BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

Hello, I have a question directed to those of you directly working with algae. Has any of you already managed to extract oil from algae? I yes, how much oil (in litres) on average per kg of algae?  How many kg of algae can be extracted usually? I need some data.  Thank you

kind regards,

                      marco

ok thaks froggy,

but in a lab what are the actual figures? are they already extracting oil from algae? Thanks

in the lab, i can extract oil from my fingernails if i wish. so that doesnt really help anything other than being able to do something.

Here is maybe an example that you are looking for.

Lets say i start with 1 lb of algae. In 1 week, i have 2 lbs. And the algae has a 50% oil content. In theory, i should be able to extract roughly .5 lbs of oil. Not counting the machines and costs or anything, just pure production #'s, that system can produce .5lbs x 52 weeks = 26lbs of oil/year / 7.5 lbs per gallon = ~ 3.5gal of oil/ year.

yes they can extract oil, you can extract oil from algae that washes ashore from the local lake. But there are millions of questions that need to be answered before anyone has any sort of real system that produces massive amounts of algae (for oil or food or...). There are a few examples like http://www.chiangmai-chiangrai.com/boonsom_spirulina_farm.html  and http://www.desertlake.com/ and  http://www.greenfuelonline.com/index.htm  that might shed some light on this for you. 

ok thanks,

that's what i need (maybe it has been posted already many times), some fresh data and hear and see directly from people involved directly into production. Someone (lab, company, etc) who can say, last year we harvested so many algae from so much water  and from those we obtained so much oil and keep a log of what's been done. Is there a source on the net? Are those two links my answer? I check now Thanks

Marco,

Check BioKing from the Netherlands.  Website www.algaefuels.org

Please share any info you got...

thanks and greetings from Barcelona

 
Ramon




 

Thank you Ramon,

I have a question, it says there "Our record is 120mt of Algae Oil per Ha per annum" does mt stand for metric tonne? Does it mean 120 tons per hectare? thanks

mt is metric tons per hectare per year.  One thing, BioKing (www.bioking.nl) produces the machinery required for converting the vegetable/algae oil to biodiesel (including presses etc).  I try to contact them twice with no luck.

Why? I could be interested in seeing their plant in Holland (I currently am living in Belgium). BTW I'm not of this trade, I'm just curious to see. Is that amount  true do you think? 120 tons per hectare is enormous.

I could be interested in knowing what smaller production kits can produce in terms of oil. Do you know if there are algae biodiesel  farms in Belgium as well? or maybe a website where they show a directory of these farms? Thanks

Mcy,

I hope I am wrong, but that website may be just a way to attract investors.

The yield performance potential for algae is extremely high.  In USA units, we talk in terms of a theoretical maximum of 120,000 gallons per acre per year.  But people have only growm small quantities.   No one has even grown 1/4 acre (abouit 1/8 hectacre).  The most reliable study I have seen said they grew  "21.9 t.ha⁻¹.y⁻¹ total lipid".  (In a coincidence, that study was publiushed by Springer Netherlands.)

Algae farms need a lot of sunlight, so they would probably be in sunny southern locations. 

ok, thank you for your reply liberty1.

Could you help me to decypher your sentence:

21.9 t.ha-1.y-1

what does it stand for? Sorry I'm not too familiar with this

120,000 does it stand for 120 thousand or for 120? if it's 120 thousand gallons per acre it seems an incredible amount in any case

no one can or will ever produce 120000gal / acre , EVER.

this is a pretty good summery of present day information    http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm

and another    http://www.castoroil.in/reference/plant_oils/uses/fuel/sources/algae/biodiesel_algae.html

and lastly, this is from our very own Mike Briggs http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Mcy, there is alotta hype out there but no one in the world is producing anything close to a commercial quanity of oil from algae. we are still many years away from. Dont get caught up in that hype please.

"Mcy, there is alotta hype out there but no one in the world is producing anything close to a commercial quanity of oil from algae. we are still many years away from. Dont get caught up in that hype please."

I won't don't worry. but even if it was 5000 gallons per hectare per year  the minimum amount for algae according to http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm it's already something amazing, it would mean at least 44400 litres per hectare, am I right? The question is, major oil multinationals are involved in investigating biodiesel potentials. Shell has investments in companies like http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=aboutshell-en&FC2=&FC3=/aboutshell-en/html/iwgen/the_energy_challenge/meeting_the_energy_challenge/innovative_technologies/fuels/biofuels.html

choren and igogen, they are investigating the potentiality of bioethanol and biodiesel from waste plants. there's no mention whatsoever of microalgae, They say you can get something like 340 litres of bioethanol per ton of fibre for example. Which is nothing compared to supposed microalgae oil yields.

 I ask myself if they are too short sighted or they have already run experiments on algae and got to negative conclusions or if they see in algae a too strong solution to oil shortage and one they don't want to investigate for sometime at least until they have sold all their oil?

Thanks Froggy et al.  You have save us a lot of time!!!  Anyway, I will keep trying to contact the Dutch to see what they are doing.  There is another company (Solix Biofules)

in Colorado that is working with Colorado State on this.  Does anyone has any info about them.

Greeting from sunny Barcelona

Ramon 

froggy:

no one can or will ever produce 120000gal / acre , EVER.

this is a pretty good summery of present day information    http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm

and another    http://www.castoroil.in/reference/plant_oils/uses/fuel/sources/algae/biodiesel_algae.html

and lastly, this is from our very own Mike Briggs http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Mcy, there is alotta hype out there but no one in the world is producing anything close to a commercial quanity of oil from algae. we are still many years away from. Dont get caught up in that hype please.

 

Froggy, I think you should know that there is a MIT scientist working on a Algae/biodiesel project in Arizona that is closer to a solution than you think. 

Doctor:

Froggy, I think you should know that there is a MIT scientist working on a Algae/biodiesel project in Arizona that is closer to a solution than you think. 

yea there are alotta ppl working on it. I have a book from the 1930's that says the same thing you are talking about. Im not trying to be pessimistic, im being a realist. Algae production is not a trivial issue.

Update to previous answer;

These people were planning to grow a 1/4 acre starting now (March):

http://www.nmsu.edu/~ucomm/Releases/2007/january/algae_biodiesel.htm

I don't know if they did.
 

Mcy,

Neither am I familiar with this.  My mind works in gallons and acres.  I think it means metric tons per hectare per year. 

That is how I remember the theoretical maximum.  As Froggy pointed out, no one has gotten close.   Most people believe the yield will be much greater than any other crop. 

ok thanks, it's a language I'm not too familiar with. As I was saying earlier, even if it was just 40000 litres per hectare per year, I think it's a lot anyway and enough to start thinking about it

agree, even 5-10k gallons of biod/acre/year would be a tremendous amount. Plus you will have made more than 20k + gallons of 'what is left after we squeeze out the oil' which can also have a tremendous amount of promise as food, feed or feedstock for sumthing else.

 Im not saying that it wont/cant be done or that people arnt/cant work feverishly on it, im saying that up to day it has proven very difficult and the reality has yet lived up to that great promise. And this promise has been known in the published journals of science from at least as far back as 1910's so that is almost 100 years.

I personally think that GMO / open pond is the way to go. Turn the pond system into a 'mine mouth' of energy @ ocean side or high water resource areas. But if we (the algae ppl) cannot get the efficiency up to over 2-3% on the solar capturing and other systems(like PV) can get over 20%, Algae may only prove to be a great promise to feed and not to energize the planet.