Update on my local wild filamentous algae.  I tried to harvest some local wild algae a week or so ago. My attempt was premature as the algae has not matured enough yet to get much algae. I find that the old growth that went thru the winter freeze cycle is still there, but is rotting and of no use.  It has broken loose from the bottom and is floating about the ponds and lakes. It has a thin veneer of bright green new growth on top that is misleading; giving the illusion that the entire matts of algae are harvestable,…

Hi folks, I am doing fine, spent today in our Iowa State Capital talking to legislators, and staff members of the governor and others.  Our Iowa Governor Branstad asked me to present my plan to our Iowa State Fair Board to power the entire fair with the waste streams coming from the fair.  Our fair runs for 11 days each fall, has thousands of head of various livestock in for exhibit and judging, and we have over a million visitors each year. That makes a lot of animal manure and garbage. We also spend a lot of money on electricity…

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/New-Technique-Discovered-to-Help-Harvest-Algae.html

Currently there are efforts underway to mitigate the emissions from coal firing plants by growing algae biomass which is then converted into fuel on sight or harvested and then exported to refineries.  This has been going on for a few years now and this is a great idea and a currently proven and working model, except the fact that some of the originators of this business model failed to make the fuel production from the biomass cost competitive with petroleum extraction and processing. It makes sense because fossil fuels like coal and petroleum are decomposed plant and animal life that…

Algal biofuels have been much hyped, but the reality is getting closer every day. Chemical engineer and algal biofuels researcher David Lewis brings algae down to earth. The promise of biofuels from algae is undoubtedly compelling: replacing carbon dioxide-belching fossil fuels with a clean and (literally) green alternative that will even eat some extra carbon as it grows. The picture is enticing, the hype is almost unbelievable, but so far that is all we have: hype. At the BioProcessing Network Conference in Adelaide in October, David Lewis, a no-nonsense chemical engineer and relative newcomer on the algal biofuels scene, cut…

The "algae research facility" by the Fraunhofer Institute and the Energy Fair operated jointly. The main objective is the production of algae and the production of an oil that can be used as biofuel.The resulting residual biomass to be used for biogas production.The algae factory is in a 20-meter greenhouse, and is directly coupled to a gas-powered micro-CHP. "That in the emissions CO2 contained the power plant and the sunlight acting on the algae" growth-promoting, says Dr. Peter Ripplinger, manager of the company Subitec, belonging to the Fraunhofer Institute. The algae are grown in four modules, each with six photobioreactors.  Come to use…

Solar and wind receive a particularly high amount of incentive money and public funding initiatives. Do you think part of the solution to scaling biofuel is to create more populist funding opportunities, or do you think making biofuel technologies more prevalent will in turn result in more funding opportunities?  Is it the chicken or the egg?

Microbes will be the (human) food- and fuel-makers of the future, if J. Craig Venter has his way. The man responsible for one of the original sequences of the human genome as well as the team that brought you the first living cell running on human-made DNA now hopes to harness algae to make everything humanity needs. All it takes is a little genomic engineering. "Nothing new has to be invented. We just have to combine [genes] in a way that nature has not done before. We're speeding up evolution by billions of years," Venter told an energy conference on October 18 at the New America…

Advanced biofuels, chemicals capacity to reach 5.11B gallons by 2015; 207 projects now tracked; 79 project updates, 27 countries. In Florida, Biofuels Digest released version 2.0 of its free Advanced Biofuels & Chemicals Project Database, which tracks advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals capacity for the 2011-2016 period. The database is available for free download. Project data includes the project developer, proposed capacity, date of completion, fuel type, processing technology, RFS2 category and feedstock. Project notes from the Biofuels Digest article database are also included. Projects include: Abengoa, ADM, Aemetis, Algae.Tec, Algenol, AltAir, American Jianye Greentech, American Process, Amyris, Aquatic Energy,…

  Dean Tsoupeis was stopped at a red light, directly behind a big diesel truck. As noxious exhaust fumes wafted through the vents of his broken air conditioner, he thought, "There's got to be a better way than this." Today Tsoupeis, 40, a graduate of Northeast High School in St. Petersburg, credits that unpleasant experience, along with his admiration for the cooking-oil fueled Veggie Van, with providing the inspiration to grow algae as a way to help liberate the world from its dependence on fossil fuel and head off a worldwide food shortage. "Algae created the atmosphere," said Tsoupeis, (pronounced…