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To: dennisw
When I look at their vertical garden systems I can imagine places where they would serve quite well, like the small back yard of a city dweller that wanted to grow his own produce on a very small lot or people in rather isolated areas where transport costs were high.
It's not an exotic technology but as always it's whether the cost is prohibitive. In the case of scaling up this process for growing algae for oil it seems it would be.
Producing oil is not difficult but producing at a cost that is competitive is. And again that is the one bit of information that seems to be missing: How much is a gallon of algae oil going to cost?
Many of the innovators obtain patents and appear more interested in selling licenses to use their technology than in actually producing any amount of product. They gather some bright fellows and get enough investors and government help to build a demo plant and then attempt to draw enough attention to bring some deep pockets into the business.
Not a bad plan for a start but cool web pages and demo plants won't put a drop of fuel in anyone's tank.
Tax breaks and government grants would be tolerable if something ever came to fruition but producing oil at $25-30 a gallon doesn't seem to be much of an accomplishment.
115 posted on 07/06/2008 8:48:56 AM PDT by count-your-change (you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: count-your-change

Dran right those are cool web pages. Lots of green and blue in them. Everyones favorite eco-colors


118 posted on 07/06/2008 10:55:54 AM PDT by dennisw
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