To: Wonder Warthog
Valcent has been running a test plant, El Paso I think, and they harvested algae at the rate of 276 tons/acre. Valcent said that would translate into 33,000 gallons of oil with the right algae.
Glen Kertz, pres./ceo of Valcent said in an interview that getting production costs down to petroleum was the goal so apparently they've quite a way to go. But they will be interesting to watch.
Renton, Washington (700 thousand people, 86 million gallons of sewage/day) is running a sewage to gas pilot project. Here is an bit of info.,
“New Gas-Turbine Generator
The South Treatment Plant, among the 33 largest sewage plants in the nation, produces about 770,400 cubic feet of digester gas per day, but uses only 18% to 20% of this supply to run the fuel cell. Under ideal conditions, the rest of the gas is now sold to Puget Sound Energybut by the end of 2005, most of it will be burned in a new dual-fuel gas-turbine generator capable of burning digester gas or natural gas.......
The South Treatment Plants average daily power consumption is 7.5 MW, but during storms its demand can rise to a peak of 24 MW. Together, the 1 MW fuel cell and the new 8-MW gas-turbine generator will more than cover the plants entire electricity base load, though it will continue to rely on PSE for peaking power.” (www.foresterpress.com/de_0511_fuel.html - 41k)
Pittsburgh with its population of around 300 to 350 thousand would have more than enough sewage to produce useful amounts of gas.
So whether algae oil will pan out is highly questionable. By the Valcent’s most optimistic projections it would cost $2.4 trillion to supply just 1% of U.S. transportation fuels and three times that cost by realistic estimates.
$2.4 trillion is about what the federal government took in in taxes last year.
90 posted on
08/10/2008 10:46:49 AM PDT by
count-your-change
(you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
To: count-your-change
"The South Treatment Plants average daily power consumption is 7.5 MW, but during storms its demand can rise to a peak of 24 MW. Together, the 1 MW fuel cell and the new 8-MW gas-turbine generator will more than cover the plants entire electricity base load, though it will continue to rely on PSE for peaking power. (www.foresterpress.com/de_0511_fuel.html - 41k) Which, as I said, is an insignificant amount of power. Assuming they are using all the nutrients available, it takes the entire poop output of Renton to generate enough methane to run the poop processing plant. Not terribly practical.
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