Algae

[cottonpicken]

Anybody else out there working on this?

[mcfarms]

If your refering to biodiesel derived from algae unless Saskatchewan has done away with winter you might be at a disadvantage to prettymuch everywhere else in the world, this is an interesting article http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

[cottonpicken]

I can buy shares almost anywhere in the world.
Cant you?

[mcfarms]

Your term working on it to me meant you were considering a local venture,

[cottonpicken]

Truce,Truce

What do you think of it?

[wilagro]

Pond scum diesel...has a nice ring to it. Would this be a growth industry? Well of course it would be, but some years are better than others. With "global warming", and longer, hotter summers we could process pond scum through the summer in order to have fuel for harvest. The ideal integrated farm process.

Sure, cottonpicken...go for it.

Let us know if and when you have enough surplus to supply the neighbours as well. We all don't have ponds to grow scum on, although some of the hog operations could probably use their slurry pit outflow.

[mcfarms]

Wilagro may be closer to the ideal usage for this technolgy than wilagro intended to be if you look around the world many of the major cities which are located in temperate and tropical zones have been putting their effluent and sewage (and leached agricultural nutrients) directly into the sea for years

I hate to admit it but this article is from the green peace site

oxygen-starved areas of the world's oceans.

"Dawn of the dead

Creeping dead zones are areas where the water at the sea-floor is anoxic - meaning that it has very low (or completely zero) concentrations of dissolved oxygen. This situation is the result of coastal waters algae blooms due to nutrient pollution from sewage discharges and agriculture. As the algae die and rot, they consume oxygen, and the oxygen dissolved in the water falls to levels unable to sustain marine life. CDZ are especially dangerous to fisheries because they afflict coastal waters where many fish spawn and spend most of their lives before moving to deeper waters.


These dead zones are occurring in many areas along the coasts of major continents, and they are spreading over larger areas of the sea floor. Well known CDZs have long afflicted the Baltic Sea and are an annual feature in the Gulf of Mexico where the Mississippi River brings down huge quantities of fertilisers from the agricultural heartlands of the United States. Many of the areas where increasing deoxygenisation has recently been observed are near the mouths of major river systems, and they're now spreading to other bodies of water, such as the Black Sea, Adriatic Sea, Gulf of Thailand and Yellow Sea. They're also appearing off South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand."



It may be not only practical but a real good thing to develop a system such as this inland or (not my first chioce)even in small enclosed areas of the coast already depleted by these "dead zones" to stop their spread and develop this industry
to lierally kill two birds with one stone. Develop a energy industry utilizing avalable heat , nutrient and water sources while reducing a serious man made impact .

This is an article from wikepedia[edit] "Biodiesel production
Currently most research into efficient algal-oil production is being done in the private sector, but if predictions from small scale production experiments bear out then using algae to produce biodiesel may be the only viable method by which to produce enough automotive fuel to replace current world gasoline usage.[15]

Microalgae have much faster growth-rates than terrestrial crops. The per unit area yield of oil from algae is estimated to be from between 5,000 to 20,000 gallons per acre, per year (4.6 to 18.4 l/m2 per year); this is 7 to 30 times greater than the next best crop, Chinese tallow (699 gallons).[16]

Algal-oil processes into biodiesel as easily as oil derived from land-based crops. The difficulties in efficient biodiesel production from algae lie not in the extraction of the oil, which can be done using methods common to the food-industry such as hexane extraction, but in finding an algal strain with a high lipid content and fast growth rate that isn't too difficult to harvest, and a cost-effective cultivation system (ie, type of photobioreactor) that is best suited to that strain.

Open-pond systems for the most part have been given up for the cultivation of algae with high-oil content. Many believe that a major flaw of the Aquatic Species Program was the decision to focus their efforts exclusively on open-ponds; this makes the entire effort dependent upon the hardiness of the strain chosen, requiring it to be unnecessarily resilient in order to withstand wide swings in temperature and pH, and competition from invasive algae and bacteria. The energy that a high-oil strain invests into the production of oil is energy that is not invested into the production of proteins or carbohydrates, usually resulting in the species being less hardy, or having a slower growth rate. Algal species with a lower oil content, not having to divert their energies away from growth, have an easier time in the harsher conditions of an open system.

Some open sewage ponds trial production has been done in Marlborough, New Zealand.[17]

A feasibility study using marine microalgae in a photobioreactor is being done by The International Research Consortium on Continental Margins at the International University Bremen.[18]

Research into algae for the mass-production of oil is mainly focused on microalgae; organisms capable of photosynthesis that are less than 2 mm in diameter, including the diatoms and cyanobacteria; as opposed to macroalgae, e.g. seaweed. This preference towards microalgae is due largely to its less complex structure, fast growth rate, and high oil content (for some species). Some commercial interests into large scale algal-cultivation systems are looking to tie in to existing infrastructures, such as coal power plants or sewage treatment facilities. This approach not only provides the raw materials for the system, such as CO2 and nutrients; but it changes those wastes into resources.

