Science

That's because LICHEN is the purest and most powerful programming language. Anyone who complains about the parentheses just isn't enlightened

If only there is a Like Button :) 

Ahh.. lichens. Humans are incapable of appreciating them (so engineering converging towards them is not possible & we are no good in engineering any thing that has long timescale feedbacks as in very slow growing systems. We may be good in tinkering with them but tinkering is NO Engineering!) 

What we're always chasing is the photosynthetic efficiency that some algae boast, which can be a few % above that of vascular plants. But with that advantage, there's still a reason nonvascular algae generally tend to grow diffusely over the surfaces of nutrient/competition poor areas (absent human pollution or destruction).

I'm not keen to speculate, I'm just saying that their more advanced photosynthesis has had plenty of time to translate into more competition with other autotrophs in their niche, but vascular plants still dominate full-sun environments. If I had to guess offhand, I'd say that they simply bottleneck out somewhere else in their metabolism, indeed I think our failures so far suggest several bottlenecks. Working around this looks like a technical house of cards.

There _is_ a niche where cyanobacteria's advanced photosynthesis and occasional nitrogen fixing advantage thrive on land: lichen.

Makes me wonder whether we should be investigating lichen farming as an alternative to vat-grown cyanobacteria. Shade-tolerance and low nutrient requirements mean they might work as a sub-solar-pv "crop" if they could be made to produce something useful. The trouble is that they tend to grow slowly (but can one "fertilise" the fungal symbiotes?), but once grown they are a stable natural organism that can compete for its own welfare.

Imagine growing them in clear tubes that are ventilated, and occasionally liquid-flushed to collect some desired exudate. Oil seems like a poor candidate in this case though for lots of reasons (energetic and purely technical) - for "pharming" though it could be interesting.

Across multiple references/studies the promise of algae as fuel/energy is just that, a promise or a potential. Not practical at all. 

Multiple fundamental issues, beginning with the typical low efficiencies of photosynthesis (this applies across the board to plants as well)

Next is the low densities. Necessity to pump very large quantities of water to filter out the algae for any further processing is again very energy inefficient. 

Technically, pumping alone will take 30-50% of energy yield from the algal lipids converted into biodiesel etc 

Companies eg. Joule have tried to engineered lipids secreted out into media (& thus easier recovery) but weren't successful. 

Algae or Biomass to fuels is never a wise enterprise, I think.  Bio to materials/chemicals is what works. 

(thinking about it : bio are typically low powered systems but are always high mass/material content - unless one can tap into the bioelectric/electrochemical 

phenomena operational in Bio - no tech exists for this presently & our battery/storage tech etc provide more power already for all practical purposes) 

Ravasz has provided nice insights above - Algae to food / materials will work as it has been working for many years (omega-3, DHA, algal proteins, pigments etc have been doing well). Spectacular failure has been  in biofuels/biodiesel from algae. Jet fuel is something being tried again now that Oil prices are very high. 

 

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 1:39:04 AM UTC+5:30 Cory J. Geesaman wrote:

This is good information, thank you.  I'll look into nannochlopropsis specifically.

On Friday, May 20, 2022 at 2:46:11 PM UTC-4 Ravasz wrote:

You probably mean the nannochlopropsis engineered by Sapphire Energy. They put a lot of taxpayer and investor money into making alga biofuels and then went spectacularly bankrupt a few years ago. Nannos have a naturally high lipid content which the engineers at Sapphire boosted even further. It worked great on a lab scale. Sadly nannos are prone to infections and don't grow well at high densities so upscaling from a beaker in a lab to any commercial reactor always failed.

We grow algae that are approved for human consumption, as that at least works. Chlorella and Arthrospira are the two most popular genuses used, but there are a bunch of other more exotic options for possible future use. We also have our own secret favourites in the works.  Honourable mention goes to chlamydomonas which is a model organism used for various fundamental science experiments.

In terms of yields the stuff I see in literature is a mess. Often cultures are contaminated but they report biomass anyway, most often they report wet biomass even though 90% of that is just water, and even more commonly they don't specify the exact lighting and medium composition used for the experiment. This is why our company is developing lab-scale bioreactor arrays for the precise, automated, repeated measuement of microalgae in a highly controlled environment. So hopefully in a few years we should be able to present an accurate, standardized metric to report algal growth yields. I am not being terribly helpful, I know. Sorry I can't give good yield estimates but they always seem to contradict each other and tests have a super high variance in yields.

On Friday, 20 May 2022 at 18:11:16 UTC+1 Cory J. Geesaman wrote:

Any insights you can give as to the yields you've seen?  What types of algae strains are you using?  I've heard of some that have been engineered specifically for biodiesel production which is where the 40% biodiesel figure comes from.

On Friday, May 20, 2022 at 4:52:17 AM UTC-4 Ravasz wrote:

Hi there,

I founded Algacraft LTD, a startup company focusing on automated alga production. This year we plan to test one of our reactors at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, at a simulated Mars base in the desert there. There a combination of diesel and PV generators provide energy for the whole greenhouse, which will include our alga reactor later this year. Note that our system will not recycle organic waste just yet, so it will not implement the full loop you describe.

The full recycling loop has not been implemented anywhere, but the MELISSA project of ESA is attempting similar. It is more involved than you think though and despite millions of funding and more than 30 years of research it is not yet operational. We are getting there though...

Note that energy production with algae is much less efficient in practice than you describe as is not even close to viability. Biodiesel production has largely been abandoned because of that, the current focus is on regenerative food production systems like ours above.

Best Wishes,

Mate

On Thursday, 19 May 2022 at 17:40:41 UTC+1 Cory J. Geesaman wrote:

The algae system I was considering would be more something you'd stick in a shipping container: tubes of algae circulating under LED lighting and a storage container to hold them in bulk - probably some sun exposure but the goal would be to power the LED lighting to "charge" the system, pumping more energy into the production of algae, then converting it into biodiesel and methane prior to turning back into fertilizer for more algae - at which point the biodiesel and methane could be stored to drive a generator when you're in need of discharging the system.

On Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 1:43:48 AM UTC-4 jnc...@gmail.com wrote:

"batteries for a 20KW 1-week off-grid system the other week and it's an insane cost for something that has to be fully replaced every 10 years. "

48V solar panels and charge controller/inverter is about $2500.

High quality 48V 20kW lithium battery cell-packs with individual battery management system is about $4,000 and with a best-in-class charge controller will supposedly last longer than 10 years (although hopefully by 10 years the battery tech would provide a better replacement anyway).

Where is the "insane cost" ?

The "1-week" of an off-grid system depends on the current drawn out of the battery packs and a recirculating system should not draw that much, the flow rate would require what, a 0.25 HP motor pump? It's for bubbling not for a Blendtec.

The bigger problem is weather.  Both power systems (solar and algae) rely on the sun and clear skies.

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## Jonathan Cline

## jcl...@ieee.org

## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223

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On Tuesday, May 17, 2022 at 10:33:43 PM UTC-7 Cory J. Geesaman wrote:

Has anyone attempted an offgrid/renewable energy storage system wherein extra electricity would power lights on a recirculating algae system, which would then be turned into biodiesel and the algae composted for methane to be burned in a generator, then used as fertilizer for more algae in a relatively closed system?  I was looking into batteries for a 20KW 1-week off-grid system the other week and it's an insane cost for something that has to be fully replaced every 10 years.  I've also been fairly unimpressed with the flywheel and gravity storage systems due to sizes involved.  It seems like this whole system could probably fit into something the size of a shipping container and scale quite large and long-term but I haven't found anyone doing it yet.  Would there be any obvious issues with the system I'm missing?

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