Small Bioreactor !! For house holds !! 26
I want to construct a low cost bioreactor.Allan has asked me the following question.
See my answer below.
ALL OTHERS are welcome to participate !!
" Manohar, cont. Perhaps LED lights/solar. Store extra solar light in deep cycle storage batteries for LED use at night. Give me some details, I know I can come up with some ideas, some of them might even be good. Alan Schaefer SAMDevelopment 1 day ago
5 Manohar, You mentioned that you are looking for a 'small' bio-reactor maybe for a household size. What are some of the inputs/outputs you see for this reactor? Are you looking for a few liters per day of bio fuel? What is the inputs? Are we talking about an algae or ? reactor. Perhaps LED light "
Nearly 400 million people in India live on less than 0.5 $ per day.
I am targetting them to make algae for me.
400 million population is more than the populaton of North America.
If I give them a small bioreactor and if they make 5 grams of algae a day, I make 2000 Tonnes per day.
Given the fact that this will help eradicate poverty in India, there will be huge support from the Governments to run this project.
WE need a low cost bioreactor. Let Allan and others suggest ideas. Feel free to ask questions and I can answer them all.
Tue June 08 2010 12:16:47 PM by Manohar
1776 views
I have read an article about one Aron Baum, a harvard and stanford grad conducting courses in CA for $ 150 training people on how to grow algae at home. He also sells a kit for $ 150. He gives them a sample of spirulina so that they can grow it at home. He recommends them to lick the gooey thing as it is good for their health.
Spirulina sells for $5000 to $ 8000 per kg.
I am not looking at spirulina. Even algae for biomass plants are good enough to keep the 400 million Below Poverty Line masses, fed, while harnessing sun's energy.
Manohar, Let's look at what these families have in common in their life style that we can use for an algae system. For example, what percentage of the families live in one story homes. AS compared to large apartment houses. With homes we can collect water from the roof and put it in plastic
55 gallon barrels. This, with simple modification, could be our "bio-reactor." Some urine could be used as nutrients for the algae.
What do you think?
Alan Schaefer
Alan Schafer
They live in the country side - in rural areas - most likely in thatched houses - single storyed houses. 55 gallon plastic bags and urine sounds great ! I am now getting excited Alan. Not only have u got my idea right, you have also got what poverty means !!
Let us now take it to the next stage.
Your only stumbling block will be the collection of the algae.
Alan Schafer
They live in the country side - in rural areas - most likely in thatched houses - single storyed houses. 55 gallon plastic bags and urine sounds great ! I am now getting excited Alan. Not only have u got my idea right, you have also got what poverty means !!
Let us now take it to the next stage.
I am planning on collection using collection agents who will travel to villages by Cycle or in Motor cycles.
In India, milk is bought from the masses located in rural areas in a somewhat similar fashion.
In your opinion approximately how many litres would it take to yield 5 grams per day.
We have developed a 500 litre bioreactor specifically designed for developing nations such as India. We will supply at cost price to governments. (?200.)
I have the model ready and even the specific suitable cheap media as well..... That was my project work for 4 months in CFTRI mysore.... But what price will be given for every 5 or 10 grams of algae?.... The cost at which we buy it will be the bottle neck for this technology and model...
And please rethink about the frequency of harvesting... i.e how many days once?
Manohar, Do you want a group of households to cooperate in raising algae? They could share the cost of harvesting and drying algae equipment.
This eqt. could be rather simple and people-powered. Just off the top of my head, what about something like this: 1 house hold would have 4 or 5 plastic barrels (55 gal. each) for growing algae. Cheap frennel lenses fibre-optics to take sunlight into the entire debth of the barrel
for light diffusion. Barrels would be on a rack
6' off the ground. (keep the kids out of them ;)
When algae reaches ~5 grams per liter it is harvested by pumping it through a pump/desicator
powered by a scooter's back wheel. This beat-up algae soup is pumped up into a settling tower. Oil floats to the top, semi clear water is returned to the 55Gal algae barrels a thickend algae sludge is hauled and sold to a processing plant. The algae oil can be further processed also or used as a local fuel.
What do you think?
Alan Schaefer
@ Alan sir...
Can you explain more about the lenses and fiber optics role and working?
And, which technology or instrument is used to measure the sufficient growth of algae before deciding to harvest...
Thanks for the comments Alan, Mahesh and algae solution.
