Third Generation: Algae

First and second generation biomass is now widely used in the world to produce heat, electricity and bio fuels. In the lecture you have heared that especially first generation bio fuels have some serious downsides. The production of bio fuels from algae has been studied for several decades and recently the first commercial production plants have been opened. The main advantages of algae are the higher photosynthetic efficiency and that they can produced on non arable land. In this exercise we will make another back of the envelope calculation to get a surface power density of this type of biofuel. Afterwards you can compare it with other bio fuels.

Let's consider a future production facility with $40500$ of algae reactors. The algae get harvested form the tubes in the reactors every $10$ days. Furthermore the facility has the following $($very high chosen$)$ properties:

Solar radiation: $1800$

Photosynthetic efficiency: $4\%$

Oil content in produced algae: $50\%$

We do not assume a further conversion efficiency.

We assume all Solar irradiation gets absorbed by the algae in the reactors.