Sustainable energy business people are now searching for the best bioreactors with the right stuff. What is the right stuff you ask? Well it must be a algae farm that meets numerous challenges: be affordable, scalable, able to manage changing climates at various customer locations.
Inexpensive to Implement
The first area of concern is definitely the associated fee. As with all devices of a industrial scale, cost is king. The technological innovation at this time has many faces to include row crops, big open pond systems, race way systems and algae PBR’s. The product you select must have nutrients to feed the algae, water and sunshine. Your carbon dioxide inputs can be active or ambient air. Cross contamination of the algal mass is really a issue, but the planned use of the algae will be the best guide.
Continuous Harvesting
Harvesting the algal mass will be a concern depending on the system. It will require more effort to harvest algae from an open pond system than it would from a continuous harvesting PBR. Continuous harvesters do just that, always harvest algal cake, you now will only need staff to move the algal biomass to the next stations for drying out and oil extraction.
Oil Removal
* There are three well-known methods to remove the oil from oilseeds, and the techniques apply equally well for algal biomass too:
1. Expeller/Press
2. Hexane chemical oil extraction
3. Supercritical Fluid extraction
* Expeller/Press
* Expression/Expeller press-When algal mass is dried out it keeps its oil content, which then can be “forced” out with an oil press. Many commercial manufacturers of vegetable oil use a combination of mechanical pressing and chemical solvents in extracting oil.
* While better procedures are emerging, an easy process is to use a press to extract a large percentage (70-75%) of the oils out of algae.
* Hexane Solvent Method
* Algal oil can be extracted using chemical substances. Benzene and ether have been used, but a popular chemical for solvent extraction is hexane, which is comparatively cheap.
* Supercritical Fluid Method
* Super-critical removal involves, pressure and heat to burst algae cell membranes.
No matter what algae method you chose just make sure it meets your needs and production goals.
Algae Biofuel will play a vital part in meeting the worlds increasing energy need, Algae has a place in not merely our past, but in our future also.
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