BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

To anyone who might know the answer? There's a few on this site that knows me from my background in seaweed. I just finished my 4 & a half yrs of research work w/ various species...but interesting emough, a few interested parties approached me and ask to grow seaweed for biodeisel Not ethanol. From the recent searching of articles from helpful participants from this site I was able to come to the conclusion that I could attain ethanol from my seaweed stock. But these people want oil not ethanol. It's been 10 yrs since growing microalgae for aquaculture ventures which was in much warmer climate I find myself in now, so I am a little "rusty" @ knowing which strains to pursue. They want to grow it up here in Washington state. I know of a micro-climate in the Puget Sound that would be milder than were I have been growing seaweed AND 300+days /yr sunshine w/ free organic manure from local daires. MY QUESTION TO ALL IS; what are the possible algae strains that could be tolerant to this type of climate? Obviously not HOT nor Brutal cold like the NE USA??? Any helpful info or places to look would be appreciative.

Thanks

Seaweedman

maybe you need to go looking in the local ponds and lakes of the area?

Just to expand on this idea. It will be a major hurdle to try and grow a non-local spp. of algae to xyz because of the threat of environmental exposure of that non-native spp.  

Hi SWM,

I agree with Froggy about going local and you should talk to your local government biologist about suitable local varieties.

Salt water Dunaliella is found around the globe and could be a candidate in your area. Check the species because they are not all oil factories. Some have a fairly broad temperature tolerance. As you know I am working on a PBR design and this, being an indoor unit, it will be easier to control the temperature.

There are a couple of dozen other varieties but I reckon a trip to your local botanical gardens is a good starting point. If they give you a few names then you can google them and see what info comes up on the web.

The NREL report has a list of several varieties that were tested. I think you may find a few on the www.oilgae.com web site as well.

Pity you can't find a sea weed that gives high lipids as you have already done so much work on them.

Good luck.

Yo SWM,

Let me make another pitch for growing your macro as simple, high yielding biomass as feedstock to AD or ethanol. With cellulose ethanol becoming a reality and AD becoming more popular, there is alot of opportunity coming down the pike for a race to grow tonage/acre to feed an energy starved world. If corn can produce 4t/acre and you can produce 50t/acre...one can see the simple math that can be fixed on a business plan. There are plenty of ethanol/AD system start ups that would love to talk with a 50t/acre, 3rd party tested and certified producer of virtually anything green (autotroph). And if you can somehow make it food safe...and if you have a crop that outproduces corn by 10x...10x is an astounding # that will turn heads (but there are 2 very big 'if's').

In Wisconsin, a typical farmer can grow ~4t of corn @ $4/b ($150/t for corn) = ~600$/acre - costs = ~ $150-200/acre into his pocket. This # is usually much lower but for the recent run-up in pricing...the farmers used to be happy w/ $50-100/acre. I would be curious about the #'s in the other parts of the world but my guess is that the bottom line # isnt far off whereever ppl are reading this.

If you can get $75/t dry weight farmgate (less than 1/2 of corn and a typically used range for bulk farmed biomass) x 50t/acre = $3750/acre - costs. <------ # will turn heads if you get a 3rd party to test and confirm that.

Hi Froggy,

I have been extremely busy recently and saw your post and realized just now looking @ it that I made an error in my calculations. My tank farm is 50' X 150' = 7500sq ft. An acre = 43,560sqft. Therefore my farm fits 5.8 times into that space. I could grow a mininium of 133.00 mt of macroalgae. But I know how to tweak the system. I did it for one month ONLY...because I was only one person. I did this for 26 days. This entailed me to work every single day for min of 14hr/day ; some days 17hrs! Extrapolating this out over the course of an year AND having low draw grow lights during the winter months up here to facilitate growth, I realized that I could grow aprox. 180 to 200 mt/ acre! I know this sounds incredible, but I am deriving this from my 4 and a half of research that I just completed. All my calculations are based on a 21 day rotation cycle. Even though my research is done I am still producing great growth rate cultivars of macroalgae. I have an average of 4%/day many 5+%/day and one @ 10%/day! Haven't seen that number in 2 years. The plants are totally full of "gel" (carrageenan), which you know is made mostly of mucopolysaccarides.....should be able to get ethanol out of that!

Anyhow, I just wanted to correct myself...

Have a Good Day

Seaweedman

(In my case I'll take it one day @ a time)

seaweedman:

Extrapolating this out over the course of an year AND having low draw grow lights during the winter months up here to facilitate growth, I realized that I could grow aprox. 180 to 200 mt/ acre! I know this sounds incredible, but I am deriving this from my 4 and a half of research that I just completed.

you are saying that you can grow 180mt of macro algae dry weight/acre/year?

Im curious how you came to that conclusion? If you have not done a proximate or ultimate analysis, how else did you come to that conclusion?

The reason I dont believe this is because there is only so many photons falling onto the earth at one time. Then the efficiency of the plant reduces that # by a large margin. To get 200mt/acre/year...one would need a solar fixing efficiency of over 20% and the theoretical limit of plants is somewhere around 11% (and the real life # is more like 2-5% tops because of 'on the ground inefficiencies')

Hi Froggy,

I derived this number from the fact that I grew 23 mt/yr from 20 tanks of the 24 tanks I have in my farm. This is fact. Extrapolate this by 5.8 times...which is the number of tank farms that would fit into an area of an acre. I could grow w/o a doubt 133.00mt/acre/yr. When I lasted approx. one month just recently working "around the clock" I wanted to see how much I could produce. In that month I grew 2311 kilos from 21 tanks in a 21 day cycle & w/ my tanks restocked to the most I ever restocked them, their gross amts = between 109 kgs to 115 kgs. Therefore using 114 kgs as a starting point as a per tank gross amt X 24 tanks = 2736.00 kgs for the entire farm/month. Multiply this amt by 12 months = 32,832.00 kgs or 32.8mts. Multiply this by 5.8 (# of times my tank farm would fit into an area of an acre) = 190,425.6 kgs or 190.43mts/1 acre/yr. This amts seems high to me...which I dropped the amt down But from MY experience w/ growing various seaweed spp this may not be too far fetched! I'm confident w/ the 133mt/acre/yr figure and I have some additional experiments I want to try to see if I could attain in reality from theory, the 200mt level! With the upcoming prospects I have been experiencing since my research completion, I may have the chance to work on that....if all develops like it should.

By the way Froggy I understand your rerservations about these figures. I am not the type of person who streches facts. I am basing these figures on MY research. These figures can be attained...I know they could because the way I had grown them in the past was alittle bit different than one would expect...I would relate it to you later. I just wanted to send this off to you. I'm interested in heasring your additional comments.

Have a good day,

Seaweedman

Froggy,

I forgot to mention...these are WET WEIGHT not DRY WEIGHT.

Seaweedman

Ah I thought so.

But then in comes the difficulty in wet weight vs dry weight...at what water % did you weight it at? 90% water? 83% 95%... This is why you need to get the 2 analysis that Ive been mentioning, so as to better define what we are dealing with.

Lets say you are at 10% solids (you may very well be less than that). 220mt = 242t x 10%solids = 24t x $70/ton =$1680...still a nice #/acre until you realize the cost of infrastructure.

At that rate/acre, I dont see how you would make a decent ROI on any fuel feedstock. Back to the high value products.