Author Topic: Algae as Bio-Fuel?  (Read 1310 times)

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Offline rickl

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Algae as Bio-Fuel?
« on: February 21, 2011, 06:49:15 PM »
Algae as Bio-Fuel?
Post by irondiopriest on Feb 21, 2010, 2:58pm

I sure don't like reading that this research has benefited from "stimulus" money, but it is an interesting prospect nonetheless...

HT: Ace...

Fueling the future with fish tank residue: Scientists discuss use of algae as a biofuel
As Americans demand new and cleaner ways to meet the country's energy needs, researchers are turning to algae as a promising new fuel source. The approach has the potential to significantly reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil while contributing to rural economic development and lowering greenhouse emissions.

...Algae is emerging as an attractive resource because it reproduces quickly, uses large quantities of carbon dioxide and can thrive in non-freshwater, including brackish and marine water, thus avoiding competition with traditional agriculture's freshwater needs. In addition, algae can produce biomass and oils, and is attractive as feedstock for renewable fuels, with potentially greater productivity and significantly less land use requirements than with other commodity crop feedstocks such as corn, soy and canola.

In recent assessments that build on earlier work done under the DOE-funded Aquatic Species Program during the late-1970s through the early 1990s, Pate and others have been taking a new look at the nation's potential for algae biofuels production capacity development and resource requirements. The U.S. has ample sunlight, lower value land and non-freshwater resources in the lower latitude coastal and inland states, including the Southwest region of New Mexico, Arizona and California, to potentially produce large volumes of biofuel feedstock, if high productivies can be reliably achieved.

With algal oil productivities that could potentially reach annual average levels in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 gallons per acre, the land footprint required for large volumes of renewable fuel production would be minimal when compared with other conventional oil crops, such as soy and canola, that produce between 50 and 120 gallons per acre per year.

"With algae, we're talking about annual average productivities that could reach several thousand gallons per acre per year — with practical values that analysis has shown might be able to reach more than 6500 gallons per acre - so if you do the math, you can see the reasoning behind this research," Pate said...

..."Algae can produce oils, which are nature's most effective energy storage medium. We already have the technologies coming online to be able to take that and affordably convert it into really useful fuels that are essentially drop-in equivalent to today's petroleum-based ground and aviation transport fuels. And there is a lot of promise to create quite a bit of oil from algae, but nobody has really done that affordably on a large, routine scale yet so that you can rely on it day in and day out."....
Re: Algae as Bio-Fuel?
Post by charlesoakwood on Feb 21, 2010, 4:19pm

--->>The U.S. has ample sunlight, lower value land and non-freshwater resources in the lower latitude coastal and inland states, including the Southwest region of New Mexico, Arizona and California, to potentially produce large volumes of biofuel feedstock, if high productivies can be reliably achieved.--->>

There are reasons no water is there today, possibly those same reasons would cause difficulty
keeping the water from disappearing. Or, we cut water to California farmers off in order to
grow algae in the desert so Nancy and the boys don't won't have those nasty platforms in the bay?

Looks like it would take a lot of regulation to accomplish this goal.



We are so far past and beyond the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that the Colonists and Founders experienced and which necessitated the Revolutionary War that they aren’t even visible in the rear-view mirror.
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