Friday, March 18, 2011

EROI of Algae




I have posted before on algae and focused mostly on integrating any such protocol into agriculture.  This work pretty much tells us that we can ignore conventional thinking and look instead for breakthroughs that produce and excrete usable product on a continuous basis.   We ended up in much the same place with cellulose.  You really have to remove the handling aspect pretty completely in order to make it all work.

In the end, the input that matters is CO2 and that means we are looking to linking such technology to power plants and heat plants that use carbon.  That technology is very much on the verge of true obsolescence as we write and the changeover to non CO2 technology is ready to happen in a number of different ways.

Agricultural waste conversion to usable fuels and byproducts does have a bright future if only to optimize the farm economy.  Importing inputs is always a serious cost factor and been able to convert waste allows a lot of valuable processes to be supported.


The EROI of algae biofuels


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