It is and it isn't. In terms of energy, it's a winner, hands down. The only downside is the high initial costs, but once things get rolling the inputs are only sunlight, the used up algae, and a few nutrients. Due to it's impressive rate of growth, and high oil per volume, select strains of algae cannot be beat for plant oil. Energetically speaking, it's frieken awesome. On the other hand, there is currently no rational limit on it's supply, no dependence that would drive prices up, and it has a large initial investment. It's expensive for the business, but cheap for the consumer, a business' worst nightmare. Of course they're going to ignore it and continue selling oil, especially as demand continues to outstrip supply. One must remember that economics has very little to do with energy production. In energy economics, the best product is the one that generates the most profit, not the one that's most efficient or beneficial. Our society serves the minority, not the majority.

You obviously haven't been reading the work Mike Briggs from the UNH and at www.biodieselnow.com has been doing concerning algae to oil.

Large open pools or reservoirs don't work. They realize this now with algae and it will be the same with plankton.

You have to build closed ponds that will not be contaminated with outside influences. Read his work at biodieselnow.com and you'll learn more.

I think plankton and algae are going to be huge parts of our future. It is just that it will take time.

Energyunlimited,
You're in a dream world buddy thinking that anything can quickly replace oil in a quick time period.

Have you even read the DOE study by Robert Hirsch??

Chuck

I went to the link you provided but after 10 mins couldn't find out why open pools won't work. Care to explain?



And that let's in the required solar energy how?

I've got your plankton to oil technology. It's called the sperm whale. Er, some other kind of whale.

evaporation due to intense sunlight will quickly result in highly salinated plankton pools which will kill your plankton.

the only way round that is to completely flush out your 52,000 square kilometers of plankton pools with new supplies of seawater until evaporation again starts to kill your plankton.

That's quite a lot of water and quite a lot of pumps and energy needed to move it around.

I'd be awfully surprised if that variable has already been taken into account. The scientists involved have been tinkering with this concept for years.

I think the 52,000 square kilometers of pools was only use to show what would be needed, Im sure we would'nt have to build just one large pool, but instead maybe many hundreds or thousands around the world.

I merged the threads due to the titles and the fact I couldn't eliminate the poll if I wanted to merge the threads. Yes the poll is a bit biased, but, that is the real question we are looking at aren't we?

My question was not an argument. It was a question. I have no idea if this will work or not, I can't even comment on the site as I can't read spanish. If you might define the difference between the two kind's of plankton, I'm curious as to what it is.

Trust me, if I thought I knew for sure as to weither something was bull or not, I would not hesitate to lay the smack. As I have no information on this and have never heard of it before, would be pretty presumptous to just dismiss it.

Why not just say you have no answer to this point.

you post junk articles with no link to back them up and you're then unable to answer even the most basic objection to your fantastic schemes, while demanding answers from 'doomers'.

Doesn't matter whether you have all the pools in the same place or dispersed around the world. Evaporation is still the killer unsolveable problem for this plankton fantasy scheme.

In fact things would probably be more efficient if all your plankton pools were in the same place.

What if the pools were under glass / plastic roofs? The evaporated water would collect on the glass and drip back down.

okay so lets put a greenhouse around those 52,000 square kilometers to keep those phytoplanktons happy

Let's say that the greenhouse costs about the same as residential construction $100/sq. ft. Okay let's be generous. Let's say $50/ft.

So each square kilometer of plankton farm costs $450 million for the greenhouse. ($50/sq.ft. * 9 sq.ft/sq. meter * 1 million sq. meters/sq. kilometer)

So the cost for the infrastruture is $23 trillion. That is before the recurring costs to actually grow the stuff: the fertilizer, electricity for water pumps and filters, air-conditioning, harvesting and straining, centrifuge and clarification, storage, distribution.

What would the upkeep be on 52,000 sq. kilos of greenhouse? hum?

OK, lets deal with evaporation problem:

<sarcastic mode>
Why not to turn Victoria lake in Central Africa into large plankton pool?
Just throw million tons of fertilizer in, bulid proper dam here and there...
<end of sarcastic mode>

Now for serious:
Once people will get really desperate for oil as it runs out, governments may authorize almost anything.
It may not be too difficult to currupt some poor african country to do something as idea above.

Doomer absurdity. Polytunnel construction costs a fraction of that.

Sure slick, a polytunnel would be great for your pot plants but in the real world something more substantial is necessary. It would need to withstand the occasional thunder and hailstorm. Some little backyard grownroom is not going to cut it. Let's say $10/sq. ft. for a good reinforced polytunnel okay.

Then you have to include the cost of the plankton PONDS. Residential concrete pools go for around $20 sq. ft. But they are deep. So let'S just say $10/sq. ft. for the pond


But PUMPS will be necessary. Cost for 1-HP pump and filter system for a residential pool is (Hayward Extended Cycle D.E. Pool Filter Systems - for in ground pools) is $1,000. That covers a deep 1,250 sq.ft. backyard pool. Let's reduce that startup cost to $250 for a shallow plankton pool. There is another $5/sq. ft.

Just for arguments sake, let's say AIR CONDITIONING is around the same as pumping. That adds another $5/sq. ft.

And a guess of $5/sq. ft. for pipes and ducts etc.

So the cost for a cheap polytunnel greenhouse to grow our nation's liquid energy would only be $35/sq. ft. or $16 trillion in startup costs.

So we would need to divert the entire Gross National Product of the United States for almost two years to this cockomammy exercise even before we produced a lick of pond scum. I don't think so