A little news article on the launch of Verticrop by Valcent. Here's what Valcent has published (taken from their website) as teh major benefits of the new system:
VertiCrop is an innovative and exciting vertical growing system which:
- Produces approximately 20 times the normal production volume for field crops
- Requires 5% of the normal water requirements for field crops
- Can be built on non arable lands and close to major city markets
- Can work in a variety of environments: urban, suburban, countryside, etc.
- Minimises or eliminates the need for herbicides and insecticides
- Will have very significant operating and capital cost savings over field agriculture
- Will drastically reduce transportation costs to market, resulting in further savings, higher quality and fresher foods on delivery and less transportation pollution
- Is modular and easily scalable from small to very large food production situations
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3 comments:
This product will help allot in the areas having shortage of irrigating facilities.
backing tracks
jees b, not a real hot bed of activity, over here!
Vertigro spooks me.
I like eliminating the evaporation and contamination of the open systems.
I would like to know how they avoid thermally cooking the algae.
But, claiming 150,000 or some such gallons of vegetable oil, per year, per acre.
100% max solar energy per acre is waaaay waaaay less than that.
15,000 gallons or so would be super excellent enough, IMHO.
And then implying the vertical system somehow collects more solar energy.
Puleeeze.
Very sad to say the 150,000 makes it sound like a scam.
In the end, though, it's $ / BTU, delivered to end customers.
All the minutae is interesting and gets you there.
But, it doesn't feed the bulldog.
If PV or CPV or CIGS or CLFR or solar towers or ... gets more bang for the buck, they win.
Irrigation water shortages are only going to get worse if the current system stays in place, overuse of water is rampant, especially in desert areas. That's what's great when considering the benefits of VertiCrop. Well, that and looming climate change (growing local also eliminates fossil fuel expenditure from trucking/shipping food from 1000's of miles away.
There's lots of info on VertiCrop and other environmental news at Valcent's blog, http://blog.valcent.net/
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