Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
Posted on 11/29/2006 12:26:27 PM PST by Red Badger
OHANNESBURG: South African fuels firm De Beers Fuel Ltd plans to produce 16 to 24 billion litres of bio-diesel a year from algae within five years with an initial investment of 3.5 billion rand ($US487.4 million - $NZ738.26m).
The company has bought licenses for 100,000 acres (40,489ha) to be developed into algae farms – for which the initial investment is targeted – and within five years from now the intention is to increase that land area to 800,000 acres.
De Beers Fuel – which is unrelated to the world's biggest diamond producer De Beers – said in a statement that South Africa uses about 8.1 billion litres of bio-diesel yearly.
De Beers Fuel already runs a plant which produces 144,000 litres of bio-diesel daily from sunflower seed oil, at Naboomspruit in the northern Limpopo province.
A bio-diesel algae reactor installed at the plant will be showcased to investors, experts and the media later this week.
"The project is highly capital-intensive. The first 100 acres will require about 3.5 billion rand, this has been sourced mainly from foreign private equity groups," Hendy Schoombee, a senior official at De Beers Fuel said.
"We had initially intended to list the company to raise the money. We might list at a future date to raise money for further expansion," he said.
One acre of algae can produce 92,000 litres of bio-diesel, compared to 350 litres produced from one acre of a sun-flower seed farm, he added.
The company will use land that is not arable or useful for most other purposes, and will also generate electricity from waste material out of the bio-diesel-making process.
Its bio-diesel will be targeted for industrial use and for future exports, and is based on technology supplied by a US company, GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, while Green Star Products, also of the US, will build the bio-diesel reactors.
Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.......
If you want on or off the DIESEL "KNOCK" LIST just FReepmail me........
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days......
I wonder if they would like to clean my pool?
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Per day?
I don't know if green algae is viable......
The closest thing to running our vehicles on water.
Well, it was worth the thought. :-(
No, I think that's annually......
The American West is the ideal place for such a scheme... algae needs a good carbon source, and plenty of sunshine, so an electric plant on the edge of a desert would be the best place to put one...
After a few cigars and a night out, I've got a lot of algae on my tongue
Can you put me on your renewables ping list?
Thanks!
Thanks for the ping. Thanks for putting me on your ping list.
:-)
I read an article the other day about how new developments in solar technology will allow solar collectors to operate much more efficiently than the older models, producing many times more KWH than they do today, and cheaper.
Alternative fuel sources haven't been practical in the past. Now there's a real reason to develop the technology to make them practical. That's a good thing for us and a bad thing for all those middle-easterners who use our oil money to make war on us.
That's not algae. That's elephant poop. Those Monte Cristos seemed like a good idea after the Scotch... until the next morning.
It could only be elephant poop. Nothing else.
:-)
I believe this is per year, or the one crop of sunflower seeds versus constant havesting of algae for bio diesel. Saw another article by a physics prof in the US who estimated if we used i/8th of the land size of our Sonoran desert, we could replace oil. Not that he said it was feasible and/or environmentally safe, but merely that it would take that much land under algae farming to do the trick.
For those who laugh and are skepitcal, wait and see. I think the real opportunity will lie in third world african countries with no environmental restrictions, access to the sea, and a big mass of scorching desert to use.
92000 Liters = 24,303.8 US Gallons
These proposed projects are coming practically every day now, but it's always 5 years in the future isn't it? Sadly, we've had the non-polluting, non-nuclear answers for over 10 years now, but nobody wants to listen...
Like Saudi Arabia?.......
OK, you're on the RE ping list.
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