Bio-energy project at Algae (SL)

Algae can be used for making biofuels. This is interesting  because of the petrol crisis (rise of the petrol prices). An aditional advantage for using algae for biofuels is that algae produce more biofuels than plants, because algae can receive more light than other plants (ratio between surface and volume).

- 1 hectare of corn à 10 tons of biomass per year

- 1 hectare of algae à 30-50 tons of biomass per year

From an economic point of view there is no profit. We can make a lot of different products using algae like medicine, food, livestock for animals and proteins. More profit can be made by using biomass of algae for these products than for making biofuels, because it is just too valuable. Genetically modified algae can also be used, invising algae to produce more biomass.

If algae are used in more than one way, there will be more benefits. Algae can for example be used  for cleaning the waste water from factories, mills etc. We have two advantages by doing that: bacteria that live with algae clean the water, in adition the algae produce biomass. There are various limitation to that limit this way of producing biomass. For example the smell is really bad and it bothers the people nearby. Another is the location of the tube plants. For the electricity of whole Europe we would have to build plants as big as Portugal. The best, and the only, place to build these plants is the sea, because of the constant temperature and light. The Mediterranean Sea is the most promising option for this.

 

Algadisk project

(CO₂ capture and biomass production)

The ability of these photosynthetic microorganisms to convert carbon dioxide into carbon-rich lipids greatly exceeds that of agricultural only oleaginous crops without competing for arable land

We have visited Algen, the centre of algae technology and one of the project partners of Algadisk. They are doing researches on algae, exchanging the information and cooperating with other institutes. A lot of universities and research centres are involved in this project, some for experience and others for results. This way they consider different mentality and opinions. Meetings are hosted by members every two months. The aim of the Algadisk project is to develop a modular, scalable and automatic biofilm reactor for algae biomass production on a large scale with low operational and installation costs.

Interview
We have interviewed the main leader of Algen,Borut Lazar, and processed his answer through the part. All the information on this page came from him.