GreenFuel Technologies Announces First Commercial Algae Plant
The promise of commercial algae fuel is getting closer to reality with GreenFuel Technologies’ announcement today of a $92 million deal to build algae greenhouses. The project will capture CO2 emissions from a cement plant in Jerez, Spain and use them to grow algae for food, fuel, and feedstock.
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Currently, GreenFuel and partner company Aurantia SA have a 100 square-meter prototype plant running. GreenFuel hopes to have a full-scale 100 hectare plant ready by 2011. The larger plant is expected to absorb 50,000 tons of metric carbon and produce 25,000 tons of algae each year. For some perspective, 25,000 tons of algae will produce 1.3 million gallons of algae oil annually.
The prototype plant began testing six weeks ago. If all goes well, GreenFuel wants to ramp up the project to 1,000 square meters.
I’m confident that the project will be successful—I just hope falling oil prices don’t discourage even more algae fuel investments.
Photo Credit: CNet
So based on $4 per gallon fuel, that’s a mere $5.2 Million gross annually before operating expenses? Using 100 hectares and costing $92 Million to construct.
Why is it that green start-ups don’t require viable business plans?
Well, I certainly hope this is true and the technology is viable. But there’s a real gap between a lot of advocates and the expectations of researchers.
A technology evaluation would be helpful to understand what the barriers are and how these companies propose to overcome them.
For example, how do they remove the algae waste to avoid the creation of a toxic environment? Is it a labor intensive process?
This page asks some useful questions algae biodiesel:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2541
It seems from what I’ve heard to date that this is a worthy longer term R&D prospect but not immediately deployable. Would love to hear how the problems have been overcome.
There’s also debate about the viability of tubular vs open pond systems.
I do research on the production of agricultural crops that have a substantially higher per-hectare value than biodiesel algae. In my context, developing 100 ha has to cost well under $1 million to be economical. That is for land and infrastructure. The profit margin on biodiesel is less, so the development costs would need to be lower.
The yield estimate of 250 tons per ha per year requires substantially more energy than is provided by sunlight. For sustained production, 25 tons would be very impressive. Current value of raw energy biomass is about $20 per ton.
I’ve seen business plans that depend on defying the laws of physics before, but never commercial success based on those plans.
Follow up on Greenfuel Technologies, the business operations and management model is flawed. Engineering and operations management neglected scientific evidence. Investment in this company is lost on egos.