MAR 27

I've been a little inundated by algae today. First I finished a chapter in Earth: The Sequel all about algae biodiesel, and then I ran across a profile of algae startup Solena at the NYTimes. And THEN I got an email from Sam at GreenFuelsForecast about their summary of the History and Future of Algae Biofules. And just moments ago Katie from Earth2Tech emailed me their story on the Top 15 Aglae Startups!

Wow! Seems to me like March 27th 2008 is algae's official tipping point!

The news, my friends, is good. Algae is the best plant out there for converting sunlight to energy. It's 100x better at creating usable energy per acre than corn is. And tons of new and old companies are trying different strains of algae and different ways of growing them not to mention using them to clean the flue gas coming out of power plants.

Algae, it turns out, eat NOx emissions without trouble, and, of course, grow much faster in higher concentrations of CO₂. The only problems are sulfur dioxide, which can acidify the water (just like it does to rain) and kill the algae, and mercury, which can accumulate in the algae and make them dangerously toxic.

Welcome to the future, where single-celled plants eat our pollution and power our cars. Who'd a thunk...

Comments (8)

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written by josh, March 28, 2008

Ironically, according to wikipedia, most of our oil used to be algae a very long time ago. I guess it makes sense that it's so good at making energy and eating CO2.

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written by Anastasia, March 28, 2008

I wish people who put down biofuels would remember algae!

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Hrmmmmmz
written by Monotonehell, March 28, 2008

I'm concerned with any biofuel whose use involves combusting it. Sure it shifts the reliance away from oil, but the oil problem is two fold and a lot of people seem to forget this.

One we are running out of oil.
TWO that burning stuff creates carbon.

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Fuel
written by josh, March 28, 2008

I've never heard of fuel you don't burn, except maybe for food, but digestion does generate heat. This is from dictionary.com

fu·el [fyoo-uhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -eled, -el·ing or (especially British) -elled, -el·ling.
–noun
1.combustible matter used to maintain fire, as coal, wood, oil, or gas, in order to create heat or power.
2.something that gives nourishment; food.
3.an energy source for engines, power plants, or reactors: Kerosene is used as jet engine fuel.
4.something that sustains or encourages; stimulant: Our discussion provided him with fuel for debate.

The plants convert CO2 into O2, we burn them which puts the CO2 back. Biofuels are just carbon neutral (or much closer) Unless it's for a nuclear plant, you have to burn fuel to get the energy out of it.

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written by RhapsodyInGlue, March 28, 2008

Anastasia,

The reason many people might seem to forget algae when discussing biofuels is that it is not yet in commercial production. Unfortunately, when it is mentioned it often is covered in rather inaccurate terms, such as stating that it can produce some X thousands of gallons of fuel per acre when in reality those are simply extrapolations from a lab. No one yet has demonstrated the ability to cost effectively produce commercial quantities of algal fuel. Doing some simple calculations it's pretty hard to believe that bioreactor based algae growth would ever be cost effective and the open pond idea has numerous problems that would need to be solved before it would be cost effective.

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Burning Carbon
written by Christopher Walker, July 09, 2008

Monotonehell,

Converting existing CO2 to oil is know as a neutral carbon exchange. Burning fossil fuels requires removing sequestered CO2 and ejecting it into the atmosphere.

Quite frankly, I'm not on board for global warming from CO2. When it had happened in previous events, the volumes were 400 to 600% higher than today. The result was an increase in plant life which produced O2 levels at 25% . Animal life got larger and many species existed for a 100 million years and more. But the biggest byproduct of this increase in CO2 was a greening of the oceans by algae which, over time, precipitated to the sea floors, was buried under sediments which exerted pressure and caused heat on the dead algae and eventually produced hydrocarbon chains that are now crude oil.

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written by screen printing machine, November 17, 2009

Doing some simple calculations it's pretty hard to believe that bioreactor based algae growth would ever be cost effective and the open pond idea has numerous problems that would need to be solved before it would be cost effective.

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??????????????????????????????????.....
written by gugha, February 02, 2010

wuhhw uwhhw wuhh ,
Algae plants are just a small spoof over our large green environment by our scentists.. What do you expect from those plants?.. cleaning this pollution caused by a 6,000,000,000 people within a century?..
well well well, Whatever they help to clean our environment, unless we care to prevent the pollution we can't survive in this mother land not more than 500 year...http://www.youtube.com/ahgugsrinivasan/

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