[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.

[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.