Estimates we did at Oilgae suggest that the drying cost using conventional methods will be between $200-$500 per ton of dry biomass, which is humungous, especially so when the cost of biomass production has to be less than $300 per dry ton to be economically competitive with fossil fuels.
This cost can be eliminated by extracting oil directly from the wet biomass bypassing the drying step. Direct-extraction or wet-extraction is basically a water-tolerant downstream process which involves separating oil from the wet algae paste and then subjecting it to transesterfication to produce biodiesel.
Some research institutes that have been working on wet extraction:
University of Michigan
Research studies from the University of Michigan reveal that the direct extraction method will be a feasible option to produce oil directly from wet algal biomass. They have worked on the marine water algae Chlorella vulgaris.
Basically, their process involves two steps:
•The wet algal biomass is reacted with subcritical water to hydrolyze intracellular lipids, conglomerate cells into an easily filterable solid that retained the lipids and produced a sterile, nutrient-rich aqueous phase.
•The wet, fatty acid-rich solids are then subjected to supercritical transesterification with ethanol to produce fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs).
Ames Labs / Catalin
•Ames Labs and Catalin – a nano- technology based company which specialize on biofuels have devised a technology that uses sponge-like nanoparticles to extract oil from the algae.
•The process doesn’t harm the algae like other methods being developed, which helps reduce both production costs and the production cycle.
•Once the algal oil is extracted, a separate and proven solid catalyst from Catilin will be used to produce ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and EN certified biodiesel.
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Do you know any company doing wet extraction for algae fuels? Sounds exciting in theory, but not sure how effective solvent extraction is in the case of biomass having 90% water!
It is not a problem and isn't theory.
You can divide water-oil mixture easily with small energy expenses.
These methods is known and have different devices design.
@kyzyl - do you have any data on how much energy could be required to separate water-oil mixtures?
It depends on initial concentration and methods of separation.
I have to have more information for estimation: quantity, content, temperature, energy source, level of separation time of treatment.
Lots of options, and it matters little what the costs are today. All processes will be much refined as we gain experience in using them.
Both micro and macro algae will have their place in the industry.
One option will surely be simply progressively heating the wet slurry to separate out the various chemicals. One of the separations will be water in the form of steam, which can then be further heated into dry super steam for powering an electric turbine.
GM manipulation will certainly be used to combine genes for fialmentous algae growth with high lipids content and thousands of other raw pharmaceuticals and chemicals feedstocks, and even finished medicines and chemical products.
Filamentous algae harvesting is very simple, and the algae can be spread out on flat surfaces to sun dry, just as a farmer sun dries his hay. Dried filamantous algae can even be baled for storage and shipping, just like hay.
As we develop processes and products, green algae will compete directly with corn as a complex feedstock, useful for food, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, vitamins, industrial chemicals, plastics and fuels; in other words, for virtualy all bio products.
Right now developing the processes and products from green algae is most important, and billions in research dollars are now being spent on new product and processes development.
In a few years we can focus more on which processes and products are most economical. Corn ethanol distillation is just now moving from the raw tehchnologies development stage, into shaking out the less efficient processes.
Corn ethanol suffered from the tunnel vision approach, however, focusing on only distillation of ethanol for several years. Now the more progressive companies like Poet and Cargill have just recently starting to add products.
Just as pork processing uses everything but the squeal, so will bio processing plants need to make as broad a line of products from their feedstocks as possible.This broad range of products insulates against a bad market or overproduction of any single product and it is essential to derive the maximum return from each unit of raw material. If you do not, your competitiors will.
In many bio processing plants, 80 percent of the profit will come from 20 percent of the products produced,The high margin niche products that no one else makes.
Ethanol, jet fuel, bulk food and animal feed will mostly be very high volume commodity products with very low profit margins.
Of course, if a small processing plant is utilizing local feedstocks and serving a local market with fuels, electricity and fertilizer , such as the semi rural, small farm market in the US southern midwest where i live, and, i suspect, in many parts of India, that in itself could form a captive niche market that the larger regional plants might not want to bother with.
"Just as pork processing uses everything but the squeal, so will bio processing plants need to make as broad a line of products from their feedstocks as possible.This broad range of products insulates against a bad market or overproduction of any single product and it is essential to derive the maximum return from each unit of raw material. If you do not, your competitiors will."
That's indeed a nice analogy, Larry...guess the million $ question is how soon such an integrated bio-refinery concept will become a reality
Greetings
Relating to the wet extraction – there are a couple companies not only trialling that process but have mastered it!!! http://solrayenergy.com/ would be from my opinion that most advanced – I have actually seen the product and – it is great !!