by Tina Casey |
For all you urban energy harvesters out there, here’s a little something to go with yourmicro wind turbine and your rooftop solar thermal-electric array: a small-scale, energy-efficient system for harvesting algae in preparation for producing algae biofuel. Called the Model 4 Algae Appliance™ harvester, it was developed by the US company OriginOil to enable small-scale algae farming at building complexes and other tight urban spaces.
Urban Algae Biofuel Farming
The Model 4 is a down-sized version of a system that was originally designed for large-scale commercial microalgae farming. It is about to get its first test at the La Défensecomplex near Paris (France not Texas, but oh well). The project is a collaboration with the wastewater-to-energy company Ennesys.
In one of those green twofers that we at CleanTechnica love to hear about, Ennesys proposes an operation that would use the wastewater from the buildings to provide nutrients to the growing algae (NASA is backing a similar algae project, btw), so the farming operation will also double as an energy-efficient wastewater management system.
Finding an inexpensive way to separate the fully grown microalgae from its watery environment is one of the key challenges for producing cost-competitive microalgae biofuel, and this is the part that the Algae Appliance addresses.
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