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Hi everyone, My name is Sander Hazewinkel and currently my company is one of the largest "real" producers of marine algae in the world. We use state of the art closed systems that will outperform all the installations that I have seen on this website and that belong to the so called frontrunners. One of the things that really disturbs me,when I hear all these "pseudo" scientists claim enormous projected yields, is the energy cost that is involved in growing algae. I dare to state that it is impossible to gain a posititive energy balance with the production of algae. It's not the apparatus (toy) that you use to grow the algae that holds the solution to a positive energy balance. The problem is that the algae itself is not so efficient as some people want us to believe. I know from hands-on experience on a commercial production scale! But I also know and understand the math behind the problem. One of the people that describes a part of the math very much spot on is Krassen Dimitrov (google will find his article). If you are able to read some Dutch (google translate might be helpfull) you can read a presentation that I gave a couple of months ago for an organisation that is doing research on energy options for Afrika. www.fact-fuels.org/media_en/Presentation_Sander_Hazewinkel It's not that i want to temper the enthusiasm for Algae, on the contrary! Algae are super as a nutrition (omega-3-fatty-acids, over 50% proteins, anti-oxidants and so on and on) all very important components for life and costing much more energy to produce otherwise than with algae. So algae still hold a strong key to a more sustainable futere, but unfortunately not to a primairy source for energy! I dare anyone to come-up with a complete lifecycle-anlysis on the production of algae that proves my point to be wrong and I dare to bet that nobody will come up with the whole (energy)cost figure because it is more sexy to talk about energyyields in stead of energy costs! With kind regards, Sander Hazewinkel