[Terrapreta] Vol 7, Issue 16 - Do you know of any such project in Africa?

[Gerald Van Koeverden]

$30,000 capital costs for a facility that produces 1 million gallons  
oil/year??  What are the other costs - land, labour, fuel, etc.?

Sounds like pie-in-the-sky to me.

Gerrit




On 13-Aug-07, at 10:38 AM, Jeff Sutter wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> In case this is the source, there's been some hype in the  
> sustainable energy
> realm having to do with refining cultivated algae to biodiesel  
> involving the
> DeBeers Fuel Company in South Africa.  They've sold "franchises"  
> and ordered
> refinery equipment from Green Star Products Inc in the US.  It's  
> all very
> promising but the press has been focused on the lack of working
> installations suggesting some sort of pie-in-the-sky scheme.
>
> It's hard to tell what's real but the approach has been endorsed by  
> the DOE.
> The thing is that everyone who's tried to cultivate algae has had  
> problems.
> It appears that GSPI has solved the environmental and contamination  
> problems
> and is engaged in solving the harvesting issue that's plagued the  
> Japanese
> and Green Fuel Co efforts to do the same thing.  The reason to pay  
> attention
> is that the yield of conventional feedstock like corn is in the  
> range of 100
> gallons of fuel per acre per year - algae is more like 4 to 10  
> THOUSAND
> gallons per acre per year!  The reason GSPI is interesting is that  
> their
> refinery that produces the better part of 1M gallons per year costs  
> only
> about $30,000 - exceptionally capital efficient.
>
> Cheers,
>   **Jeff**
>
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