BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

I currently own 5 acres in central florida. I have some questions I would appreciate any input on.

• Can I grow algea from current available species or is everyone still in R&D because you simply can't overcome the problems of farming it at this time?
• I was thinking of using the make your own plastic tubes technique I actually read about on a post on this forum?
• I was going to build a room with an air conditioning filter for intake of new air and then through some sort of fan into the tube system.
• I was also thinking of using conical tanks in a closed off form to possibly spin the water through and either take the algea off the top or bottom of the system, wherever it ends up.

My degree in college was in aerospace so I don't really want to have to delve into genetically modifying my own strain of algea lol.

Can I put my land to good use in what I would think is going to be a boom industry in this part of the country?

theres no problem to growing algae with ther right system especially in florida. well soon be doing a 400 acre project down there. near jupiter. check out www.ecogenicsresearchcenter.org ..

for more...

 Marc

Wannabe - go get em buddy. In the words of a famous sports clothing brand - just do it.

We need more people willing to try and then reporting on their progress so we can get quicker results. There is a ton of info out there and you need to read as much as you can.

Check out the following:

Oilgae.com ., Marcs site as per above, this forum has heaps of info and links, Oil from Algae Yahoo groups, Treehugger.com, TDiclub.com, Wikipedia.com and then there is Google.

Google search for algae, biodiesel, biofuels, photobioreactors, patents and any other related words.

No need to GM your algae. There are several out there that work well without modification. Check with your local enviornmental people to see if they can give you a list of species that grow locally. Armed with that you can do a search by species to see what one is better for your needs. 

 Wannabe,

It is feasible but there is no cookbook. 

Everyone is still in R&D about farming.  But as Slippery implied, the only way we are going to learn to farm algae is to start doing it.  So please start doing it and let us know what works and - just as important - what doesn't.

In my Yahoo group archives, we have my interpretation of the Scientific American instructions for getting started growing algae.  Carolina Biological sells algae samples cheaply ($6), but they do not have oil bearing species.  Marc sells oil bearing species for $30.  

 It's great that you are interested in growing algae since you are in a prime location for an algae farm.  All of the large scale designs that have been tested (that I know of) have been near the tropics so you are golden in that sense.  I am not sure how much money you are planning to invest but whatever you build will most likely have to be experimental in nature.  Ecogenics seems to be geared to people like you who want to start growing algae so I'd recommend using his guidance.  I would also recommend figuring out exactly what your goals will be with growing your algae; are you going to sell the algae to someone else or are you going to attempt to extract the oil yourself? Are you hoping for an end product of biodiesel or are you just hoping to capitalize on the early market for oil-containing algae?  People have posted on these boards that they will buy algae from people who are willing to produce so you might be in luck.  They have made offers to buy all that can be produced. (though i don't know how serious they really are)

Check out this article:
http://www.drfriendly.tv/PDFs/Huntley+Redalje200611.pdf (thanks to froggy for previously posting this link that is open to the public)

Combining closed and open systems logically seems to make alot of sense.  You can build a smaller PBR system with the clear tubing to culture a strong population of your chosen species then innoculate into another open, larger, cheaper system to allow quick growth followed by nutrient stress.

people tend to discredit this paper but I think there is some valuable information that can be used and expanded on.  The number-crunching done in that paper doesn't all add up and their estimates of cost and production are not taken very seriously.  Despite this, I don't think valuable research like this should be entirely discredited.  This company produced algae for a couple years at the scale you are hoping to grow your own.  There may be a good reason why they aren't still producing algae(as far as anyone publicly knows), though.  That might be because it is still too expensive to run something like that for the money you can make for the algae you produce.  There isn't an established infrastructure for processing algae so once the algae is produced, there are no cost-effective means of turning that into a valuable commodity yet.  That is a big reason why everything is still in the R&D stage.  They need to figure out how to turn the algae into oil in a cost-effective way.   That not only involves the techicalities of production, harvest, and extraction of the algae itself, but the big picture needs to be figured out as far as transport, processing, and waste, etc.

For comparison, look at cellulosic ethanol: there have been millions put into R&D and there are even pilot plants that can make it happen.  The only problem is a cullulosic processing plant costs somewhere around $600 million as opposed to $60 mil for a distillation plant that can make ethanol straight from sugar.  My point is that you should make sure you have a market for the algae you will produce and do the math to make sure the money someone will pay for that algae does something to make a dent in your costs.  

 Again, ecogenics is doing it well so I'd talk to him. There is something about what he is doing with algae production that is working.  

grtful 

 Grtful,

Marc knows how to grow spirulina and raise talipia(SP?).  And he wants you to sign a non-disclosure agreement. 

what part of central florida are you in?

Grtfulbuster:

  people tend to discredit this paper but I think there is some valuable information that can be used and expanded on.  The number-crunching done in that paper doesn't all add up and their estimates of cost and production are not taken very seriously.  Despite this, I don't think valuable research like this should be entirely discredited. 

Yes they do not do a very good job with number. Lets assume they are only bad with economics and not the whole of number crunching and production numbers are correct.

One has to take these numbers as a high level of algal production/acre. Meaning that it would take some 'green' production unit years to reach production levels that were achieved in the study. So take the numbers offered and ask yourself, is this worth the time?

For food and other high value products, it might be.

For energy production, its not until energy value goes up many x present value.

Wannabealgeafarmer:

   I currently own 5 acres in central florida. 

Lets say you can grow Miscanthus or some other energy crop @ 12t/acre/yr.

