XPRIZE Video - Algae Biofuel

[Armornone]

If this ethanol or like regular fuel. Ethanol totally sucks for your engine,

[davepamn]

What is the market?

[davepamn]

Will oil prices per barrel drop to $50 a barrel? If that happens will biodiesel be able to survive and capture its return on investment?

[VERGIS92]

@davepamn Oil at $50 a barrel? no way, crude oil is depleting at a steady 6% annual rate, plus insurance premiums have risen (some $15 per barrel goes to insurance, to cover BP oil accident, ship spills etc), you will never see $50 again,, more likely to see $250

[davepamn]

When will I be able to buy a gallion of biodiesel made from algae for $2?

[circusboy90210]

@davepamn price should be more like $0.75 input cost are nothing, sunlight & co2.

[cassie23231]

i like to make a differet

[datzfast]

i grew a whole swimming pool full of this algae, by accident

thats how hard it is to grow folks. very careful scientific measurements with hard to pronounce additives were not required.

[datzfast]

the dead cells must be removed with the living cells because the dead and the living cells contain equal amounts of lipid rich membrane. lipid rich membrane is the source of the biofuel. some people will not be happy until yo just put the algae and water in your gas tank and turn on the key. That may be possible someday

[hdelicious]

great info, and done in an interesting way

[UnclePadula90]

There's no way this is more expensive. You can probably grow algae on your ass after not showering for a week. This is badass and should be researched more

[AllIAnceghost]

@UnclePadula90 It is badass and is being researhed more trust me,and it even grows in the dark too.Co2 and water(rainwater/dirtywater/sal­twater and old water really will do)why do you think Obama is trashing BP.and trying to take it over??

[tremolomasta]

great video

[GlennDoty]

There's still the problem of costs. Algae is in no way cheaper than corn-based biofuels. It's prohibitively expensive. Current tech costs ~$50/gallon of diesel.

Without addressing the costs of the fuel, you won't get anyone to switch from the heavily polluting fossil options (such as tar sands, shale oil or coal-to-liquids).

[tremolomasta]

how on earth would this be expensive... you can grow algae in a glass cup. it is DEFINITELY a cheap alternative. Where are you getting this data? obviously not credible. read up on algae. The only process that could be potentially expensive is separating the ethanol product from algae. otherwise, it is EXTREMELY cheap. PVC piping, water, CO2. Simple if you actually researched it.

[GlennDoty]

I can't send you links via this comment route, but the cheapest they've been able to produce bio-fuels in a bioreactor (the only plausible means of scale-up), is ~$7/kg. Assuming 50% lipid mass and 85% efficiency on cleaning and refining the oil (this is very generous on both counts), you get ~$16.47/kg of diesel. A gallon of diesel is ~3.3 kg.

For gathering natural algae (not scalable), it costs ~$3/kg.

It's expensive.

*shrug*

This was not meant as an attack.

:)

[cassie23231]

@tremolomasta i like your inder

[JimtheEvo]

I'm a phychologist Glenndoty is quite right the cost is still a major issue. I'm doing currently and have been for a over a year now research into to algae, its is very expensive but we are making tracts. Check out my three videos looking at some of the research I've done if ppl are interested send me a message and I'll get back to you.

[Magganrchy]

How can something that can double, quadruple, even octuple it's weight in a day be cost prohibitive?

[GlennDoty]

Because it takes water, nutrients, CO2, and sunlight to grow... everything except for the sunlight must be vigorously maintained for optimal growth conditions... the dead cells must be removed - as they block sunlight to the living cells, which requires extremely complex filtration. The water boil-off is a constant problem, because the pools cannot be more than a few inches deep (3" is optimal), and if not pools than literally thousands of miles of tubes are needed.

It costs, A LOT.

[nopethegeek]

It only costs a lot to put the infrastructure in place. Once production is ramped up, it will be very inexpensive. The water is not a problem in a closed loop system (you reuse the water). The nutrients are not a problem, as you can use livestock waste. The sunlight is not a problem - if you cultivate in areas with lots of sunlight (read the desert). The CO2? Ha! Ironic that seems to be the troublesome greenhouse gas we don't know what to do with. =)

[nopethegeek]

I *AM* told the one downside is engineering strains of algae that have a higher yield, as that will drive the price down even further.

But honestly? If this is viable (and the amount of research being done into it seems to indicate it IS) I'm willing to pay a little more at the pump - IF it means our energy is (literally) home grown, renewable and SAFE. Hard to put a pricetag on any one of those!