In November 8, 2006, Green Star Products has announced that it has signed an agreement with De Beers Fuel Limited of South Africa to build 90 biodiesel reactors with algae as raw material. Each of the biodiesel reactors will be capable of producing 10 million gallons of biodiesel each year for a total production capacity of 900,000,000 gallons per year when operating at full capacity, which is 4 times greater than the entire U.S. output in 2006. Also, GreenFuel Technologies Corporation has delivered a bioreactor to De Beers Fuel. Doubts have been expressed about Green Star's expertise in biodiesel technology. [19] Green Star's president did however answer questions in an online interview with WallSt.net where he claimed that the South African biodiesel production has exceeded the original expectations.[20]

However, according to one 2007 study, algae-based biodiesel will not be commercially viable until fuel prices exceed $800/barrel[21]


[edit] Hydrogen production
Main article: Biological hydrogen production (Algae)
Algae can be used as a biological source for the production of hydrogen. In 1939 a German researcher named Hans Gaffron, while working at the University of Chicago, observed that the algae he was studying, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (a green-algae), would sometimes switch from the production of oxygen to the production of hydrogen.[22] Gaffron never discovered the cause for this change and for many years other scientists failed in their attempts at its discovery. In the late 1990s professor Anastasios Melis, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley discovered that by depriving the algae of sulfur it will switch from the production of oxygen (normal photosynthesis), to the production of hydrogen. He found that the enzyme responsible for this reaction is hydrogenase, but that the hydrogenase will not cause this switch in the presence of oxygen. Melis found that depleting the amount of sulfur available to the algae interrupted its internal oxygen flow, allowing the hydrogenase an environment in which it can react, causing the algae to produce hydrogen.


[edit] Biomass
Algae can be grown to produce biomass, which can then be harvested and burned in the same manner as wood, to produce heat and electricity.[23]


[edit] Methane
Through the use of algaculture grown organisms and cultures, various polymeric materials can be broken down into methane.[24]


[edit] SVO
The algal-oil feedstock that is used to produce biodiesel can also be used for fuel directly as "Straight Vegetable Oil", (SVO). While using the oil in this manner does not require the additional energy needed for transesterification, (processing the oil with an alcohol and a catalyst to produce biodiesel), it does require modifications to a normal diesel engine, whereas biodiesel can be run in any modern diesel engine, unmodified, that is designed to use ultra-low sulfur diesel, the new diesel fuel standard for the United States of America that went into effect in the fall of 2006.


[edit] Hydrocracking to traditional transport fuels
The oil of algae strain Botryococcus braunii is different than other algal oils, in that it contains a class of oils which can be reduced to chemicals traditionally extracted from petroleum and used for transport fuels, such as octane (gasoline, a.k.a. petrol), diesel, and aviation-grade kerosene. [25]


[edit] Commercial and industrial uses
Algae are cultivated to serve many commercial and industrial uses.

Bioplastics
Dyes and Colorants
Feedstock
Nutritional
Pharmaceutical
Pollution Control
CO2 sequestration
Fertilizer Runoff reclamation
Sewage treatment

[edit] Nutritional
There are many algae that are cultivated for their nutritional value, either for supplemental use, or as a food source. Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) is a blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) that is quite nutritious, this species thrives in open systems and commercial growers have found it well-suited to cultivation. One of the largest production sites for Spriulina is Lake Texcoco in central Mexico.[26] The plants themselves produce a variety of nutrients and high amounts of protein, and is often used commercially as a nutritional supplement.[27][28] Extracts and oils from algae are also used as additives in various food products.[29] The plants also produce Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, which are commonly found in fish oils, and which have been shown to have positive medical benefits to humans.[30]


[edit] Pollution Control
Much of the carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere is from the burning of fossil fuels. With concerns over global warming, new methods for the thorough and efficient capture of CO2 are being sought out. An alternative to carbon capture and storage, by attaching an algae pond, or photobioreactor to any fuel burning plant, the carbon dioxide produced during combustion can be fed into the algae system. Nutrients can be sourced from sewage, thus turning two pollutants into resources for the production of biodiesel, with a land requirement much smaller than other crop sources.[31]


[edit] Algal Culture Collections
Specific algal strains can be acquired from algal culture collections."

Since you asked cottonpicken simply yes I'm watching it closely and it has potential.