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Algae isn't hard to grow and makes great fuel, it's just very difficult to harvest (and depending on what you're doing, biofouling may make it difficult to main

Algae isn't hard to grow and makes great fuel, it's just very difficult to harvest (and depending on what you're doing, biofouling may make it difficult to maintain a system long term). Things like corn and soybeans work okay to create fuel, but they're easy to harvest. (Note that we aren't using wild types of vascular plants either, except in eg wood stoves.) Food supplements are a much higher ticket item than fuel. It's a lot easier to make money that way. But you're right, pivoting to some kind of food product is a cliche.

hinkley 3y ago
I suppose it makes sense to pivot, if you can find someone who’ll pay you $100 for a gallon of dried algae, versus $4 for a gallon of algae lipids catalyzed into fuel. And how many gallons of algae does that take?
- maxbond 3y ago
  The dream would be to efficiently fractionate your algae, and separate out lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and specific high value stuff like phycocyanin or astaxanthin. Then you could sell into these high margin markets to supplement your fuel production. Or you could not do any of that and press your dry algae into a pill and sell it at a high margin. As far as the profit motive goes, it just doesn't add up. So the dream dies on the vine. I'd love to see the government pour money into this and build a plant that operated this way at a loss, on a sort of Apollo project basis; it wouldn't necessarily make financial sense, but we'd generate a bunch of great technology which would be applicable in many areas, and eventually it just might work. I think it's worth a shot to see if we can sustainably meet our food and fuel needs, maybe even in a carbon negative manner. But sadly I think we're going in a different direction.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I bet even as an animal feed supplement it makes more sense than making fuel. We have connected the dots between feed and healthiness of fish and eggs. For ungulates I understand you have to beware of high protein. Unrestricted access to clover (which is one of the most palatable things they can eat) can make them quite sick. An algae/clover blend could probably still be palatable, and if you selected for high fat to protein ratio in the algae it might actually be safer. As someone once put it, “oil is so plentiful we can afford to set it on fire”. Finding something else we can set on fire will be difficult, but it might be better to pyrolyze it directly and feed electricity into the power grid. The waste heat from the heat engine could be used in a heat exchanger to dry the algae before firing. Speaking of power, the cooling effect of photosynthesis is also an underexplored areas.

hinkley 3y ago

I suppose it makes sense to pivot, if you can find someone who’ll pay you $100 for a gallon of dried algae, versus $4 for a gallon of algae lipids catalyzed into fuel. And how many gallons of algae does that take?

maxbond 3y ago
The dream would be to efficiently fractionate your algae, and separate out lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and specific high value stuff like phycocyanin or astaxanthin. Then you could sell into these high margin markets to supplement your fuel production. Or you could not do any of that and press your dry algae into a pill and sell it at a high margin. As far as the profit motive goes, it just doesn't add up. So the dream dies on the vine. I'd love to see the government pour money into this and build a plant that operated this way at a loss, on a sort of Apollo project basis; it wouldn't necessarily make financial sense, but we'd generate a bunch of great technology which would be applicable in many areas, and eventually it just might work. I think it's worth a shot to see if we can sustainably meet our food and fuel needs, maybe even in a carbon negative manner. But sadly I think we're going in a different direction.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I bet even as an animal feed supplement it makes more sense than making fuel. We have connected the dots between feed and healthiness of fish and eggs. For ungulates I understand you have to beware of high protein. Unrestricted access to clover (which is one of the most palatable things they can eat) can make them quite sick. An algae/clover blend could probably still be palatable, and if you selected for high fat to protein ratio in the algae it might actually be safer. As someone once put it, “oil is so plentiful we can afford to set it on fire”. Finding something else we can set on fire will be difficult, but it might be better to pyrolyze it directly and feed electricity into the power grid. The waste heat from the heat engine could be used in a heat exchanger to dry the algae before firing. Speaking of power, the cooling effect of photosynthesis is also an underexplored areas.