How Would You Change Algae Into Useful Biodiesel?

One of the most discussed renewable fuel sources in the past handful of years has been algal biofuels. With all the world-wide efforts to cut down on our dependence on fossil fuels, algal biofuels have been showing promise on being able to scale to the quantities of production to affordably replace our dependence on traditional petroleum oil sources. Beyond the advantages of currently being renewable, algae biofuels have also shown that they’re significantly much better for the environment through the reduced quantities of Carbon Dioxide emitted at the time of their use. Biodiesel from algae is one of the alternative fuel sources being researched for potential widespread usage. To understand this we need to first answer the question of what is bio-fuel?

What Makes Up a Biofuel?

Biofuels could be in different forms to including liquid, gas, or solid materials. Biofuels are generally made from any biological carbon-based substances, with corn and soy beans being the most common crops utilized for biodiesel manufacturing. Using these crops requires the land normally used to develop food we eat. As a result, the renewable fuels industry has been investing time and effort into refining the process to remove bio-fuel from algal mass as a third generation bio-fuel.

Algae Fuel Advantages

Algae will develop at 50 to a hundred times faster than corn or soy, and don’t need freshwater or farm land to be developed. Algae may be grown in non potable water or suspended containers located exactly where the land can not be used to grow food. The conventional barriers to successful use of algae as a biodiesel have been the relative low expense of oil when compared to the cost of extracting the biofuel from algae, however, with enhanced technology and increased crude oil costs this distance has decreased over the past couple of years.

When developed in closed photo bioreactor systems, the algae growth process can be controlled resulting in greater yields and improve biodiesel production. Another advantage with the algae development method is the algae pulls carbon dioxide from the air and replaces it with clean oxygen. This makes bio-diesel algae farms a lot more attractive to place near industrial plants that produce extreme amounts of carbon dioxide to help decrease pollution but also benefit the algae grower.

Algae biodiesel has the potential to replace all crude oil world-wide. If algae farms can achieve their potential, then this could be completed 100 million acres in contrast it would take exponentially much more land to achieve the exact same effect with conventional biofuel crops.

How Is Algal Oil Removed from Algae?

Extracting the oil from algae has been the major cost barrier for the expansion of algae bio-diesel into the mainstream. Once the algae are harvested, the oils are then extracted from the algae cells. Probably the most rudimentary procedure to do this is to use an oil press which is similar to how an palm oil press works. The oil press has approximately a 75 percent extraction rate. Another technique employed to extract the oil is the hexane chemical extraction. This method results in approximately a 95 percent extraction rate of the oil from the algae.

The third method used is the supercritical fluids method which can get up to one hundred % of the algae oil out from the algae biomass. In this method, carbon dioxide is used to act as the supercritical fluid. The algae is pressurized and heated up to change it into a fluid and gaseous state. Then, the CO2 is mixed with the algae which turns it almost completely into oil. This method requires a considerable investment in equipment and incurs considerable expense. As soon as the algae oil is extracted, it is then processed making use of the transesterification method in which sodium hydroxide is mixed with ethanol to create biodiesel from algae biomass.

Algae Biofuel technology has kicked open the doors for Producing algae biodiesel, Using algal photo-bioreactors look at this Algae Biofuel home study course… from this day forward is your turn.. Free reprint available from: How Would You Change Algae Into Useful Biodiesel?.

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