great post pony...in case your link content was missed by some. Obviously BEHL is in the exact right place at the right time and have the right positioning in the space.. All the key elements are now falling into in place for the company to really thrive. Those betting against them at this stage are just pure axe grinders with an agenda.
Algae Biodiesel
Algae One area of alternative fuels that has gained a lot of interest over the last year or two is algae biodiesel. This is probably because it will produce 10-30 times what the best oil producing crops in America will produce. Here are some of the gallon per acre figures in this chart (note that the gpa figure varies greatly depending on who you ask, where it is grown, how it is planted, the strain used, how many harvests per year, etc)....
Oil Crop / Gallons of Oil per Acre
Soybeans/ 48
Rapeseed/ 127
Jatropha/ 435-2000
Algae/ 5000-15,000
As you can see, algae produces a lot more oil per acre than all the other oil crops put together. And this is why algae biodiesel is gaining more and more interest.
Here are some other points to consider...
* Algae consume carbon dioxide, thus reducing harmful greenhouse gases. Most algae farms are being built right next to coal fired electricity plants so they have a steady supply of CO2.
* Currently, "carbon credits" are very valuable. Total estimated carbon credit trading this year is about $72 billion dollars. And, it is expected to reach $32 Trillion by 2020.
* The byproduct left over after extracting the oil from algae can be used in cattle feed, vitamins, pigments, cosmetics, etc.
* Algae can also be used to clean up waste water.
* I'm sure you have all heard of the blue green algae vitamin supplements. This business sector has been cultivating algae for many years now in huge quantities, so this technology is not exactly new.
* From Wikipedia - "Anastasios Melis a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley discovered that if the algae culture medium is deprived of sulfur it will switch from the production of oxygen (normal photosynthesis), to the production of hydrogen. He found that the enzyme responsible for this reaction is hydrogenase, but that the hydrogenase lost this function in the presence of oxygen. Melis found that depleting the amount of sulfur available to the algae interrupted its internal oxygen flow, allowing the hydrogenase an environment in which it can react, causing the algae to produce hydrogen."
* If algae biodiesel farms could also produce valuable hydrogen, this sure would make the economics of the algae farms more feasible. The hydrogen could be used to power the new fuel cell cars or cars that burn hydrogen directly in an internal combustion engine. Right now, most hydrogen is produced using expensive electrolysis.
Ethanol - As you all are painfully aware of, producing ethanol has its drawbacks. The price of crops has risen drastically over the past year. The ethanol people say it should not be so because the byproduct of ethanol is a high protein animal feedcake. They say no animal feed is lost in the process and the price of corn should not go up because of that. However, everything is more expensive and that's a fact. It's probably due to the fact that more oil crops/animal feed crops are being planted than people food crops.
Oil Crops - Here too, prices are skyrocketing and probably for the same reason... more crops are being planted for biodiesel than for human consumption. The biggest problem with oil crops is that there is only so much land out there and in today's environment, we cannot replace food crops with oil crops. That is the benefit of Jatropha: it can be grown where food crops will not grow. The same can be said for algae biodiesel - it can be produced without using up valuable food crop land.
Did you know you can start an algae biodiesel farm in your own back yard?
No? Well, Did you know that...
* There are many different strains of algae that you can use.
* You can cultivate algae in salt water and fresh water.
* You can grow algae in cold weather and hot weather.
* You may not even need to buy algae strains - you probably have them already in your area.
* Algae complete an entire growing cycle every few days compared to most of a year for most crops.
* One quad (7.5 billion gal.) of biodiesel could be produced on 500,000 acres. To produce one quad from a rapeseed crop would require 58 million acres.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
