All of the hands involved in the process of makeing algae to oil is a big reason for the high costs.

I think we should have a look at the presentation link given by waterfry - the first commenter...it is interesting...should be worth visiting him to see how he is able to achieve algae biomass at 9 cents per kg.

I am ready to set up a scalable oil to algae closed system.
Someone has to actually set up a business and show a profit. Yes, even at one acre or less level.
If this is truly a scalable business model then it "should" make money at 1/2 of acre of total surface growth area or 10 acres ? But so far it looks to be 1 million an acre for closed system. Unless someone can show me a system that works and is not as costly.

High price is due to the lack of a clear defined transition path from the current fossil fuel economy to the algae economy. Price will fall when economies of scale are realised. All parts of the value chain must be put in place simultaneously at large scale, a complex task that slowed the growth of the LNG industry. Simple large scale methods are needed to build a big global algae biofuel industry, with strong government leadership. Ocean based algae production is the best option as it has spillover benefits for climate regulation and fish production, as well as liquid energy, and does not compete with land use priorities including food crops.

The harvesting process can be broken down into at least three steps. "Collection", at about 700 gpm, from the PBR,on a continous basis and
"Separating", the continous flow into two streams. One stream goes back to seed the PBR, the major stream goes forward to the
"Concentrating" stage where using very low energy technology the major stream is brought up to more than 10% solids. Water from this treatment area is cleaned and returned to the PBR.
The 10% solids slurry of algae and water is further concentrated
and heated at 300 F for 20 minutes and high pressure and turbulant flow. This is a continous process. With proper chemistry the main products will be crude biofuel. The gross return per PBR should be at least $50,000 per day. This rate of return is for converting 4,000 scfm of CO2 into useful products.

cost of production - nutrient, CO2 land area. extraction - electrical energy, it a long list - this is why i think the rout through human waste water algae is a good start.

Corporations looking at expensive industrial process plants to make super profits. For them the larger and more complex the plant the more important they look. If you can keep the process simple then costs will be less. I note a lot of contributions have mentioned drying, surely if your primary purpose is extraction of oil why dry?

Strains with less photosynthetic efficiency,harvesting and extraction-makes the technology expensive.
There are few strains which can grow with out CO2 that has high lipid content-mitigation of CO2 is achieved mainly due to non fossil fuel use but not due to supply.Hence CO2 might not be a major cost contributor for few strains.

FOA, Friends Of Algae, Sorry about the mistake on the amount of CO2 gas per minute. It should be 20,000 scfm NOT, repeat, NOT 20,000,000 scfm

Alan

Friends of Algae,

To me the obvious answer to the above question is a lack of
efficiency of production and harvesting.
Let's start with production.
If one is to make a significant dent in CO2 emissions then you have to mitigate the CO2 coming from the big stationary emitters.
Our designed system will (with advanced GM cynobacteria and/or algae) absorb ~ 4,000 scfm of CO2
per 1,000,000 gal. of reactor capacity. So if you have a medium
size emiter of ~ 20,000,000 scfm
you would need five 1,000,000 reactors. Use the math in my previous posts and you will see that this runs into serious money. If you have a system that is big enough to grow enough algae to make it worth while, real money can be made and one can recycle CO2.... one
more time.
We have to view CO2 as a valuable
resource. This is the primary
feed stock for our bio-reactors.
It may be free or we may share (pay rent) our profits with the emitter. In any case it has value, and lots of value. One will not bubble CO2 up through the algae/water mix, this is wasteful and not green and dangereous on a large scale.
The system MUST operate 24/7/365.

Solar raceways/ponds on this scale would be totally too expensive and would be in direct competion with food crop land.

So, this is enough for this evening, I will give my views on harvesting later.

Maybe the extraction method; the cost of the solvents or the equipments, we have to find another way to do it

That way there are many new patents that will reduce the cost.
What we are talking about now is what is the costliest part of making oil from algae.

Unitel says

" In the Unitel process, the feedstock – a slurry or “soup” of water and cultivated algae (1% to 20% by weight) is continuously treated in a special hydrolysis reactor to yield 1) a fatty acid product, 2) a “sweet” water stream containing glycerol and other solubles, and 3) deoiled algal biomass. A small fraction of the fatty acid product is fed back into the reactor as catalyst. "

The so called hydrolysis reactor is reducing the cost of extraction, dewatering and drying.


It is this hydrolysis reactor that reduces the cost of a. drying and b. extraction. That is very very interesting.

Algae biodiesel doesnot produces compounds which cause atmospheric pollution like sulphur oxides.They can also be used in cold conditions more effectively than ordinary diesel.But people engaged in algal cultivation depends on the same for their livelihood and the government funding is minimum for this cultivation,this makes algae and hence biodiesel costly.

Harvest.

Waterfry/ Shyamlal of
http://www.energymicrolgae.com
should be able to provide cost indications of various processes.

Strain selection. That is why Exxon mobile has put in $ 600 m on it.

Strain selection is. BB is not the answer for the strain. IN BB there are several classes and the suitability for your environment is time consuming.
next is contamination prevention.
In open ponds, once contaminaton happens, they can spread fast.

Harvesting is costly depending upon the method used and the strain.

What Seambiotic Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof. Ami Ben Amotz says is the converse of what Larsyn says regarding water and what water to use. Prof Ami Ben Amotz suggests to use the waste water from the plant and Larsyn says if the algae is grown to treat waste water and the grown algae is used for biofuel . Interesting.

Seambiotic's Chief Scientific Advisor has this to say about costs
" The cost of producing Algae is quite high mainly because Algae uses carbon dioxide and fresh/sea water, which are quite expensive.
Today, we are able to use the waste of power plants. They include waste seawater used for cooling the turbines, and scrubbed flue gas emissions, which are clean enough for the growth of algae. Our model, which is new, uses the waste of the power plant, namely the seawater and the carbon dioxide to grow algae, thus saving a lot of money. "

according to me the main cost the main reason for higher cost of algal biodiesel is downstream process of algae to get it.

What about the cost of water? There is ALWAYS a cost to water, even though we assume that it is free. One way to make this cost insignificant is to use sea water, but that will necessitate putting up algal farms close to the sea

Land will go into the capital cost.
We need to know what part of the process is the costliest.

Is it, strain selection, harvesting, cultivating, extraction etc ?

As I have done the project, nutrients are available in plenty at cheapest cost... But avoiding contamination and drying are taking some money, But we can innovate the chemical processes involved (reactions)and try to bring down the cost... I mean that's an area where thoughts have to go.... It's my personal opinion....

No apparent technical difficulties.. The one things I can think of is land cost and ofcourse political considerations of policy/decision makers

If algae production is used to clean wastewater the algae left from that project is free. It may not be the highest oil variaty but research can be carried out on leftover qalgae from cleaning water.

Drying. That is the least technical activity and isnt it a NO brainer ?
Why should that be the costliest activity.
YOu certainly dont need much technology !!

Great idea to have this " topic of the week"
I read in an oilgae newsletter that the biggest cost is drying.
So my answer is drying.
I wonder, why it cant be sun dried ?

The costs will vary from pilot / lab scale to actual practice.
In my opinion, the cost of preventing contamination will be the biggest cost and drying the second most costly process. Although solar energy shd help.

I believe Algae should be considered for wastewater treatment only. This justifies the cost. Then the research placed on the algae produced to find additional profits.

I think there are many reasons. The most important are: photobiorectors costs, algae harvesting costs and transesterification.

i think low yield for large amount of source may be the reason...effective pretreatment process may be give good yield

See the slides
http://www.slideshare.net/waterfry/presentation-algae

To me it looks like drying.