Without a doubt, one of our favorite projects is our ongoing research on algae-to-biofuels.  In this section, we discuss much of what we have learned over the past several years and try to debunk some of the nonsense being promulgated in the literature (or, at least, add a degree of realism):

In "Algae for Biofuel," we discuss a little about algae's potential as an energy feedstock.  Not much new here, but a good place to start if you are new to this rapidly evolving industry.

In answer to many questions about what an algae-related feasibility study might encompass, we put together a brief outline in the "Feas. Study Example."

Our success in operating an open photobioreactor on the campus of the University of Nevada at Reno is well-documented.  If you are interested in this project, please see the "Nevada Project."

Last year, we used some of our proprietary models to demonstrate the resource requirements for a hypothetical open-bioreactor located near Dallas, Texas (the "Dallas Example").  We had two primary reasons for doing this: (1) to demonstrate the types of information that should be understood before contemplating an open bioreactor project and (2) to answer the many questions we were receiving about energy and resource requirements.  There are several subsections that discuss water requirements, heat requirements and a realistic assessment of CO2 capture for the hypothetical project.

Even as we were working on the Dallas example, we were receiving numerous questions about the validity of new technologies being developed and/or sold for algae harvesting and dewatering.  To keep things simple (and to keep from being sued), we put together a brief, generic discussion of the need to judge these new technologies on their energy balance.  Because almost none of the vendors of these systems provide sufficient information to actually compute an energy balance, it is our hope that our visitors will develop a healthy sense of skepticism (see "Energy Balance").

Lastly, we discussed some new information on the energy requirements for closed photbioreactor systems ("Closed Systems Energy Requirements").  Someone once said, "The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." 'nough said.