Comment by dnautics
17 hours ago
Honestly not really. Insolation energy is not that high, and photosynthesis tops out at around 10% under best conditions, and that's energy out the end of photosystem (solar cells are pushing 30% and perovskite might go to 40 or 50%), so doesn't take into account inefficiency in your sugar (much less hydrocarbon) conversio. The care and feeding of algae is annoying, they grow really slowly so contamination is a constant problem, and they self-shade, so the suface area to volume of growth conditions must be high. And a high surface area means awful evap problems... The list goes on
None of those things change the fact that you're growing your own diesel, which is really cool
if you want that sort of biofuel you would be better off creating a carbon fixing (non-cyano) bacterium and connecting it directly to current coming off of solar panels.