The Second "Rain-Forest" - ALGAE

As a member and ambassador of The Pickens Plan (http://www.push.pickensplan.com/), I have learned of CNG, solar, ethanol and wind as alternative energy sources. The most promising and unique source that I have come across, is pond scum. You know that icky looking green, globby mass of yuck floating on top of a pond. This is algae - what could be the answer to our fuel problems.
Algae for commercial use is grown in a Algae Photo BioReactor and the link below is a video of a BioReactor system in Texas:
http://cc.pubco.net/www.valcent.net/i/misc/Vertigro/index.html

Algae is the fastest growing organism/plant on the planet. Depending upon the type of algae, 50% of it's body weight produces "lipids" or vegetable oil.
Corn will only produce about 18-20 gallons of oil per acre per year.
Palm will produce between 700-800 gallons of oil per acre per year.
Algae will produce over 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year - when grown in an open pond system. Much, much more when done in the bioreactor. If we took 1/10 of the state of New Mexico, converted to vertical reactor algae production, we could meet all the energy demands of the United States.

Algae, like all plants, require carbon dioxide, water with nutrients and sunlight for growth. The bioreactor technology is ideal for locations adjacent to heavy producers of carbon dioxide such as coal fired power plants, refineries or manufacturing facilities, as the absorption of CO2 by the algae significantly reduces greenhouse gases.

A Photo Bio Reactor (PBR) is a system that provides an artificial environment for photosynthetic organisms (Algae) to perform a chemical conversion. Scientists and engineers have been developing several types of photo-bio reactors (PBR’s) over the past fifty years to grow microorganisms that are used in a wide variety of applications. Cultivated algae cultures can be used to produce human food, animal feed, health food, therapeutics, chemicals, fuel, hormones, and fertilizer.

The link below shows actor Alan Alda at a Photo Bio Reactor at MIT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c

I asked a fellow Pickens Plan friend of mine, Frank "Palani" Cipriani of BioFarms Hawaii, "why isn't more being done on the oil production side?"
His response; " My take is the "Laws of Economics & the Law of Perpetual Motion theory", as applied to an INDUSTRY based on an "Oil-algae" is the basic stumbling-block. In order to better understand this, let's look at a comparison of another algae and market; Spirulina platensis for Nutritionals; a blue-green "super-food" according to the literature.

I've cultured Spirulina, my wife and I have eaten it on a daily basis for years, the market is under-fed, keeping the prices up. I pay $40/lb. for whole dried product for our consumption. Is a pound of oil-alga worth $40/lb.?(the extracts of Spirulina's pigments and compounds are very valuable for a number of Markets..... So, the problem state-of-the-art Algal-oil Production Lines face is scalability in the most cost-effective manner, how to achieve perpetual "bumper-crops" of oil-alga to balance out the comparative cost of production of Bio-oil and make it worth while doing....on an Industrial-scale.Meanwhile we; (my Company) continue to look at Bio-prospecting of a wide range of Algal-species, for harvesting of targeted Compounds, Extracts, and Bio-products for a variety of Products for Mankind's benefit; "the mind boggles" at the potential!" (Pharmaceutical Companys have referred to Algaes as "The Second Rain-forest"). For more information check out - http://www.biofarmshawaii.com/