Plankton to Provide Clean Oil - see full news item
"A system for producing energy from marine algae, to replace fossil fuels and reduce pollution, has been developed by Spanish researchers and will be operational in late 2007...
...Biofuel Systems SL (BFS), the Spanish company developing the project, told IPS that "the system will produce massive amounts of biopetroleum from phytoplankton, in a limited space and at a very moderate cost."
The executive explained that the photo-bioreactor to be produced by his company is not the same thing as algae-based biodiesel projects from other countries...
BFS, with the support of the University of Alicante, "has designed a totally new system for producing biopetroleum -- not biodiesel -- by means of an energy converter," he explained.
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I would request you to read the article in full from the link provided above, it provides some useful data
What is really intriguing is the claim that they can produce bio-petroleum from these phytoplanktons...Guess I need to do some more reading in this regard, since from what I have learnt, the triglyceride present in the feedstock such as fixed oils and algae oil can be converted into biodiesel though transesterification, I am not aware of a process that converts these oils into petroleum/gasoline. I'd be grateful if anyone of you could provide some details in this regard
Have a nice day
Btw, have you checked out the new open source project for biodiesel from Algae we have kicked off at Algae? Admittedly, this is just a thought and an experiment at this stage, but we have been getting quite a few enthusiastic responses, do check out algOS - Oil from Algae Open Source @ Oilgae
Ec
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I cannot follow you with that. Only a very small part of the organic matter is buried in the sediments. By far most of the CO2 fixed by phytoplankton is released by the food chain and bacterial degradation. This is mostly supported by oxygen as an electron acceptor. So I think it is no big difference if the fixed CO2 is released by degradation or by burning. Of course there might be an impact for the ecosystem if done in marine open pond systems but generally I think it is a good idea.
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