Green Star Products in San Diego is getting an enthusiastic response to their Algae-to-Biodiesel program according to this article by Fox Business.
Algae growth needs only sunlight, non-potable water (salt, briny or wastewater) and CO2, which is the major global warming gas.
One tank full of gasoline in your car emits over 200 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Algae eat CO2; convert it to oil, proteins, carbohydrates and other useful products; and, emit only oxygen to our atmosphere.
The plan is to take CO2 emissions from things like coal burning plants and let the algae convert this into biodiesel for use as fuel. Now this all sounds too good to be true and maybe I’m missing something but from what I see maybe it is in fact too good to be true.
As I understand it one of the big advantages in biodiesel is that any carbon content released when the fuel is burned is carbon that was already in the atmosphere to begin with. Plants take in CO2 from the air, plants are converted to fuel, and then burned in my Mercedes sending carbon back to the air. The net effect is no new carbon in the atmosphere. But if that CO2 the algae takes in originated in coal to begin with then we are again taking the carbon out of the ground and send it skyward. Maybe we are getting more work out of it on the way, but this seems far from ideal.
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Here’s how I think about it.
If fuel that’s mined or drilled is burned there will be more CO2. Biodiesel from algae uses existing CO2 regardless of it’s source so there’s no additional CO2 added to the atmosphere and (if it’s) oil drilling is reduced along with the trade deficit and support for undemocratic regimes.
About 1/2 the carbon “eaten” by algae can be harvested as fuel, what’s left over is called press cake that is a high protien animal food or a source for carbon sequestering “terra preta” low run-off fertilizer.
Power plants that acquire algae farms to eat their CO2 will cut their “mined/drilled” fuel consumption in half and recycle 100% of the carbon emissions and make money doing it.
Far from being too good to be true, it’s the physics of algae growth that makes it worth considering. If corn is used to produce ethanol there is so much energy consumed harvesting and processing the product that there is limited if any net carbon recycling and the yield is about 100 gallons per acre per year.
Algae grows so much faster than anything else (can double in weight every 6 hours) that the numbers go through the roof: oil yield can be 10,000 gallons per acre per year using junk land, little watter, no fertilizer, and not depleting the soil. And the cost of cornflakes and beef return to normal.
Thanks for the comment Jeff,
If carbon pulled from the ground in the form of coal eventually winds up in the air then any benefit we would have is minimal…kind of a environmental money laundering. It is basically delaying the inevitable. Getting our power from solar or wind seems a much better option. But given that we are going to be using coal for a while yet; well, any port in a storm.
If they’re recycling 1/2 the carbon there’s no coal mined for that. And if they’re sequestering the other 1/2 as charcoal (in fertilizer), there are zero new net emissions and coal depletion is cut in 1/2.
But since you mention it, there’s hope. Nanosolar began shipping production solar pannels this month that have an installed cost that’s less than coal fired power plants! It’s cheap because they make them using a printing press like process using mile long rolls of aluminum foil rather than on glass or silicon plates in vacuum ovens.
Their first “press” doubles the US output of photovoltaic cells and the first 18 months of production are already sold to utilities here and in Germany (where they’re building their 2nd press.
This, more or less, puts the nail in the coffin of fuel fired power plants for use to meet increased demand – they’ll only make sense where there’s little sunlight or insufficient night time capacity – that’s very rare.
http://www.practicalenvironmentalist.com/environmentally-friendly-companies/groundbreaking-new-solar-panels.htm
we should see a lot of interesting things happening in the next few years.
National Algae Association
Algae: The Next Biofuel
Inaugural
Algae Commercialization
Business Plan and Networking Forum
April 10, 2008
http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com