (as opposed to solar panels). Algae provides a cheap way to scrub CO2 and nitrous oxide from coal power plants (

The amount of land area to produce enough diesel fuel for the US is roughly 1/8th the size of the sonoran desert. Given that the US currently uses 25% of it's land to produce animal feed, the amount of land required for energy independence is small. The total amount required to build the algae farms is estimated at $380 billion with an operating cost of $60 billion per year. The total amount spent on foreign oil is $120 billion per year. Within ten years, the US will have recovered the cost for the algae fields and will be saving money.

Diesel cars are more energy efficient than gasoline cars (up to 40%). A gasoline/electric car can get up to 70 mpg on the highway, whereas a diesel car can get up to 84 mpg on the highway. The diesel car is simplier to build and doesn't require batteries that need to be replaced every 5 years (at a considerable cost).

We have the land, we have the CO2, we have the sunlight; those energy sources can produce biodiesel while not disobeying the laws of physics (conservation of energy).

Nice discussion, I think more research is definitely required into production of biodiesel from algae,especially since the yields of oil from algae appear to be over 200 times that for traditional oilseeds such as soy, or rapeseed...

Another page that provides good inputs on algal biodiesel is Biodiesel from Algae - Information, Resources, Links

Vic, Castor Oil Online

The following page provides more inputs on biodiesel from algae - Biodiesel from Algae - Info, Links

Vic, Castor Oil Dictionary

The potential of this is immense.

Follow along, and feel free to correct any of my assumptions, but from what I've been able to locate, the US produces 6.4 billion tons of CO2 per year, with 40% of that produced at coal and natural gas-fired power plants. If the Greenfuel process is capable of reducing the amount of CO2 by 40% and were attached to each stationary source (or the exhaust piped to remote algae farms) we'd see the bioreactors remove 1.024 billion tons of CO2.

Each ton of CO2 becomes 2 tons of algae (2.048 billion tons of algae).

And if the algae is 50% oil by weight, each ton of algae could be processed into 3 barrels of biodiesel and 1.5 barrels of ethanol (since the remaining parts of the algae are mostly starch). That leaves us with 6.144 billion barrels of biodiesel and 3.072 billion barrels of ethanol for a total of 9.216 billion barrels of liquid fuel.

Compare that to our current petroleum use which is 7.7 billion barrels annually.

Actually, I like the idea of remote algae farms a lot. According to comments by Isaac Berzin, for each MW of power generated by a coal fired plant, you'd need 2 acres of bioreactors to process the exhaust.

If you could pipe the exhaust from multiple sources to a single remote site where land is cheaper, you could put a biodiesel/ethanol plant on-site achieving economies of scale and reducing transportation costs. After the oil is removed from the algae, the remains could be sent through a digester to produce the ethanol. As an added kick, the CO2 produced from the ethanol part of the plant could be recycled through the bioreactors to make more algae, increasing the efficiency of the system.

Oil & biodiesel from algae are definitely very exciting...I guess more research needs to be done before large scale commercial viability is proven, but this is one area where it is worth investing a few billion dollars of the war money!

A site I found that focusses on biodiesel from algae is Oilgae.com

Ec

Why not skip the intermediate phase of burning fossil fuels and just burn biodiesel in all power plants? You can scrub those exhaust gases to partially recycle that carbon, but there would be no net increase in atmospheric carbon if the plants burned biofuel to begin with.

Oh, and take all the recovered carbon and pay unemployed coal miners to put it back where they found it.

Burn biodiesel instead of coal?

Every time this is brought up, somebody offers a stupid comment that hasn't been thought out in the least...

To be fair, the long term goal should be to wean ourselves of fossil carbon based energy. But in the intermediate, we need to continue to use it while working out the kinks in the process of recycling carbon. If we can achieve carbon recycling rates that near 90%, then we'll be able to supplement the cycle by harvesting terrestrial crops as biomass to feed the plants.

But you can't just "skip the middle man" as several have suggested here. If you want to try, then the first thing to do is smash your computer, unplug your refrigerator, start gathering water from the stream and just go off-grid. Give it a try and tell us how it goes. You'll have to write us all individually since you won't be able to enjoy this lovely interweb thing...

Let's just be glad that somebody is putting their efforts and money behind this. There are at least four companies in the US working on different types of bioreactors. What they learn will be built on and hopefully become an important new industry.

Down the road, we might be able to create a network of pipes to collect CO2 from producers over a certain size to be sent to algae farms. Using the same technology that we use to store natural gas, CO2 could be pumped into natural formations underground and then drawn out during daylight hours to feed algae farms at the peak of their productivity. That is when we might be able to recycle CO2 at up to 90% efficiency by avoiding pumping the stuff through bioreactors when the sun isn't shining and by not forcing ourselves to provide artificial light during night hours.

If the efficiency becomes high enough, we could replace petroleum and also make a significant dent in replacing coal. Biomass like MSW, wood and grasses could make up much of the difference.

hey, your posts are super interesting.

I'm in a renewable energy class and I just did a 14 page Report on a profitable way to grow algae and convert it right to bio-diesel for the UCSC bus fleet to use and sell the excess that would pay for itself in 2 and a half years and then make half a million dollars every year selling the fuel to ready local company .
check it out http://ackza.livejournal.com/24537.html

hey aim me at ackza779

The installation of a bioreactor, algal pools and extraction facilities would take no longer than 1 year. At the end of the second year of our operation we would find ourselves with an expected yield of 62,000 gallons of biodiesel. At a sale price of $2.15 a gallon to Pacific Biofuels, which is what they have agreed to purchase biodiesel for redistribution, this would generate $133,300 in revenue. The time it will take for installation of the bioreactor and algae ponds will be no less than a month. The construction of an extraction facility will only take as long as it does for the necessary equipment to ship. By the end of first year the projected 62,000 gallons of biodiesel produced will have an initial production cost of $1,021,577 and in the 2nd year production revenue should cover the entire initial operation cost, allowing us to generate annual revenue of $592,595. After the second year operation costs will reduce by $1,296,768 allowing for profit and we hope to also increase output by using a more efficient strain of algae and take advantage of our bioreactors which can yield more than 362kg of algae a day and potentially deliver up to 96,000 gallons of biodiesel a year. Since every gallon of algal oil will require 1 times the amount of methanol and .007 times the amount of lye, it will cost an additional 70 cents for every additional gallon of Biodiesel produced. Regardless for the retail price of around $2.90 for local distributors, the extra expenses will be worth it and allow the project to take in profits of $1.47 a gallon if sold to Pacific Biofuels which purchases B100 biodiesel for up to $2.15 a gallon and also must use 2 cents a gallon to transport it from Richmond, Washington. Funding should take no more than one year to acquire and if we produce the maximum amount of Biodiesel that one of our bioreactor can yield, 907.2kg per day we will produce 43,737 gallons per year, and receive revenue of $94,034 just from fuel. From the cakes of dry algae that are in high demand in agribusiness, which sell from an average of $3.50 per kilogram to a variety of local farmers and food producers, we will generate $579,474 in revenue. The additional 7 cents per gallon taken into account during extraction means an extra cost of $30616 per year. After 2 and a half years we will reach revenue of $1,481,487 (with maintenance costs), meeting the initial cost of $1,347,377. Every year after this we will generate revenue of $592,595 per year, which can be reinvested into expansion of our current production operation.