We always take such announcements with a grain of salt. But sometime between the year 2020 and 2030, it is likely that algal biofuels will be competitive with synthetic fuels from natural gas and coal.
AFS BioOil announced that initial tests conducted by the company since startup of the system confirm that production costs of biodiesel will be in the range of $2 per gallon when produced in a commercial system of 1 millon gallons/yr and greater.…AFS BioOil has recently partnered with a renewable electricity company that has the technology to convert waste heat into electricity at a cost of 6 cents/kWh and potential of reducing the cost to 4 cents/kWh in the future. Both companies are planning an integrated project of 5 MWe of renewable electricity and 1-3 millon gallons/yr of biodiesel. This will pave the way for future deployment of combined systems producing renewable low-cost electricity and biodiesel. The companies are at a design stage and will release the actual scope of the project in Q3.
GCCSome analysts are projecting a 43% annual growth rate for algal biofuels over the next few years.
Elsewhere on the biofuels front — just to remind us that this is not your grandfather’s era of biofuels – Amyris officially enhances its collaboration with French oil giant Total to produce fuels and chemicals precursor farnesene, from plant based sugars. The stock price for Amyris subsequently jumped.
The long term prospects for algal and microbe produced chemicals and biofuels is excellent, although in the shorter to intermediate term, competition from natural gas-based chemicals and fuels will be fierce.
If they can build an actual plant and sell the stuff at a profit for $3, I’ll give them a pat on the back and buy a hundred shares of stock. Please note that they say “production costs”. That says nothing of capital investment, which will be huge, and it may not include transportation, or even personnel.
If, as I am inclinded to believe, it is really going to to cost $6-9/gallon, I’ll give them a kick out the door and laugh at their suckers of “investors”
Hey, what’s not to like? Take some photosynthesizing critters. Add solar power, water and CO2. You want to turbocharge the process, dump in urban waste for fertilizer and enrich with more CO2 from a nearby power plant. And if this gets you diesel fuel at $2 a gallon, sweet. And think of the by-products. Maybe ingredients for feed, fuel, who knows, they might be able to ‘use everything but the oink’.
But… how many gallons at $2? A gallon a day? We need lots. And we need to pave the deserts with ponds for all the algae, which means the climatologists will be all over it, spray painting it, camping in it, probably poisoning a few. Not time to celebrate yet.
In order to make 20% of the fuel demand with algae you’ll have to have a vat the size of Illinois unless they come up with some miracle to increase production/efficiency. Several studies and simple calculations have already been made and posted by engineers and scientists showing what a folly this would be on any large scale. Just consider the water consumption alone.
Having said that, the concept of co-generation is attractive. Perhaps they can use sewer waste. Any usable gas/fuel can be cycled back into the system to drive motors, lights, etc. and reduce costs of operation.
Sewage of any form is far too wet to get energy from combustion. Combusting sewage waste is for destruction, not energy.
And there were discussions of improvements, including chemical-plant style designs with algae in a giant glass loop reactor.
Remember that in the 1940s, it took giant plants ages to make even single doses of penicillin. Now, due to improvements in reactors and better strains, it is cheap enough to give to cows. Don’t dismiss the entire thing out of hand. To replace all oil consumption, there are serious dollars involved, and a single order of magnitude improvement changes your idea from ludicrous to actually quite reasonable.
Hang on to your wallet. With a 3 million ton per year existing animal feed market for algae as a proven alternative to fish meal at a price of $1500/ton, only idiots or rent seekers (parasites) would produce an algae with even 50% oil which would only generate about $300/ton is revenue.
This is just the newest variation on “Aqua-shysters”.