12t/ac x 5ac = 60t of biomass/yr.

14,000,000 BTU/t x 60t = ~ 1B BTU/ your 'farm'.

1B BTU x 25% efficiency gasifier/gen set that you can buy off the internet and build yourself (if you can build an algae farm, you can do this)  / 3413BTU/kwh = ~ 75,000kwh's/your farm.

The ave family uses ~ 12000 kwh's/year.

An electric car gets ~ 4miles/kwh. If you drive 12000miles/year / 4m/kwh = 3000kwh's/year.

Thus... you can already supply your complete energy need 5x growing a perennial weed which will improve your soil (and even get more $$$ by carbon sequestering).

Or... you can try to grow algae...

froggy:

An electric car gets ~ 4miles/kwh. If you drive 12000miles/year / 4m/kwh = 3000kwh's/year.

Oops, sorry I forgot that electric cars are not mass produced today.

But seeing as tho you are a rocket scientist, you could a heck of alot easier build an electric car than try to build a PBR... if not, I have another solution you could do, AD.

20% efficiency conversion into BioGas could easily do the job for you and a few buddies. You can build one of these yourself also, there are millions of them in the backyards of china and the philippines. And the auto conversion from gaz to gas is easy enough...

one problem with methane as an automotive fuel is that it is a BIG gas, it takes up a lot of space, and to liquify it takes 5000 psi you dont want to have a pressurised tank of methane gas in your trunk it would be like having a high powered bomb. in case someone rear-ended you

 methane is feasable however as a fuel for stationary engines I built one at my 5000 head of hog feedlot at my ranch and ran a generator that powered our lights and irrigation pumps as well as other equipments.

 the chinese use methane gas to power buses they drive arfound with large bags of gas on the roof when the bags start to deflate they go back and refill them they look like  some of the  vehicles in a  futuristic scene from a Driuelette cartoon from the old" heavy metal" comics (metal hurlant). one of our clients takes the effluent from his methane digestor at his feedlot and feeds the algae the supernatents.. he says the algae grows like crazy...

I live in the apopka area which is northwest of orlando. My goals with the algea are to produce biodesiel and sell it to locals for awhile and then take it from there. I understand and doubt this will be an efficent process to begin with, but I think with time I can meander my way through to something workable, especially with a great community like this to help me through.

So here is the plan

1. Production: Bag PBR laid out on the ground with a serpintine pattern and a water pump circulating the water slowly through the system. An air pump pushing the air in the other way. I have been reading here lately and I intend to try a vertical bag now and just see if I can get the air circulating to push the water through too.
2. Extraction: I still have no real plan here, I have seen a number of methods. Including one on invention nation where they seemed to cook the oil out of the algea. Granted this is not a sound thermodynamic process however, energy in the form of diesel is much more valuable than the energy in the form of wood which is sitting throughout my yard (and I am sure I can get the lawn guys to dump their excess biomass on me to burn.) So I make an oven and cook the algea while pumping the carbon coming off the fire into the system to grow more algea.
3. Refining: This has been covered in depth and is not a big issue as far as I can see. Set up some tanks, find a good distributor of methanol (which I hate that the price of this whole process is tied to another fossil fuel), and process as much biodiesel as possible.

Please poke as many holes in my plan as possible so I can have my patches ready.

Sorry I butchered this post, I need to get my explorer spellcheck up and running.

CBS had an editorial report yesterday on the evening news about a town in Indiana that went 'green'. It's tough going. It is a rural community of aprox 500. There are fields of corn for ethenol and plenty of dairy cattle for methane. The ethenol is working and E85 is aprox 1$ cheaper that regular unleaded. However, they were not able to stay off the electric grid. The methane only produced enough gas to power the dairy farm, not the community. Still a long way to go, there.

What is missing in all these posts are the results of real production. This town found out that they could not go methane alone with the size of thier animal farms. That's important information. We need to have specific data, like so many cows produce so much poop and methane, that will produce a specific amount of electricy. Far too many post are ideas only without quantitative action with verifiable results. Nothing wrong with ideas but, we fall for the ancient Greek scientific method. That is, hypothesis with out experimentation. That method kept civilization back for several hundreds of years. So, lets do something for real.

I grow bytryococcus braun ii. Its's tough going. I created a septic system, using canine dropings from my yard, as a CO2 source. In part, it works. But along with increased CO2 there are other gasses that do not get utilized. But, hey, that's experimentation and it takes time and real action. That creates data and not deflated dreams.  Once a person starts moving, the failures and succeses add up to knowledge that hopefully, one day, will add to our nations power sources for transportation fuels. But I'm not there yet. So, get moving. Act on your ideas and find out for yourself if it works.

Sgtrock - I've been putting some thought towards the topic of BB growing so slowly.

At some point in the past, BB, or an algae very similar to it, was growing like nuts, its pretty undeniable. CO2 was in the atmosphere, but it wasn't the only thing - have you tried a mix of methane, CO2 and nitrogen ?

Naturally there are a great deal of anomalies and byproducts that could occur from such a varied mix - however I believe the key to producing high quantities of flourishing BB is to have an environment as similar as we know to when BB - or a similar relative, was making all that kerogen that we all call petrol today. CO2 may merely be the rice, when you could be feeding your BB steak (or soylent green).

Wannabe,

What you called refining is transesterfication.  It also requires KOH or NaOH.  It is more difficult, but it can be done with ethanol - if you are opposed to fossil fuels..

You will need a refining step.  Hopefully, that may be simple filtering and degumming.