I'm located in the Philippines with exeprience in algal culturing
from my shrimp/prawn hatchery operation.
The 95000 liters oil yield per year per hectare that Michael Briggs
and others were writing about rekindled my interest in the algae
business.
Have run actual outdoor tests, semi-continuous, with an Isochrysis
strain, but the yield was only 23000 kg of oil/ha/year, (12 g per
day/ton of water). That was off target by a factor of 4. I'm sure
it's possible to tweak that a little and get a better yield or use a
higher yielding strain.
However, the main problem is not the culturing but the cost of the
input like fertilizers, electricity, labor, overhead, etc., which
are many times the value of the oil you can get out of it. Even at
95000 liters oil yield per hectare per year the input expenses would
be several times larger than the total oil yield.
So who would invest in a business like that? And I'm stuck right
there.
Would love to continue this project, but am looking for information
about tweaking production, and most of all, substantially lowering
the input costs.
Peter
I'm located in the Philippines with exeprience in algal culturing from my shrimp/prawn hatchery operation. The 95000 liters oil yield per year per hectare that...
I'm located in the Philippines withexeprience in algal cultures from my shrimp/prawn hatchery operation. The 95000 liters oil yield per year per hectare that...
That is interesting, Peter. If you are getting 23000 kg of oil/ha/year it means very conservatively a gross income in the order of $10,000 per ha/year. I am...
Semi-continuous operation can run about 10 days before you start another run. The trial was for that period, yielding about 60 g of dry algal matter per day...
Peter, I think it is great news that your have achieved 1/4 of the yield that is the theoretical optimum. That shows great progress. Like another poster, I...
Dear Peter, Yes, for a short trial with a lot of wastage but your figures cannot apply on an annual basis. That works out to about $31,500 for media/ha/year...
I see your trying the outdoor method, this equates to a lot of loss from evaporation, and an excess of man power and time to travel around the perimeter of the...
As mentioned previously, the presently achieved 23000 kg oil/ha/year translates to 4.4 kg per ton of water per year. That ton occupies about 1.9 sq.m., so we...
Peter, The most comprehensive study that has been done was part of the Aquatic Species Program. It concluded that oil from algae would cost twice as much as...
If Saudi Arabia ran out of oil, which some pundits say will happen very soon, the government would have the option to fund algal oil production at any price,...
... I'm afraid the economy would disintegrate long before oil production from algae could ramp up to a useful level. ... Have you considered growing a species...
Never heard about it but I would be grateful for any info, and also it's costing... ... production > instead of oil? Some species are supposed to be upwards ...
... Unfortunately I don't have a lot to go on. Have you looked at the NREL final report yet? There is a lot of information in that. Coming across this list I...
Peri, If you get 20 to 30% oil in real tests, that is about as high as you can expect - some people are claiming higher, but when you look into what they were...
I reccomend trying a different species of oil. Many can produce with higher yields than Isochrysis. It's expensive to tinker too much though. Are you using...
Hi, I am new in this group. 12gm of algae/ton of water seems a very dilute mixture.I would like to know how to harvest them economically on a commercial scale....
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