Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae

University of New Hampshire, Physics Department : UNH Biodiesel Group ^ | Michael Briggs

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Anything Into Oil 1may03
"We will be able to make oil for $8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process.

Very interesting, and nothing to say that it couldn't use algae as its feedstock. We could grow algae in the desert and export oil!

What word on this that's less than a year old??

[Moonman62]

Algae floats. Why not just fertilize the ocean far away from land? It would also feed lots of new sea life we could eat, and suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide right out of the air, allowing everyone to drive around in SUVs, not just John Kommy's family.

They've already done successful experiments by seeding the oceans with iron to grow algae to suck up CO2.

[Moonman62]

The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $50.7 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the more than $100 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries.

If this really is such a good idea the venture capitalists would have already done it. My suspicion is this paper was written by hippies smoking too much dope.

[FastCoyote]

Hey, this is the first logical exposition I've seen in a long time. Hydrogen has soooo many problems.

[stboz]

Next they'll be breeding us like cattle!

You are, of course refering to India and China.....;-)

[Sofa King]

Right you are. The enviroscum aren't about keeping the environment clean, they're just another bunch of commies.

[Rodney King]

There are two steps that would need to be taken for producing biodiesel on a large scale - growing the feedstocks, and processing them into biodiesel. The latter step would perhaps be best accomplished by existing oil refineries within the US being converted to biodiesel refineries, but could also be accomplished by new companies building new plants.

Hmm. Build a new refinery? Good luck.

[randog]

You were wondering about alternative fuel sources. Here 'ya go--Soylent Oil.

[Imal]

Soylent Oil is people! It's peeeeeople!

[DuncanWaring]

Less than a year old?

Here's a reference to a paper presented at some conference earlier this year. (unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago someone else referenced it and I called it "pedantic". oh well)

Check some of the footnotes. It appears to be a going concern.

[DuncanWaring]

Publicly traded?

I don't think so.

Here's their website.

There are no references evident to "Investor Information".

[tortoise]

They wont be happy until the U.S looks like Afganistan.

Yeah, well what pisses me off is that none of these damn hippies would last a day in genuine high desert wilderness, and most have never even seen it in person or comprehend the vastness of it. On the other hand, I've rescued hippie f**kwits who managed to get themselves stuck in the Nevada wilderness on no less than five different occasions when offroading in the vast expanses of mountains around my very remote ranch on business of one type or another.

I have no patience for those idiots. I very nicely enumerate the long list of things they did wrong and then basically tell to never show their faces out there again unless they can discard their neurotic fantasy about what the real wilderness is actually like. Maybe it is the fact that I have a pistol on my belt that they just nod and say 'yessir' to whatever I say; I've met a number who are apparently unaware that gun in the western wilderness is about as essential as your boots. Never mind the stupidity of running off 40 miles into the random wilderness without backup or adequate equipment. Those bloody twits think Central Park in Manhattan qualifies as wilderness. They can't even conceive of being 100 miles from the nearest pavement.

Feh. I am as cosmopolitan as they come, but my roots are in the extremely rural west. Nothing yanks my chain like a bunch of city slicker blowhards who think they know something about the wilderness.

[null and void]

Bingo!

[blanknoone]

My rough estimate....it costs half the cost of oil to grow the algae (say $15/barrel, from article) plus $12/barrel to turn it into oil (TDP process) plus an unknown amount to seperate the algae from the water and concentrate it into an appropriate input. Further, it requires specialized refineries. So somewhere north of $27/barrel there is a little bit of money to START covering the costs of the investment necessary. Not economically feasible at this point. But it could be useful either if oil actually goes and stays high and it could be used to chill out the environazi 'we're running out of oil' scaremongers.

[Redcloak]

At this point, it's a "boutique" fuel; hence, the higher price. Here in CA, we pay more for gas than the rest of the country because of our requirements for low emission boutique fuels. It's all a question of economies of scale. Produce more of the boutique fuel and it ceases to be a pricey specialty item.