Biodieselfever.com

You probably wondered why there wasn’t any article on biodieselfever.com recently. Well, we’re all tied up in a photobioreactor consultancy project in China. We cannot disclose it’s location and you won’t find anything on the internet, not via the chinese Google search engine and not in any chinese online newspaper. But it’s there, honestly.

Anyway, this is not about algae, it’s about another scam. Imagine yourself at work in a nice office in The Netherlands, Spain or Portugal trying to ward off the usual whining customers who paid money but never received equipment when suddenly the phone rings. “Hi it’s Kevin Lopez from Equiasiagroup in Japan. We are a leading investment broker and we would like to send you some information to review”. Uh uh ok you say and you hang up. Then you get a link to a website: General Electric (wtf). A day or so later some other bloke by the name of Anthony Scott (Kevin’s boss) calls and suggest that you buy stocks. GE is not hot anymore, Novartis (beware, pharma) is now. You have some money left from the millions you made in 2007, just before the terrible crisis, the bankruptcies, the hideaway and the escape routes became fashionable, so why not give it to this perfect stranger?

Then suddenly you see a flash and smoke, and there’s Avi, our conpsiracy specialist in his spandex superman outfit witha big warning sign that reads: “STOP”.

Why?

Well, Anthony Scott ‘is no longer’ with Equiasiagroup. He now works for Aiken & Edgefield, who are listed on the Japenex energy exchange. The only problem is that the companies, despite their shiny websites, do not exist. They are fake. Baloney. The artwork on the broker’s website is similar and the real time stocks on the Japenex site are from a free server.

Nothing wrong with funny websites and aliases, but we draw the line when people are after your money while having nothing to offer in return. Algae photobioreactor salesmen, boiler room scammers, Portugese biodiesel equipment suppliers who use pictures from a bankrupt company and so on.

So who is behind all this? Well, a guy called Alek Tan from the Phillippines. He used to support people on newsgroups, now he uses all his technology skills to steal other people’s money. You can reach Alek Tan at metnik1981@yahoo.com

Update: We’ve got a new boiler room scam: http://www.inactrading.com/- scumbags almost looking legit by hiring a virtual office in the Shanghai Kerry Centre.

Every time you see something like “algae could” or “algae could be the solution to” you can assume that the writer has no clue what he is writing about. In the algae for fuel arena most writers use this technique to feed us the usual propaganda without jeopardizing their own position as a writer. Check this article and get back to read how the Royal Society of Chemistry has joined the algae for fuel scam train.

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After Biodieselfever proved that the Algaelink photobiroeactors consume more energy than they can possibly yield in the form of algae carbohydrates and algae oil, Algaelink decided to remove the specifications from their web page and hide the power consumption of this revolutionary equipment. No updated specs unfortunately, only the statement that their photobioreactors are “high efficiency” and “low-cost” is still there.

But then there’s enough places reminding us about the real figures and the impossible wet dream of Hans van de Ven, who resigned from the company a few months ago.

And also Bioking is back in business, at the same location Algaelink resides, as we can see from a recent picture on their Spanish distributor’s website

Again algae fuel made it to a jet engine, but the journalist reporting about it didn’t care to ask the one million dollar question: “How much algae derived fuel is really in that blend sir? Oh you have a press release? To hell with my questions then. Why bother about details if I can just copy over my story from your press release and take the rest of the day off.”

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Air New Zealand fueled up one of the four Rolls Royce engines on a 747-400 Boeing with 50% fuel made from jatropha crops and 50% Jet fuel and kept the plane in the air without trouble. In a two hours test flight the mix dealt with altitudes and other typical demanding conditions, except the burning.

Jatropha is a family of crops of which some have beans with a high oil content that can be converted into a second generation biofuel (marketing buzzword for a fuel originating from non-edible source). According to Wikipedia it can be eaten too, but we would recommend against it. In 2005 Western Australia (a country close to New Zealand) banned Jatropha gossypifolia (purging gossip nut) as invasive and highly toxic to people and animals.

One thing needs to be figured out yet: jatropha contains phorbol, a well known strong carcinogenic. Phorbol, being a methanol soluble organic compound, is likely to accumulate in the recovered excess methanol during industrial biodiesel production. The methanol being reused again and again will be highly toxic unless something happens to neutralize it. Anyone?