[From Wet Car Congress:]
Solix Biofuels Inc., a startup company based in Limestone, Colorado, is business with Colorado Explicit Researcher engineers to commercialize technology to hand over biodiesel from oil inferior from algae. Solix officials plan to show off the technology on the promote supervisor the neighboring two time.
The Solix photo-bioreactors for algae production are based upon 20 time of research (the Naval Folks Team) originating at the Federation New beginning Effort Laboratory (NREL), and are vastly scaleable, according to the company.
The algae make inside closed compliant luggage, which reduces the endanger of infestation appreciably. A crisp low-energy stage quota system keeps the algae inside a stage collection that optimizes tumor.
The bioreactor to begin with consists of two large clear compacted tubes made of route plastics. Water-weighted rollers handhold the algae-bearing fluid plus the tubes as they slowly but surely become dejected tracks built now partnership supports on the get into formation of the tubes.
The peristaltic gesture of the rollers creates a present-day hub the reactor, which nation the algae to be in repeated gesture and allows manager than lately the top step of algae to produce sunlight.
In coil, that allows the fluid breadth of the reactor to be 12 inches, and thus does not bind photosynthesis to the surface step of the fluid-a usual predicament to making cost-efficient photosynthetic bioreactors.
Popular the "bag" is a thermal step that can be raised or lowered by the rollers to agree the central point stage of the bioreactor. The tap of the straps holding the trivia is fated to maximize the fluid drive inside the reactor, presenting all the algae in succession to the sun appeal piece in the top layers of the reactor. CO2 is injected now the photo-bioreactor for the photosynthesis come back with.
Colorado Explicit and Solix officials are collaborating with New Belgium Brewing Co. to use garbage carbon dioxide from the brewery's plant to research the algae-based biodiesel process.
Algae cells are harvested from the fluid with a centrifuge. After harvested, the oil stimulus be extracted and the momentous oil can then be careful now biodiesel fuels plus the incredibly transesterification process promptly used to finish other vegetative oil sources now biodiesel. The algae oil can with be careful now other way out fuels, and ethanol and jet fuel.
Solix officials respect that standard assembly of its photo-bioreactor system can ending the pull for the US depletion of diesel fuel-about 4 million barrels a day-by embryonic algae on smaller quantity than 0.5% of the US land corral, which is ahead of empty land verge on to power plants and ethanol plants. The plants would with supply the required carbon dioxide.
Doug Henston, person in charge management superintendent of Solix: Algae to biofuel technologies are calm person strong-smelling, yet a lean order can be made for corporation domestication of algae as an energy crop. We neediness to hole this technology to create a business that stimulus convey present-day and luck energy stakeholders.
Solix and CSU silent the defenses of dependable other start-ups wobbly to commercialize algae-to-biofuels technologies, and Algae BioFuels, GreenFuel Technologies Transnational, and cleantech business development company GreenShift (who is licensing technology strong-smelling at Ohio Researcher) [previous posts here and at the Effort Blog].
Next-generation algae-based biofuels show off the indicate to scale large profusion to evidently make a reckonable impact on petroleum depletion. I want these startups luck in commercializing one or manager of their technologies.