1. Mahesh ! you can provide us more info on what you did at CFTRI. The price ofcourse will depend on the end use. Will depend on the quality of algae.
Pl provide more info of what you have done.
Alan
Let us assume for the time being that an Agent will go around the households once a week and collect the wet algae or (sun dried algae). If the value comes to about $ 5 it will be good. How many grams is that. If they can earn Rs 400 per week, ie $ 9 to $10 per week, it will be great.
55 gallons is too much. The size is too much. Also the cost of carrying them and delivering in households could be high. If the pbr is made of plastic, it may not be difficult to carry.
Assuming we are making algae for a biomass powerplant and cot of power is 8 cents per kw.
Moreover the poor in the urban areas who may also be interested in the Rs 200/ or Rs 400 per week.
In the urban areas there is not enough space to store a 55 gallon pbr.
I plant to collect the algae from thousands of households and have a centralised powerplant or extraction unit. Am looking a t modular small scale powerplants like 500kw biomass powerplant or oil extraction unit of 05 tpd.
Algae solution
Can u give us the specs for a pbr which is much smaller in size ? I would be talking really large nos.
What is teh logic of 55 gallons ?
Why not 5 gallons ?
I want to grow 10 grams or 20 grams of algae and be in a postion to pay Rs 20 to Rs 40 a day.
ie about a $ a day. What is the minimum that i should grow. Ofcourse it will depend on the end use of the algae. As John Benneman says there are
algae for COMMODITY uses and algae for SPECIALITY uses. Commodity use like algae for fuel or bio mass will cost about $ 1000 per tonne. Where as speciality usage costs tens of thousands of dollars.
Am expecting Alan, my Guru to tell me which end use should i pursue ?
Manohar, When you grow algae you want to give these plants the BEST possible conditions to achieve their growth potiential. This is why pond/ditch technology is not sustainable on a large scale. One dosen't have a chance of providing "good" growing conditions 24/7/365.
ASP program proved this.
So, one has to control light, temperature, nutrients, purity, etc.
Let's start with light. It's easier and cheaper to bring light to algae then algae to light. Thousands of acres of raceways are VERY expensive to build, maintain and operate. For a plant that emits 25,000 cfm of CO2 it would take about 14,000 acres of shallow water raceways. IMPOSSIBLE! With ultra-modern PBR systems the mitigation problem can be done with 8 PBR containers of 1,000,000 gallons each.
Manohar, Next is temperature,
Most algae like growing conditions around 80F. Too hot, they die. Too cold they quit growing or die.
So to keep the temperature at the required 'happy' point you could bring in your plastic bag and sleep with it.
Or on a small scale one could use a 55 gallon plastic barrel and wrap some insulation around it.
A large mass of water takes a lot of heat to raise it's temperature so if it is properly insulated it will NOT get too hot in the daytime or too cold at night. The algae will be happy.
The larger the container the better this works.
Manohar, Next is Nutrients;
Yes urine can be used. Also a compost 'tea' from cow chips. This would provide P and K. and micro nutrients.
I have no idea as to the quanity and quality of these materials to use. Perhaps hang some rusty iron in the reactor for Fe, the algae like Fe.
A small wind mill could pump air into the mix to provide some stiring action and CO2.
Manohar, Next is Purity,
This is the bad one! There is no way in hell that at this time in developement of simple algae systems one can expect to keep an algae strain "pure" for more than a few hours, after a few days it's evolution time!! The only hope comes from GM. Algae are plants so something like "round-up ready" algae would work. Just a drop of Roundup in the bioreactor every other day would take care of the species contamination problem. Water Bears and Roterifers now that's another problem. Bacteria also.....maybe silver-water would work on the bacteria.
Manohar, Next is Harvesting, Let's have some input from the rest of the FOA (friends of algae)
people out there. I think the harvesting and drying needs to be done right over the reactor. (55 gallon barrel) There is NO way you can haul water containing a very small amount of algae more then a couple of meters. You will have already expended more energy than you will get
out of the algae/water mix. Your concentration may be a thin as 3 to 6 grams per liter. No energy there. Well not much.
