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Algae references

Where does your 100x100 mile to replace oil import number come from?

For oil from Algae, I see wildly different claims, differing by as much as an order of magnitude.

For example, a widely cited source is the Michael Briggs' paper (UNH link below).

It makes claims that are somewhat more modest than yours: 15,000 square miles to replace the liquid fuel used in transportation. Combining his estimates with the DOE's numbers for crude oil imports alone (which doesn't count finished petroleum product imports), I come up with 16,500 square miles of algae farms to replace oil imports. That's 65% higher than your number. But still certainly doable if the cost is as low as claimed by Vertigro ($20/barrel).

But Vertigro also claims that their test bed facility has demonstrated that 4000 barrels of oil per acre per year is achievable. If that's the case, we'd only need 1440 square miles to produce the 10 million barrels a day we import.

I guess we'll have to wait and see who's right.

References:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

http://www.globalgreensolutionsinc.com/s/NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=152410

Posted by: jfinlayson   Posted on: 10/30/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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