Seriously? To be able to tell OPEC to take their oil and cram it? I'll drink to that! =)

[GlennDoty]

You're wrong on several accounts. First, the capital costs are a part of the cost of the product. If you have an up-front capital cost of 9 billion at a 30-year discount rate of 10% on a system that produces a million bbls/year, that works out to ~$933/bbl.

Next, you'll have the nutrients. Animal waste CANNOT be used, as these would "cloud" the water and reduce the insolation - lowering the photosynthetic efficiency of the system... so you have to use pure finely-ground particles...

[GlennDoty]

Ran out-of-room.

The nutrients add another ~$100/bbl - $200/bbl.

Then there's energy. Every liter of water has to be pumped and filtered every 3 hours. The filtered algae then has to be dried and crushed, and the resulting algae oil has to be filtered, hydrocracked, refined, and distilled. Energy costs run at least $400/bbl in large scale production.

Then there's labor. To produce ~50 million gallons/year (our 9 billion dollar system), would require nearly a million km of tubes.

[GlennDoty]

Ran out-of-room again.

Those tubes must be cleaned, and would eventually degrade (reducing insolation) and need to be replaced....

The costs here are hard to quantify, but they are VERY high.

There has only been 2 large-scale attempts at algae oil production. Both shut down after 2 years, and the average expense for algae oil in those two cases was ~40,000/gallon (of course, this is because the enormous capital costs were only amortized over two years).

Algae oil is expensive.

[jpthecreaton]

yeah, but cell phones used to be $2500 and weigh 30 lbs and cost $2-3 per min to use...now you can get one for $10 and it weighs ounces, and $40 will have you yapping your face off for a month. same with this-once everyone is onboard, it'll be cheap.

[GlennDoty]

Massive infrastructure projects are not cell phones. There's no correlation between the two at all. There is nothing on the drawing board for any of these companies to reduce costs to under ~$50/gallon.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles costed ~1 million dollars apiece in the 90's... Now, 20 years later, they still cost ~1 million dollars apiece.

Some times bad ideas just cost too much, and regardless of support those costs cannot be reduced.

[datzfast]

so, oil does not cost ALOT?

[GlennDoty]

no datzfast, oil doesn't cost A LOT!... not by comparison. Oil is trading at ~$75/bbl, or ~$1.80/gallon.

Right now the cheapest algae oil that you can find is being sold to the navy at $425/gallon. That's 238 times the cost that oil trades at. If oil were to increase it's cost by more than 10fold, then algae oil would STILL cost 20 times the amount that crude oil does.

This is an economic hurdle that will never be overcome.

[datzfast]

oh come on, i just read the article you got that from and it stated they paid that amount for the R and D and start up facilities. And they hope to use this biofuel soon, but not at 425 a gallon. get a life please. Are you one of those that wont be happy until you just turn the key?

i think maybe you were by passed

[GlennDoty]

I've tried to respond several times... and this worthless forum keeps deleting my replies because they contain links or try to work around the link-ban.

I do not have time to make you an expert, and barring the ability to cite links, it would be very difficult for me to provide enough information to be useful in 400 characters.

look up "WindFuels" and scan the alternatives list for "micro-algae". That's a good place to start, with good references.

[FishyMoe]

@GlennDoty yeah but thats to the Navy. The US defense force spends ridiculous amounts of money for things. For example, they spend like $200 for a pillow for a soldier. I recently bought a top of the range, memory foam pillow for $100, so I don't know what they are sleeping on. This is only expensive now as it is a new technology and the infrastructure isn't in place to be cost effective. yet.

[GlennDoty]

@FishyMoe

@FishyMoe

No, it's not just the Navy. GreenFuels technology burned through 70 million dollars, produced less than 100 gallons of fuel, and went bankrupt. Over a billion dollars has been completely wasted on algae with less than 10,000 gallons to show for it. The company I listed was by far the cheapest contract ever for algae. Of course, no-one else has ever delivered, so there's no reason to suspect someone will start now.

[FishyMoe]

@GlennDoty well 2+ trillion has been spent on the war in Iraq and not much has happened there so thats an exponentially massive waste in comparison.  What are the issues involved in create of of the fuel?

[dinomuhovic]

@GlennDoty and when there is no more oil?

[its0a0me]

@dinomuhovic~ There is a massive conspiracy going on with Crude Oil. For the past 5 years they have been telling us that Crude oil is slowly running out. This is absolute BS!. Its all part of the Human de-population agenda (genocide). They tell u its running out.... therefore raising the price (when the price of a transport-fuel goes up, so does everything else pretty much)..... so the poor people in the poorer nations will simply starve or die due to illness CAUSED by not being able to feed

[dra9onf1re]

very nice mike

we should totally team up to make cool videos... combined, we could make some pretty cool stuff