Algae Biodiesel Farms"AtLast! You Can Make Algae Biodiesel and Produce Unlimited Energy…Without Collecting and Filtering Dirty Waste Oil Every Single Time "
Imagine...Being Able to Produce Unlimited Clean Oil, In Your Own Back Yard, Without Having To Collect, and/or Filter Dirty Waste Oil Every Single Time. It's Now reality, 
OK, in theory, algae biodiesel farms or large scale algae farming appears to be the only feasible and/or realistic solution today for replacing petro-diesel completely. No other feedstock or crop has the oil yield high enough for it to be in a position to produce such large volumes of oil. However, More research into this area is currently needed.
To elaborate, it has been calculated that in order for a crop such as soybean or palm to yield enough oil capable of replacing petro-diesel completely, most of the current land available would have to be used only for biodiesel crop production, which is, of course, impossible. (Do you want to eat, or do you want to drive SUV's?) For some small countries, it would mean that all land available in the country be dedicated to biodiesel crop production. If this interests you, keep reading...
Enter algae: If the biodiesel feedstock were to be algae, owing to its very high yield of oil, it has been found that about 10 million acres of land would be needed for biodiesel cultivation in the US in order to produce enough biodiesel to replace all the petrodiesel used currently in that country. This is just 1% of the total land used today for farming and grazing together in the US (about 1 billion acres). Clearly, algae are a viable alternative as a feedstock for commercial algae biodiesel farming and/or production. In practice however, biodiesel has not yet been produced on a wide scale from algae, though large scale algae cultivation and biodiesel production appear likely in the near future (4-5 years). In order to produce biodiesel from algae on a large-scale, the following conditions would have to be met:
The first two aspects are specific to algae, while the third is a generic aspect for biodiesel production from all plant oils. Based on the current research inputs, it appears that the real concern would be condition # 1: Capability to sustainably produce high-oil-yielding algae strains on a large-scale. While the other two conditions need to be addressed as well, those two are primarily engineering considerations over which we have more control than over condition #1. This, hence needs to be given more focus. The capability to sustainably produce high-oil-yielding algae strains on a large-scale can again be thought to contain two distinct aspects: (1) Identifying the high-yielding algal strains, and (2) Identifying the most optimal methods to cultivate them. A good amount of research is taking place in each of these two aspects and it is hoped that there will be more good news soon. See Also:
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