Friday, July 8, 2011

Closed cycle CO2 in algae farming

If we take my conjecture of the most efficient algae farm is a farm with its own still, and produces alcohol for delivery.  Fermentation of solar grown alge generate excess CO2, to be captured.  You get a free partial pressure of CO2 above atmospheric, you keep spare CO2 sequestered as reusable fertilizer. The gain should be large, similar to the gain from closed nitrogen.

If you add synthetic photosynthesis, absorption control on the plastic bags, then you are looking at 70% solar efficiency, I think, very high.  The onboard still, with it enzyme matched to the algae, makes very simple single stage bags. gets bag costs down to the $50,000 per acre.

The whole farm is at 'ground' temperature of  85 F, semi steril, so everything is tuned to that ground temperature. That is another gain.  The only variable left is matching grow time, flow rate and tube size to minimize self light blockage.

What have I missed? Can we at Imagisoft close the books, and claim job done?

One can conceive of the new American migration, families towing their stills, bags, trawler, barges and boats out to the Gulf, claiming the best locations. A family farm generating $300,000/yr in net for the family.

We need a web site selling the equipment.
Marketing to the new American migration.  Anchoring systems, medium size self contained stills, durable bags technology, filters and memranes, alcohol fueled generators and motors. Pumps, barges, small farmable trawlers, flexi pipe, floating tanks, floating stills, living quarters, etc.  Likely a trillion dollar market over ten years.
My numbers come to 100,000 farm families along the coast, farming foods and fuels and feeds. (And threatening an Ice Age)

I guess, one final note.  The algae farmer can convert his alcohol directly into electricity and run the exhaust back into the algae bags.  His delivery cost is then about 20 miles of cable losses. In this case the farmer is entirely closed CO2, scrubbing only enough to cover his carbon losses.  His entire solar operation, at 70%, generates about 3600 kw per acre per sunlite hour. But alcohol storage allows him to spread that out over peak. He still generates the $300,000 for the kids.

The energy source is the sun, carbon is the energy carrying vehicle.  So, converting sunlite is the thing.  Using algae, the farmer gets energy storage, to delivery, or to sell over the day via electricity.

Scrubbing CO2 and nutrients from the sea and air is like free ranging alfalfa. So, farmers will take advantage of the passive permeable fabrics. Very large acreage farmers may deploy passive bag systems, collecting algae protein for fermentation elsewhere.  If we can get this to work, we can imagine large trawlers deploying hundreds of bags, an acre per bag.  Roll the bag back through the squeegy roller in the trawler, sqeeze out the goo and roll the bag back right back out.

Key points.
Large, almost unlimited acreage with the best sunlite ithe world.  Abundant water at stable 85 F temperature.  Conversion system based on high concentration liquid algae storage.  Key technology.  Algae and enzyme selections, large low cost durable bag technology.

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