Costs for algae-based fuel currently range from $10 to $100 per gallon, according to systems engineer Ron Pate at Sandia National Laboratories. “The idea [is] bringing algal oil down to $1 or $2 per gallon at a scale of 50 million gallons [190 million liters] per year.”

High cost is a problem throughout the algal biofuels industry. “It’s energy cost to pump the water,” says Craig Harting, chief operating officer for Vancouver-based Global Green Solutions, which is building 100 bioreactors (large plastic devices used to grow algae) at a pilot plant in El Paso, Tex. “It’s capital cost to build bioreactors. It’s the harvesting and extraction process.”

As a result, most companies say they have yet to determine the consumer price tag for algae-derived oil—or to produce much of the stuff—though Wolfson says Solazyme’s goal is $40 to $80 a barrel—competitive with fossil oil.

via Powering Our Automotive Future with–Pond Scum: Scientific American.

Costs for algae-based fuel currently range from $10 to $100 per gallon, according to systems engineer Ron Pate at Sandia National Laboratories. “The idea [is] bringing algal oil down to $1 or $2 per gallon at a scale of 50 million gallons [190 million liters] per year.”High cost is a problem throughout the algal biofuels industry. “It’s energy cost to pump the water,” says Craig Harting, chief operating officer for Vancouver-based Global Green Solutions, which is building 100 bioreactors large plastic devices used to grow algae at a pilot plant in El Paso, Tex. “It’s capital cost to build bioreactors. It’s the harvesting and extraction process.”

via Companies Trying to Bring Down Cost of Producing Oil from Algae.

The Oil Drum | Cost Viability and Algae

Robert Rapier recently drew attention to the demise of GreenFuel Technologies, the company founded on ideas from MIT and Harvard and supported by millions of dollars in venture capital funding. One of the creative ideas that the company has was to located their plant at existing power stations so that the carbon dioxide generated in the flue gas could be fed into the bio-reactors holding the algae, with the gas also keeping the algae at an optimal growing temperature. It was a company that was in the vanguard of promoting the use of algae in both carbon dioxide collection and liquid fuels production.

via The Oil Drum | Cost Viability and Algae.

Come back soon!

J.B. Hunt

SunEco Energy

Have a look at this one as well!

We will monitor the threads and try to synthesise the information people provide there.

As of 2008, such fuels remain too expensive to replace other commercially available fuels, with the cost of various algae species typically between US$5–10 per kilogram.[citation needed] But several companies and government agencies are funding efforts to reduce capital and operating costs and make algae oil production commercially viable

Managing director Andrew Lawson says testing at James Cook University in Townsville suggests for every two tonnes of carbon captured, the MBD technology can produce almost 1 tonne of algae, of which one-third can be made into oil products and two-thirds into meal. With meal sales about $400/tonne (rival soymeal product sells at about $780/tonne) and oil selling at $800/tonne, that equates to about $570 of revenue from each tonne of algae, or more than $250 for each tonne of CO2 captured.

The article touches upon the “competition” between geosequestration and algae based carbon capture technologies:

But Lawson is frustrated that the federal government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme only recognises and supports geosequestration. Why seek to bury it at massive cost and with unproven technology, he asks, when it can be recycled and used to generate a new earnings stream?

To illustrate the point, he says a privately funded, $1.2 billion facility could capture half of Loy Yang’s carbon emissions and generate $740m of meal income a year and $660m of oil income, as well as carbon credits of about $225m, while using just 10MW of energy. It also recycles water.

A carbon capture and storage facility is at least a decade away, would require a government investment of more than $5 billion, require 300MW of power a year and only generate income from carbon credits. The difference in value creation over 20 years is $26.8bn for the MBD technology and minus $2.6bn from CCS.

The information provided in the article about MBD Energy makes it quite interesting to follow going forward:

MBD Energy is in the process of raising about $10m from three cornerstone investors, including an international energy company and a local carbon fund.

From Reuters:

Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and champion of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that recently passed the House and is making its way through the Senate, has taken an interest in algae fuel. Late afternoon on Sunday, Markey got a tour of Alameda, Calif.-based Aurora Biofuels’ labs, where the startup is using biotechnology to create algae strains, which it says can produce biofuel for a low cost and with low carbon emissions.

Interesting to see him quoted on “low cost” but it would be more interesting to get some facts on the actual production cost levels. We are looking forward to more details from Aurora Biofuels in the future!