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Outside Asylum Take a walk, smell the roses. Any topic is fine, save people bashing. |
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Outside Asylum Take a walk, smell the roses. Any topic is fine, save people bashing. |
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In Reply to: Here from Wiki posted by Victor Khomenko on January 19, 2007 at 19:31:57:
Presently, the De Beers plant is now operating at 10,000,000 gallons per year on sunflower seed oil as feedstock and has contracted for additional feedstock for additional plants. However, the final answer for biodiesel feedstock will not be oil crops - it will be algae. For example, soybean produces only 48 gallons of oil per acre per year, canola produces 140 gallons per acre and algae can produce well over 10,000 gallons per acre. This figure has been verified in actual algae field production tests by the US Department of Energy in an 18-year Algae Study Program from 1978 - 1996. This makes algae the only worldwide feedstock capable of replacing crude oil. Making use of algae also means not competing with crops for food sources that would otherwise lead to an increase in food prices.Mr. de Beer has made great strides to acquire the latest Algae Production Technology. In recent weeks there has been many media articles about the success of the algae bioreactor operating at MIT (see http://web.mit.edu/erc/spotlights/alg-all.html) utilizing the MIT CO2 exhaust boiler emissions as feed for the algae.
de Beers appear to have bought a research algal bioreactor from MIT, and are hoping to scale it up. In the meantime they are using vegetable oils like everyone else. They appear to be optimistic about the prospects. I'll keep an eye on them. Keep in mind that they quote the ASP research, which is exactly what was covered in L.D.'s article - the one that talked about significant problems, and concludes with this paragraph:
Finally, the claims that algae yield 'enormous' amounts of useable biomass, have never been demonstrated or substantiated. Algae production in photobioreactors has never left the laboratory or pilot phase and no energy balance and greenhouse gas balance analyses exist for biofuels obtained from such system. The only real data we can rely on, so far, are those of the projects carried out under the Aquatic Species Program.
We're a long way from home yet.
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Follow Ups
- Here from the press release of Nov. 13 - GliderGuider 01/19/0719:56:45 01/19/07 (1)
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