BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

I think its a matter complacency and lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of people  in general. what ever happened to the public will?  running a few politicians out of town on a rail did wonders in the days when the public had the courage not to bend over and take it up the kazoo.

 predators prey on the weak. there is no justification for this outrageous fuel price gouging,

 in saudi arabia gasoline is 25 cents. dont give me any of that bullshit about the cost of distribution

a little show of strength and resolve on the part of citizens and we"d see the price of fuel go down "magically"

 when the citizens of this once great country of ours had thier tea and whisky taxed they staged the beginnings of what resulted in the american revolution.

 what will it take now? Im not an anarchist just a fed up individual who knows a bit about history and proactivity..

so many people bitch and moan and go on to  taking it up the keester evryday.

 time to stop bitching and start acting like citizens of a once great  nation lets take america back  from the haliburtonites and the smarmy third rate shiesters that call themselves our leaders.

 yes they are our leaders, they are leading us down the road to ruin.

 where are the cojones americans once showed.?

 evry body seems to want some one else to take responsibility. well, citizenship is the responsibility of each and evry  american citizen. one person cant do it alone... once in for all lets open our eyes to the reality of the condition of this country and see through the thin veneer of respectability of those politicians who pander to the foreign interests and have dismantled the strength and power of this country for thier own gain.

 we can sit and talk about this stuff all day long and we can even act individually and create solutions like the ones we discuss on these forums. but as long as there is devicive-ness amongst us and disunity  amongst the citizens we are like reeds bending in the wind.to the will of self serving opportunists.

wake up!!! we need to take back our country.. energy independance is the cornerstone of our national security..we need a cohesive informed and dedicated force to  produce that independance. the technology is here now but where is the will to implement it? leaving it up to the politicians is a dead end street.anyone with half a brain and the will to act can help make this happen. what are YOU waiting  for????

Marc

 Marc,

This field is an excellent proof of your point.  For 18 years and millions of dollars, people worked to make algae oil a reality (the ASP).  Then a politician cancelled it, just when it was about to produce results.

You are correct, we need to work together to make algae oil a reserach lab reality, a backyard and farm reality, and a large, industrial production reality.  We can overturn what the politicians have done to us.

Let's do it. 

Hello everyone, 

Liberty, Could you please tell me what is DI-Water? And on the same note could you elaborate on the chemicals you referred to, when you said "you probably want to start your experiments with chemicals to produce algae"?

I am trying to make some calculations about how much it would cost to produce a certain amount of algal biomass. And I have very approximate values for some of the factors involved in that equation. Now, I need an approximate estimtate for the cost of nutrients(manure, sewage or anything else) required to obtain a ton of algal biomass. I know it depends on a number of factors but I just need a very approximate estimate and it don't matter if it is off by 20-25% on either side.

 We all know that algae have ravenous appetite for carbon di-oxide. If I don't have the luxury of hooking up with a power company that would donate their CO2, the only other option I have is to get all the CO2 from the atmosphere. Now one way to get all that CO2 would be to use an electrical pump to pump in the CO2 from the atmosphere into the bioreactors. Now, I would like to know if there is any other way. Preferrably one that does not require a lot of electricity.

 And lastly, I've been collecting all the organic waste around my house for the last two weeks and Ive managed to pile up quite the stench on my terrace. I intend to use it as manure for growing algae. Now, do I have to leave it out in the sun to let it dry so that I can powder it to use it for the algae or is it ok to use it the way it is.. (rotten tomatoes, fungi infested bread, shriveled punjabi rotis, 4 days old dal palak... you get the idea) 

Sorry for this long discourse.             

 Thank you.
      

 Nesna,

DI water is de-ionized water - the "ulitmate" distilled water.

All of the nutients needed to grow anything are available as chemicals.  See this site for one particular formulae for some species of algae:

http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/media/table/f2.html

For instance, notice that they include the iron the algae needs as FeCl₃·6H₂O.

