Oil Extraction

[ericd96]

I am new to this forum but I wanted to know if anybody has ever used thermal depolymerization to extract oil from algae. Changing World Technologies developed this method to extract oil from wet feed stock, specifically turkey guts, at their now closed facility in Carthage Missouri. They were able to make oil from turkey guts and pig fat for about $80 a barrel. It seems like a natural method to use on algae but it takes a large plant to do it thus it can't be done at home on a small scale. I just wonder if there have been any experiments along this line that anybody knows about.

[pochatoux]

hey, Im a masters student at UGA and my research topic for the next two years is the seperation of the algal biomass from the water and extraction of oil. I am also looking into supersonic extraction of oil and cost effective methods of seperation at a large industiral scale. Ill keep you updated on my progress!

As a student, you may have access to a supercritical CO2 extraction machine. I sure would be interesting in finding out if that process works on wet algae. It should, and should be relatively low cost except for the capital expenses. If you can do it, I think that would be worth a PhD!

This is what they do in switzerland, the process is called SunCHem
http://www.lcainfo.ch/df/DF36/DF36-4%20 ... berger.pdf
At a lab scale, it appears to be cost efficient

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[DR Johansen]

As a student, you may have access to a supercritical CO2 extraction machine. I sure would be interesting in finding out if that process works on wet algae. It should, and should be relatively low cost except for the capital expenses. If you can do it, I think that would be worth a PhD!

This is what they do in switzerland, the process is called SunCHem
...
At a lab scale, it appears to be cost efficient

Very interesting. They use supercritical water rather than supercritical CO2, but it does show the promise of that general technology. Thank you.