Grow car fuel in the ocean? A very good idea
Biofuels are often criticized for using too much land that could otherwise be used for farming food. Turns out, one of the better sources of biofuels, acre for acre, is algae and it grows great where real estate is a steal: the sea! There are also fresh water algae fuel projects and there have been tests conducted using iron to cause algae blooms in the ocean, a wacky solution to global warming. Researcher John Munford did some number crunching and an algae farm the size of the North Sea (pictured) could produce enough fuel to replace all the fossil fuels we use today. There are real questions of how to harvest algae in the sea but whoever cracks that nut will be rich. There is simply not enough land to spare to grow biofuel crops economically. But, wiht the Earth being 70 percent ocean, I think of that moment in The Graduate: if you are a smart, young, kid not sure where to focus your research, I got two words for you: saltwater algae. That's how it went, right?
Related:
[Source: The Economist]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Phone Monkey 8:47AM (6/10/2008)
Algae is great, so let's not limit it to bio-diesel...
Researchers should not forget that algae can be high in either starch, protein, or fat. We can combine technologies like:
high-starch Algae + thermal or enzymatic process = Cellulosic Enthanol (like they use for wood/paper/plant waste).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol
Or
high growth algae (for mass) + Thermo-chemical conversion = crude oil (like they use on turkey/pig/cow manure).
http://www.thepigsite.com/articles/4/waste-and-odor/1206/converting-manure-into-crude-oil
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mike 4:56PM (10/11/2007)
is this the same as those "red tide" algea blumes off the coast of florida, caused by pig farm waste runoff? didn't they cause huge fish kills?
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rgseidl 6:03PM (10/11/2007)
Out on the open ocean - especially in tropical waters - there is certainly potential for harvesting the sun. A very long (tens of miles) floating skirt could cordon off the growing area to prevent algal blooms reaching the coast, though it would have to be robust enough to withstand high waves and squalls.
Harvesting could be done with ships slowly criss-crossing the growing area. They would deploy a *very* large filter net with the help of a couple of auxiliary boats and then slowly reel that in to concentrate the biomass near the stern. There, the algae would be scooped up and squeezed dry before being transferred to holding tanks. Processing would be performed on-board, with part of the resulting biodiesel used to power the whole process.
SWATH ships might be suitable platforms:
http://www.swath.com/concept.htm
The entire combo of skirt and harvesting/processing ships would be complemented by holding tanks embedded in the skirt. Those tanks would have engines of their own, making the whole system mobile. This is necessary not only to get out of the way of tropical storms but also because the algae deplete the CO2 dissolved in the water. After a while, it's time to move on and let that particular patch recuperate, much like nomads avoid overgrazing by their herds.
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Lascelles Linton 6:24PM (10/11/2007)
Mike, Yes, I think the blooms feed on the waste as food and kill the fish because it reproduces faster and breathes too much oxygen out of the water, suffocating the fish. I don't think a farm, if done well, would have that problem. Yes, if it were, the entire North sea, sure there would be mass sea life death but the comparative is what's important here. We like land. There is a natural ceiling there. Sea farms could be dotted all over the world, on coast lines for example and equal the same area as the north sea. Unlike an oil leak, an algae leak would probably attract fish.
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TX CHL Instructor 9:59PM (10/11/2007)
Algae tanks don't use a lot of real estate, and can be put just about anywhere. I don't see a pressing need to farm the oceans. We have a definite tendency to screw up things, and we don't need to be screwing up the oceans any more than we already are. We simply don't understand the ocean ecosystems well enough.
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Lascelles Linton 10:36PM (10/11/2007)
Tx, It's really all about exposure to the sun. At a certain point, that just comes down to real estate.
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Nicholas 11:16AM (10/12/2007)
I think it could be a great solution. I mean, when algae is produced to a certain extent in the oceans...it´s only making the waterquality worse. I think this could be a winner.
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Yuan 12:19PM (10/12/2007)
Wait, doesn't the ocean's algae produce most of the oxygen we breathe? I'm with TX. Farm if that works, but leave the oceans alone!
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ug 5:39PM (10/12/2007)
Most of the solutions proposed require a scale so massive as to approach geoengineering. That's because there are just too damn many people on this planet requiring too much energy use per capita.
Just think of the flow of oil out of the ground (nicely contained deep in the ground where there are limited local effects) and try to replace that with any process that's only input is the sun over a long time interval. It requires massive, truly massive land areas to duplicate that much energy creation.
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GreyFlcn 12:34AM (12/13/2007)
Actually it's a very dangerous and stupid idea.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=AAFCC579-E7F2-99DF-33CF444CDD8F7AAF
Not to mention amazingly inefficient use of resources.
http://greyfalcon.net/algae4
http://greyfalcon.net/algae
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