PROSPECTS
FOR THE BIODIESEL INDUSTRY
Where
we've been.
The
biodiesel industry has reached a crisis point. The demand for
biodiesel has promoted the construction of a large number of
biodiesel plants. These refineries use the oils from many plants,
but especially soy. The cost of seed oil has risen dramatically
because of the rise in petrodiesel costs to farm and the demand for
ethanol as an additive to gasoline. Ethanol is used in the
processing of biodiesel.
In
Europe, many of the biodiesel plants have been moth-balled because of
the high cost of oil seed oil. Imperim Renewables, Gray's Harbor WA,
is finishing a 100,000 million gallon per year plant, with no assured
source of vegetable oil. They are reluctant to import palm oil
because of the adverse ecological impact of the palm plantations.
Other refineries are facing the same supply issues.
The
favored source of oil, algal oil, has been touted as the liquid fuel
source of the future – and indeed it is. Most early investors put
their money up to fund the construction of algae farms. Guess what?
They proved they could grow algae using a wide variety of
technologies.
Where
we're at.
Slowly,
it dawned on these producers and their investors, that while they
could successfully grow algae, they had only very inefficient means
of extracting the oil from the algae cells. The universities were of
no help since most of their funding was to discover ways of growing
algae and tweaking the DNA. None have developed any new technologies
to extract the oil in a continuous, large volume process.
There
are ways of fracturing the algae cell to get at the lipids floating
around in the cytoplasm. Heat, pressure drop, impingement, solvents,
crushing, grinding with small ceramic bebees – all have been tried.
Yet much of the technology, derived from the lab bench was not
scalable to commercial standards, except at great cost and poor
results.
AlgalDiesel
to the rescue.
We are
a small group of highly energized professionals who have found the
technological “sweet spot” for harvesting the Chlorella
vulgaris cells and
extracting the algal oil. Included in our talent mix are mechanical
engineers, an agricultural engineer, a computer scientist, a lawyer,
airline owners and an biodiesel plant design-and-build specialist.
The process of harvesting the mature “parent” cells and returning
the “daughter” cells to the head of the growing system has been
solved. The opening of the Chlorella cell is done by osmotic
rupture, leaving the cell wall intact, looking like an opened flower.
The cytoplasm and the cell walls are separated and then the lipids
(oil) removed, returning the balance of the cytoplasm to the algae
production system to add to the nutrient. The cell walls can be
dehydrated and sold as a health food supplement or fermented into
ethanol. The wash water used to clean the raw biodiesel is laced
with Phosphorus and serves as a nutrient.
The
remaining mechanical issues are: how big do we make the system to
handle what quantity of algae? If our clients will tell the
quantity, we can build the machinery to handle the clients' request.
We are not dealing in rocket science. We are not interested in doing
study after study like the universities and think tanks. We want to
build the machine the client wants and get it into operation fast.
We will stand behind our work and tweak the equipment when necessary.
We are constantly on the look-out for new ideas. The technology in
this field is a moving target, and we move with it.
In
terms of scale, our designs will serve two primary markets: The
small farmer cooperative of fifteen to fifty members, using at least
100,000 gallons of biodiesel a year, and the larger farm which is
producing algae which converts to 10 million gallons of biodiesel a
year. While the equipment we build (the cell harvester and the cell
rupture machine) are fully scalable, some of the equipment we buy
from others has not been scalable, except by installing a bank of
units. These units include filters, separators, polishers, and
solvent recovery devices. We are working with many of these vendors
and encouraging them to scale up their equipment. We have
encountered the age old problem of “why invent, develop and make a
much larger machine, since no one has demanded such machine”.
Before Xerox was invented, no one demand a Xerox copier.
We
have the science and engineering talent in our firm and the advanced
knowledge of where technology should be driven to solve the “Xerox”
conundrum. We will not likely be on the front page of the WSJ any
time soon. We are not interested in selling out to an oil company,
merely to see our patents and technology suppressed. We know that
Chlorella divides 2.5 times per hour. The growth/harvest cycle is
about ten days as against annually for oil seed crops. We can grow
the algae in cover ponds in the middle of winter in Montana on
non-crop soils. We can grow it on dry desert lands. We can make our
own distilled water. The wash water can be used to grow algae and
other crops. The co-product, glycerol, has many profitable uses,
despite what you may have read about the glut of raw glycerine on the
market. We want to use the “free” energy of geothermal wells,
the Sun and wind energy. We want to be as green as we can get with
the smallest carbon footprint.
Contact
information:
AlgalDiesel,
LLP
530 NW
13th
St., Corvallis, OR 97330
Landline:
541-757-9797; cell: 541-971-0403; Skype: jimmiller5417 or 541-359-
3676. Attention: James E. Miller