Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazer
The other is the use of microalgae to make biodiesel instead of rapeseed or palm oil. It turns out that certain species of algae are very oily with lipids accounting for 50% or more of their mass. Various farming techniques are being tried right now, but the National Renewable Energy Laboratory theorizes that future algae farms will yield up to 10,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year, compared with palm oil's 635 gallons and rapeseed's 127 gallons. Like switchgrass, algae grows very fast and it doesn't need to be grown on fertile land because it grows just fine in seawater. Imagine sunny southern California dotted with algae farms fed with water from the Salton sea or the Pacific Ocean, and local fuel prices well below the national average. We'd never hear pisser complaining about gas prices again.
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I thought I'd come back to this post and provide an update. A joint effort between
Global Green Solutions and
Valcent Products has built a test facility in El Paso, Texas to demonstrate their VertiGrow algae bioreactor technology. This is just one of many possible designs for algal biofuel farms, but I wanted to show it to you all because they've produced a video explaining their design and a comparison to open algae pond systems as well as other sources of biofuel. Here's a
direct link to the video.