Posted on 06/02/2008 3:53:17 AM PDT by chessplayer
A Californian start-up company promising "green crude" fuel from algae has been given $50m (£25.33m) in funding from investors, including Britain's biggest charity, the Wellcome Trust.
The year-old start-up, Sapphire Energy, came out of "stealth mode" this week with an announcement that its trials have been so successful that its backers have promised no-limit funding.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
You'd have to do more than simply state such a claim. I've seen descriptions of several versions of oil from algae schemes recently and none sound like they'd use more energy than they'd produce.
For many Diesel engines the algae oil will need to be transesterified to become bioDiesel with the correct viscosity range to be metered properly. Lowering the cloud point temperature will also be required for winter use in the north.
Exactly, this stands on quicksand.
Try insideautomotive.com and oilmovements.com to keep up to speed with reality, FReeper.
You are utterly wrong.
Even biodiesel produced from a relatively low-yield biosource produces more energy than is consumed in its production. The limitation is there is not enough land to grow enough soybeans to provide for all our energy needs.
Algae is much higher yield, and requires less energy to grow. The challenges with biodiesel from algae that I've hear of are water supply, and contamination.
That’s correct. The gel point varies according to biosource, but all the biodiesels seem to have a gel point much higher than petroleum-derived diesel. There is one company that has a potential anti-gelling agent that will work with biodiesel, but I don’t know much about it.
I'm not "up" on either Diesel engines or diesel or biodiesel fuels. I've been a "gasoline engine" type all my life. The family farm used either gasoline or LPG when I was driving and repairing tractors/cars/small engines--didn't get into diesel tractors until well after I had gone to college and gotten started in my career as a chemist. My brother farmed the place after I left----HE has "diesel expereience".
No significant information on this website. All a lot of hot air about how great their management team and investor network are. Zip about product or process-—just handwaving.
Simply, it takes fuel to transport, refine, process and so on and so on to change algae, switchgrass, soybeans into a finished product.
No money of mine is going into biofuels and I LOVE WILLIE~!!!!!!!!
In 10 years they’ll be able to make enough gas to drive a car for a year.
The article I saw on this topic (last year in PopSci) had a funny paragraph.
The journalist asked them “so, how much biofuel have your processes produced so far” and they looked at him as if he had spoken heresy.
I’ll have to look it up, but some company was making a bioDiesel from something that allowed them to have a cloud point of ~ -17F or so. Pretty amazing as the B99 I tested on my back porch would go solid below ~40 deg F.
Dam. I just got my pool clear again. I coulda lived like an arab sheik.
If so then this is not a resource but a manufactured product like ethanol.
Crop Oil in Liters per hectare
Castor 1413
Sunflower 952
Safflower 779
Palm 5950
Soy 446
Coconut 2689
Algae 100000 !!!!!
Check the video in post 36. Looks like they've figured out how to beat those problems.
No, it doesn’t.
Did you watch the video?
That is an amazing video.
I don’t know much about the process- once you have the biomass with the lipids (vegetable oil), what do you have to do to turn it into fuel?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.