<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Son of Doohan @ Feb 6 2009, 05:13 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>How many acid tabs do you take per week?
Valcent set a world record not long ago for producing 30,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year.
I am talking about locally grown fuels that don't use arable land. At only 30,000 gallons per acre per year the United States could power every vehicle in the United States using 10 square miles of non-arable land. Furthermore, algae in a closed-loop system must be fed CO2, it can't extract it naturally from the atmosphere. CO2 would become a valuable commodity when algal oil is feasible.
You're right to be skeptical, algal oil extraction costs about 5x-10x (about $150-$300 per barrel) as much much as conventional petroleum extraction. However, many companies are working on the problem, companies much bigger than Valcent, and they have attracted very big investments. Billionaire Gates and his band of venture capitalists, known as Cascade Group, recently gave 150 million to Sapphire Energy for the production of an algal oil refinement facility.
Electrical energy only appears to be the future because it is the natural progression of current electric hybrid technology. Unfortunately, electric hybrid technology isn't that good. It is simply an overly complex set of technologies designed to improve efficiency while guarding our car makers from emerging industrial powers like China. Mechanical hybrid technology stores energy in a spinning mass (a flywheel) so it is about twice as efficient as electric hybrids. Flywheel technology is also substantially cheaper and it weighs less than electric hybrids. It has some reliability issues and rotational mass issues (bad for motor vehicle handling) but a few major manufacturers are rumored to be sorting the problems in F1 this season.
Valcent set a world record not long ago for producing 30,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre per year.
I am talking about locally grown fuels that don't use arable land. At only 30,000 gallons per acre per year the United States could power every vehicle in the United States using 10 square miles of non-arable land. Furthermore, algae in a closed-loop system must be fed CO2, it can't extract it naturally from the atmosphere. CO2 would become a valuable commodity when algal oil is feasible.
You're right to be skeptical, algal oil extraction costs about 5x-10x (about $150-$300 per barrel) as much much as conventional petroleum extraction. However, many companies are working on the problem, companies much bigger than Valcent, and they have attracted very big investments. Billionaire Gates and his band of venture capitalists, known as Cascade Group, recently gave 150 million to Sapphire Energy for the production of an algal oil refinement facility.
Electrical energy only appears to be the future because it is the natural progression of current electric hybrid technology. Unfortunately, electric hybrid technology isn't that good. It is simply an overly complex set of technologies designed to improve efficiency while guarding our car makers from emerging industrial powers like China. Mechanical hybrid technology stores energy in a spinning mass (a flywheel) so it is about twice as efficient as electric hybrids. Flywheel technology is also substantially cheaper and it weighs less than electric hybrids. It has some reliability issues and rotational mass issues (bad for motor vehicle handling) but a few major manufacturers are rumored to be sorting the problems in F1 this season.
