"Not able to get a good algal yield"

You are at: Oilgae Blog. See the complete list of Oilgae Blog articles.

Do you know that oil derived from algae is an exciting renewable fuel possibility? - see Oilgae for more.

"Not able to get a good algal yield"

Here's an interesting message I found on the Oil from Algae yahoo group, a person from Philippines has this to say:

"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"

Bobby Yates Emory has this suggestion: "I think froth flotation may be the answer"

See the original message and the list of responses here

Nature gave us oil from algae; perhaps we should try Nature's way again

Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae
Oilgae Blog; The complete list of Oilgae Blog articles.
algOS - Biodiesel from Algae Open Source

About Oilgae - Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae has a focus on biodiesel production from algae while also discussing alternative energy in general. Algae present an exciting possibility as a feedstock for biodiesel, and when you realise that oil was originally formed from algae - among other related plants - you think "Hey! Why not oil again from algae!"