This article is incomplete because we don't know what type of fuel is made and also we do not know what is the feedstock that grow these algae. Anyway im interrested to buy fuel from them if i can put this fuel, probably butanol a gasoline equivalent, into my dodge neon and my lawnmower.

21 million gallons = 81 million TONS?  Something's dodgy there.

Probably $15 a gallon fuel from this facility..

Earlier info on Sapphire, from 2008:
'Yusuf Chisti at Massey University in New Zealand estimates that algae could produce almost 100,000 litres of biodiesel a year per hectare of land, compared to 6,000 litres a hectare for oil palm, currently the most productive biofuel.'

And:
'Where Sapphire departs from other algae companies is that their aim is not to produce standard biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. Instead, they take their inspiration from the way crude oil was created in the first place, millions of years ago.

"Way back when, when the algae were responsible for creating the long-chain hydrocarbons like diesels and heavy oils, the biomass just got buried and compressed and formed crude oil," said Steven Skill, a researcher in how algae can be used to make organic chemicals at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and who is familiar with Sapphire's work. "Algae synthesise these long-chain hydrocarbons within the cells."

Sapphire would not reveal details of the type of algae they are using but Skill thinks it is probably using genetically-modified cyanobacteria, which used to be called blue-green algae. These organisms can grow quickly (some blooms can double their mass in just an hour), operate in high temperatures and some strains can even fix nitrogen from the air to make their own fertilisers.

"Sapphire claim they can engineer whatever they like now on the strain of algae they're working with," said Skill. The next step, he said, depended on developing the engineering and cultivation systems to grow the algae economically.'

And:
'Algae can easily be grown in open ponds, but these result in very low-density blooms and are therefore an inefficient way to produce lots of fuel. Skill said that Sapphire would need advances in technology called photobioreactors to make a successful leap to commercial production.

Photobioreactors are closed vessels that would provide plenty of light and carefully tuned conditions that could intensively grow the microorganisms. Several teams around the world are testing designs for growing algae in them but none have so far made it to market.

Also crucial to making the green crude commercially viable is to use the byproducts other than oil from the algae. "You can probably derive 40% of the algae's weight in oil and you've got 60% of other stuff and there's a lot of valuable components in that in terms of chemical feed stocks."

These extra ingredients, which include fats, sugars and proteins, could be used for animal feeds or even as replacements for other petroleum products used in everything from cosmetics to plastics.

Sapphire said it expects to be at a stage of commercial production of green crude within three to five years. Geoffrey Love, head of venture capital at the Wellcome Trust, said the investment was made with this in mind. "There was already in place a very strong scientific and management team.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/biofuels.travelandtransport

"You can probably derive 40% of the algae's weight in oil and you've got 60% of other stuff and there's a lot of valuable components in that in terms of chemical feed stocks."

Given the relative consumption of fuel compared to food, it would actually make sense to convert the sugars and other nutrients to something a vehicle could burn!

Finally !

It's been ten years since I became an advocate for Algae.

In the meanwhile much valuable work has been done to increase the oil production. Algae feeds on sewage and CO2. Various types grow in clear, dirty and salt water. Power plants could easily develop adjacent Algae production. The diesel fuel that is produced this way is one of the best bio-fuels available.

Fuel distribution - low transportation costs - has the potential to lower the pump price when Algae is widely produced.

EP

Actually a bit closer to 78.75 million tons. (Unless they are making oil that is heavier than water.)

I think their tonnage is off by 3 orders of magnitude (factor of 1000).

21 million gallons at 8 lbs/gal (approx density of water) equals 168 million lbs at 2000 lbs/ton equals 84 THOUSAND tons which would be close to 81 thousand tons.

It would be better if they would SI or metric units.

Also, it would be good to know something more about projected economics.

What sd said.

Yes, 81,0000 tons for 21,000,000 gallons would make more sense.

I calculated the efficiency of solar energy conversion, assuming 1kW/m^2 and 2000 hours of insolation per year, for 300 acres x 4000m^2/acre and 1.5 million gal of crude oil/year = 2% efficiency. This is a very high photosynthetic efficiency and can be one order of magnitude higher than farming on-the-ground crops. Of course, new solar PV can be 20% efficient, so the bulk of energy of the future will have to come from solar and wind energy, but the ready-made algae crude oil is a very convenient way to store solar energy for airplanes and ship use and for backing up renewable energy, as well as for the organic chemistry industry and in the making of plastics.

The article states “1.5 million gallons (5.7 million liters) per year” from “approximately 300 acres (120 hectares) of algae cultivation ponds”, which equals 47,000 liters per hectare annually, not almost 100,000 liters per hectare that DaveMart attributed to Sapphire (ca. 2008).

At 10.7 kWh of thermal energy per liter of crude oil and using the 47,000 liter figure, each hectare would produce 500,000 kWh of thermal energy. This is not that impressive since each hectare in New Mexico receives about 20 million kWh of solar energy per year.

Recent wide spectrum solar panels are 30+% efficient. Future 3D printers will produce them a much lower cost (under $1/watt). Some thing will have to be done to reduce current high installation cost. Could be integrated to roof?

Lower cost e-energy storage is the other problem to address. Will it be with lower cost batteries or via hydrogen and FCs or a new technology?

Thanks, folks, for finding the math errors in the post.

A pity there's no link to the source so that its authors could enter an erratum.

Another article on it here:
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2012/08/28/green-crude-demonstration-from-sapphire-energy-begins/

Apparently these are open pond, not bioreactors, and the surplus biomass will be fed back as nutrient.

@Northern Piker:
The 2.5% efficiency you give for the biomass is actually very good, usually around 1% is the maximum.
I would be very surprised if they do that well.

With their dodgy figures it all smells pretty much like a boondoggle to me.

Almost 260,000 gallons/ton is also unreal?

That's roughly one ounce (weight) per gallon, so if you're talking gaseous fuels it might be real.

I don't understand all the confusion. their site states 1.5 million GALLONS per year (100 barrels per year) by 2014. The tonnage means nothing with that minuscule amount of output on 300 acres.

Correction 100 barrels per day which equals 1.5 million gallons per year. The 23 million gallons already produced are 23 million gallons of algae biomass unprocessed into fuel.