Lost track of Arctic (edit) work on this…
Anyone had the opportunity?
Marko? Looks like Arctics Algae.
Damn, you’re right…
Feeble mind
I’ll fix it with my ballpeen hammer!
Arctic, so sorry…
But any feedback?
Interesting. Looked it up online and saw the article, says 2015. http://arcticfoam.us/category/algae-surfboards/
I retired from our local electric utility last year. I was in the Corporate Communications dept. and saw a lot of early hype for biofuels. One of the sources I was hoping to see progress more was algae. It will be interesting to watch where the algae based oils end up. Seems like anything that remotely threatens “Big Oil” disappears.
Algae production and power plants are perfect partners. Capturing CO2 to be used for other fuels seems like a smart thing, but the utilities don’t want to spend money on anything they don’t absolutely have to. The volume of algae based fuels would be small compared to the amount used in large power plants, but it does create a use for CO2. Converting CO2 to a usable feed stock for other fuels seems much better than what they plan to do with it now. Most of the plans involve dumping the gas into out of production salt mines or deep in the ocean.
A lot of the work done on non-petroleum based plastics seems to be out of the mainstream media. I wonder if this is another casualty of the “Big Oil” machine.
Unfortunately Shark, algal fuels have a lot of drawbacks and obstacles unrelated to opposition from oil companies.
The most profitable market for algal oils/lipids is nutraceuticals.
See PM.
Though Arctic is now producing an EPS foam; I have heard nothing for several months on the Algae. Not in production as far as I know. I pick up blanks down there all the time and have heard nada nuevo.
Stoneburner, I don’t want to argue with you on the science. I know you are well educated in that area. I saw that there have been drawbacks to the way algae bio-fuels turned out, but I think it’s so new and they haven’t done much to mature it. It’s too bad everything is tied to money. The surfing industry is F’d because the money is more important than innovation. Costco boards are popular because they are cheap, and easy for beginners to use.
Big Oil keeps their cost low enough to discourage R&D, and if you show something that seems like it will work, they’ll buy you then bury the tech, or bury you and the tech.
There was a thriving “Alternative Energy” community 30 years ago, but oil killed it. We did OTEC in Hawaii in the late 70’s early 80’s. Proved it could work, then pulled out because oil was so cheap. We were one of the first places in the US to build a windfarm, but the tech was 1st gen, from the wrong manufacturer, and flawed. We let it fail, then we pulled out. 10 years later Big Wind is everywhere. We were using 1st gen electric vehicles here in the early 90s. Just when they found a good battery for EVs, the NiMH, Texaco/Chevrons buys the patent, and they stop letting the EV companies use it.
Every time I asked a top executive or nationally recognized expert about the various forms of alternative electricity production, I was told that it wouldn’t be economically viable here because oil was too cheap. Then the price of oil here jumped from the high 30s to about $150/barrel in just a couple of months. Our electricity prices doubled, and everyone was pissed. Grid connected PV was allowed and that created a gold rush in Hawaii for solar energy companies. Before that we only saw PV systems in remote areas where people lived off-grid.
Weve already got solar power and solar hot water but We’ve decided here at home to use the Tesla home battery, especially when I’m doing so much shaping and stuff at night. During the day the cost of energy is cheap and at night ( when they know you have to turn on lights and cook) the prices skyrocket. A battery will allow us to use the stored energy at night and top it up via solar during the day.
It’s about 12K all up for the Tesla system but current quarterly bills are $900.
Are there any other alternates to powering the night time shaping shack without selling our souls ?
I have talked to the guys from Arctic a few times (most recently at boardroom last weekend) about the progress of the algae based blanks. Each time i ask, it seems like the public release date gets further and further away. They say they have a few guys shaping them for some pros for testing and are getting good results. They said the blanks should be ready for public sale by the beginning of next year (which is also what they told me at last years show). Im really hopeful that they will be available soon though.
Proceed with caution; this is a highly contentious issue that is beginning to rage:
Controversy erupts over genetically engineered algae for biofuels (same stuff)
http://biofuels-news.com/display_news/12264/controversy_erupts_over_genetically_engineered_algae_for_biofuels/
“This study confirmed that genetically engineered microalgae grown in open ponds will escape and spread into the environment. Once this genie is out of the bottle there is no way to put it back,” said Dana Perls, senior campaigner with Friends of the Earth, in a press release.
“genetically engineered microalgae”
It is likely genetic engineering is of limited value anyway.
"Algal starter cultures are begun with one algal cell or very few cells, but many species of algae are single-celled plants. The final biomass harvested from a pond represents, at the least, millions to billions of cell divisions that originated from one or only a few cells. It is inevitable that gene mutations will occur, causing ‘genetic drift’.”
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/FarmingAlgaeFuel_07_10.pdf