It will probably be possible to grow algae with manures, organic wastes, etc.  Today we do not know enough about what we are doing to be able to know how to feed the algae.  To be able to design reproducible experiments, we need to start with known strenghts of chemicals.  We can get the chemicals in a known strength, so when we find out how much to use, we have a solid fix on what we were feeding the algae.  If you haphazardly feed some rotting garbage to the aglae, you will have no idea of what you fed the algae.  Even if you tell me exactly what you did, I would not be able to reproduce your results.  My rotten tomatoes may only be half as big as your rotten tomatoes.  Yours may have a fungus growing on them that produces B-12 while mine doesn't have that fungus.  (Some speices of algae require B-12.)

So, at this stage in our knowledge about growing algae, we need to learn how much to feed the algae to get maximum growth.  After we learn more about growing algae, we will be able to figure out how to supply the needed nutrients from organic sources.

For our experiments at this stage, we are not too concerned about costs.

When we get to production, I hope we will be able to use manure, so the costs will be minimual.  If you need some numbers, the report of the ASP has cost estimates for everything, including chemical fertilizers.

There are two source for CO2.  The atmosphere is my preference.  Some people look to get it from another process such as flue gasses or ethanol fermentation.  PBRs will probably require pumping the CO2 into the culture.  Raceway ponds can use pumps if the CO2 come from other processes or paddlweheels if the atmosphere is the source.  

As discussed above, pass the garbage along to the garbage collector. 

Hello everyone,

Liberty, thank you for that insight. It makes sense to make sure we know what chemicals and in what amounts we are using in the experiments. Otherwise like you said, it would be hard for someone else to reproduce similar results. I checked out that website about f2. The first entry in the first table says " NaNO₃ (75.0 g/L dH₂O)". What does 'dH₂O' mean? I know h2o is water. The prefixed 'd' is not clear. Im guessing it might mean distilled water. And what is the meaning of the '1ml' entries to the right? Does it mean we have to add 1ml of the NaNO3 solution to 1L of seawater?

Thank  you. 

froggy:

IMO, this is much too aggressive a number. $10-$20 is within the realm of probable.

This number is highly variable. It dependent on alot of things like; process, infrastructure, production/acre, cost of doing business like profit, financing and IP costs. All numbers are guesses.

I agree the true costs are probably quite high, but for someone that already has the land and all I have to do is buy some plastic, water pump, air pump, fertilizer, plumbing. I could probably make some and make a little bit of money on the side that is worth it too me because it only costs me $1 a gallon lets say over money I was already spending. Now once I decide to plow over every piece of landscaping around my house to make room for PBR's and buy the greenhouse complex that is in financial distress across the street . Then the true cost would actually effect me.

The true cost of the things that go into it are very cheap to scale up though, and as you scale up I think your costs drop exponentially. I.E. instead of buying land in central florida for 25k an acre, buy it out in the desert by the 1000 acres and so on. I think that assuming you can combine CO2 and sunlight which are both free quantities once you have the land, you will eventually beat the hell out of dino oil because it will constantly get harder for them to pump the stuff out of the ground. (This however isn't the case atm, the saudies would rather keep the oil in the ground that will go up in price rather than accept dollars that will likely lose value over time.)

BTW I know no one knows... But someone give me a shot in the dark about what type of algea strain I should stick in my PBR . I was gonna use BB but now I am scared of it. I would possibly be more comfortable with a freshwater strain but I could easily consider marine if there was an advantage. Just toss me a bone or a link to a thread that explains the little that is known about eligible strains.

 Wannabe,

If you are still interested in cost estimates, read this:

http://algae.tcoalternativefuels.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ronputt-algaeasabiodiesefeedstock.pdf

or:

http://tinyurl.com/43reqe

 Nensa,

That is called the water of crystalization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_of_crystallization 

Yes, use 1 ml per liter - but of distilled water.  (If you want to use seawater, it needs to be purified.)