Carden
Industry Professional, NweYork, United States
Emily ’s Questions
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Emily wants to know Why is microalgae being viewed as a low priority candidate in the race for fossil oil replacement? 1 year ago
In the NAA (National Algal Association)'s opinion, there is a one word answer to this question: “Water!” The very attribute that makes these aquatic species so spectacular in performance also hampers their transition commercial production. Farming of algae(upstream in the oil industry vernacular) is a solvable problem and many of the solutions are already developed in practice and ready to go, in part, to research funding from the Federal agencies. It is the subsequent steps (midstream) of
microalgae harvesting, dewatering,extraction, fractionation and conversion into streams suitable for conversion (downstream) using the existing infrastructure into final consumer products (such as fuels,
energy, nutraceutials and chemicals) that have been neglected in the race to move the microalgae solution forward.
Source: http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.comin Algae Fuels
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Isnt it true that algae also respire during night and release CO2 at that time? Why would we want to tamper with a natural cycle?
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Emily posted a question As drying is an expensive step, we are working on surpassing that step and follow wet extraction. If we subject the biomass to wet extraction will there be serious issues during solvent extraction. Will the water mix with the hexane or will other be any other issues? We are planning to extract ethanol after the extraction of lipids, so if we use wet extraction will it increase the costs of separating ethanol and water ( distillation)? 1 year ago
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Dear Emily the solvent Hexane is use in water situations to remove oils... as for the water in the algae to be fermented to produce ethanol, I think it wouldn't matter because I believe fermentation takes place in water, at least it does in a distillery. Here is a link to the Hexane article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexane
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AS far as I know , there are about 3 or 4 companies working on these - Spectra Stable Isotopes (Maryland, USA) Martek Biosciences (Maryland, USA) Reed Mariculture (California, USA) Check out this link for more information on these companies and their areas of research - http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i1704e/i1704e02.pdf
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Some important links pertaining to licencing of microalgae fuel technology http://lawofalgae.wiki.zoho.com/Chapter-4-%E2%80%93-Technology-Issues;-Licensing-Algae-Technology.html http://lawofalgae.wiki.zoho.com/License-Terms-1.html
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Algacem 1 year ago
Answer this question / Share a linkEmily, DOE, knows for several years that ponds technologies do not have a future as producers of algae oil in a scale-up scenario. It is very simple, water is one issue, but land as well as nutrients and CO2 from industrial sources too. Simply put there are not enough natural and industrial resources in the US to just produce 1/3 of our liquid fuels need per year. Take water, just imagine a one acre pond in the Southwest. The natural evaporation under the sun irradiance and lack of moisture translate in an evaporation rate of 3/4 inch of water per day. And then when you had the windy condition in most states in the Southwest plus the velocity of the pond culture in moving it, the total evaporation is tremendous. DOE has put it at more than 1,000 gallons of water per gallon of oil. Needless to tell you there is no business that way. The same is for land, nutrients and CO2 unless you extract it from the atmosphere. The idea to just go in the desert pump off the ground the brackish water and occupy 17 millions acres and have a monumental carbon foot print is just a dream pipe. As a result, to grow the algae in an environment that is not a waste of resources is the primary condition and then you will see incentives to produce algae oil. DOE may resume its grants program but USDA may take over the task to do so. So far USDA mandate is to promote cellulosic bio-fuels from land crops or wood not algae. If you like to learn more, just let me know. Gerald, AlgaCem CEO.