[Biodiesel In Utah] Algae - the next big thing

[dgkemp1 at comcast.net]

Hi 

Very  interesting, are there specific types of algae that create oil?  is it pressed also?

Thanks 

D

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: eastmanassociates at comcast.net 

I haven't been contributing much, but thought you might be interested in what I've been doing.  With the help of a couple partners from California, I'm involved in starting up a little company to make biodiesel from algae.  We hope to have a pilot plant up and running some time next spring, and a full-blown commercial plant (~7 MM gpy) by about 2009.  

Clearly, this is not what most of you are doing, but over the long run, the high productivity and non-food nature of algae will probably win out over all current sources of oil for biodiesel.  Consider this:  the NREL estimates the productivity of soy oil as 38 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year.  In their (very imperfect) pilot runs, they achieved productivity of nearly 10,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre of algae per year.

Biodiesel is indeed the future, but it may look a lot greener (figuratively and literally) than even we think now.

--
Alan D. Eastman, PhD 
GreenFire Energy
801-278-9560
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Subject: [Biodiesel In Utah] Algae - the next big thing
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