Do the math. 1 pound of dry algae = 454 grams of dry algae. At 5 grams algae per liter concentration, 454 grams divided by 5 = 91 liters
of algae/water mix to haul somewhere to extract
1 lb or 454 grams of dry algae. At a 50/50 ratio of oil to algae cake/meal there is not much energy
left after you haul 91 liters very far. Besides
you are hauling or pipeing the reactor water away. That has to be replaced ...more energy is wasted. Harvest and dry and recycle the reactor water right at the reactor site. There are lots of ways to do it, lets hear some ideas.
Alan Schaefer
Dear FOA,
Let's talk economics. Yes, there is a market for certain algae products which bring very high prices.
This is a very "thin" market. Supply and demand are out of balance. Well maybe not out of balance
because we are seeing demand drive up price because there is a limited supply.
In the near future what will happen to that market
when supply of algae per day will exceed the 'yearly' output we have now by many times. Yes, you read that right, in the near future we will be producing algae at the rate of many thousands of tons of dry algae per day.
When that happens then demand and price will go down.....way down. DAM...Dry Algae Meal...will be
just a common commodity. Soya meal is about $300.00 per ton and DAM will be right along side, competing for market share. Sorry, that is just the way it works.
Alan Schaefer
Mahesh, wrote" What about frensel lens and fibre optic cable.
A frensel (sp. wrong) lens is usuallyround and about 1/4 inch thick and has concentric circles about 1/4 inch apart. What it does is take light that is coming in from all directions and head it straight down 90 degrees to the surface of the lens. I think that is about how they work, I amsure someone could help by giving a better explanation.
OK, how are we going to use that in an algae bioreactor? Let's make sure the lens is in the sunlight and maybe we could have some mirrows
focus more light on the lens.
At the bottom side of the lens we have an array of tightly packed fiber optic cable and the "straighten" light waves comming from the frensel lens will enter the butt end of these glass fibers.
Then we lead the cables with the light comming into them and cut them different lenghts so that the whole debth of the 55 gallon barrel is lite up. So now you have a PBR that is active at all debths and has an effective surface area of maybe 6 to 7 times the actual barrel top.
If you use solar panels to capture light/electricty in the day and store that power in deep cycle marine batteries then you can use that top power LED lights at night to keep the process going.
P.S. Day or night it is a good idea to pulse your light on and off to keep the algae from creating excess heat with the excess light. Milli second cycles are about right. Algae don't need much 'dark' time. Keep them working!
Sorry, I forgot Mahesh also asked? "How can we tell when the algae is at the "proper" density for harvesting"?
I will give some thought to this last request and then shut-up for a while.
How about trying to make some kind of optical scale reader that wiil do a rough job of measuring density/opacity.
Start with a ruler, lets use a foot long ruler, but it could be a meter stick or whatever.
OK, take the foot long ruler and tape a LED flashlite to the 1 inch end and have the lens pointing toward the 12" end. Now you take a coat hanger and cut the bottom long part out...leave about 1" of the 'curl' at each end. Paint this curl white or use white tape on it..you want to be able to see this when it is put down in the algae next to the ruler, set the white hook around the bottom of the ruler and submerge both into the 'soup'. When you can't see the white end anymore, look at the ruler an read it at the water line. If we calibrate this system it should be pretty good for something that is super cheap. What do you think??
Alan Schaefer
Alan
YOu are too fast for me.
Be it maths or algae to oil process.
It is now reasonably clear to me that I must learn the process as well as the math to be able to come up with some sensible solution for
LOw cost House Hold algae growing for INDIAN conditions.
Can u do some math for me Alan !
Given DAM as per you at $300 per ton. It amounts to about Rs 13, 500 per ton
That is too cheap !
I want the poor people to earn atleast Rs 20 per day. As per the rate of $300 per tonne, they need to grow about 1.5 kilograms to earn Rs 20.
Alan, you wrote "When algae reaches ~5 grams per liter it is harvested" Who gets 5g/L from an algae culture? Could you please supply a reference for me? We are working with figures of 1g/L but I would love to get 5.
The species and strain will have a lot to do with survival and growth. For example Spirulina comes in many strains including one that is suitable for tropical regions (see the Soley Institute site, Culture Collection).
Unless you are growing Spirulina there are going to be major problems harvesting it. Many species are less than 10 microns in size.
From personal experience, 55 gallon drums are not going to work unless you have a power source to aerate it constantly.
I don't mean to dampen your plans but in my experience this type of culture isn't feasible. Something more feasible for country folk would be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6cslNtc6P4