The bottom line on this problem is the one that worries me the most. All this talk about PBRs saving us from foreign oil is crazy at best. Just to replace crude oil imports into the USA PBRs will have to produce 10 million barrels of refinable oil assuming that the oil from algae was equal to crude oil in output. 550 million gallons of oil per day. How much algae would it take to produce 550 million gallons of oil per day. if 50% of the algae was oil, then you could say you needed to harvest and process 1.1 BILLION gallons of algae just to meet todays demand for crude oil. That would end our dependence on foreign oil.
12,800 gallons of algae harvested and processed every second of every day. Even 100 facilities producing 128 gallons per sec 24 hours a day doesn't seem very likely unless they are massive facilities with an 11 million gallon capacity. And to be fair, even if you could get the solution you were growing algae in to saturate to 25% by volume, you would need at least a 44 million gallon facility to get your 11 million gallons of algae. That's massive. Massive facilities require massive startup, running, and upkeep costs. Using what I can see from the BEHL materials I estimate you would need at least a 75 acre facility to accomidate that kind of production.
When I look at the numbers, 7-10 years seems generous. Even if the technology was available in 5 years, it would still take another 10-15 just to design and build the infrastructure for enough capacity to end crude oil imports into the US. And all that is assuming the oil companies would do it in the first place. Try to keep in mind, what big oil wants, big oil gets, and when Exxon entered the game, big oil declared it was now their game. Patents will be bought, tech will be stolen, whatever it takes. IF there is ever money to be made at it, the oil companies will get the bulk of it. They aren't going to let pond scum put them out of business.
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