Turning Algae Into Energy

MONTANA, Jun 05 2008 (Neo Natura) - Algae, that green stuff in your pond, is being used to make biodiesel in New Zealand. Algae can grow almost anywhere, even in deserts. And some species grow so fast that they double in size three or four times a day. According to Fred Krupp, author of the excellent Earth: The Sequel, it would take only 47 million acres of algae to produce fuel for half of America's cars, compared with 1.5 billion acres of soy beans. I never knew pondlife was so exciting.

Algae also eat carbon dioxide at a similarly prolific rate. That makes them multitasking miracle-workers: both a fuel and a way to clean up power-plant emissions. Not surprisingly, several companies are now trying to move from relatively small algae beds to industrial scale.

Green Star Products, Inc. algae facility in Montana is one of the world’s largest demonstration facilities and has served as a scientific and engineering milestone towards the commercial production of algae for energy and food.

The algae industry is in such an embryonic state that very few people even understand the real algae production problems, much less claim solutions for the production of algae.

The company's latest report delineates the real problems and engineering solutions provided by the demo project without revealing the patent pending intellectual property provided by the program.

A new algae production industry offers the potential to simultaneously solve three major world problems: energy crisis, global warming and food production crisis.

Here are a few factors that make algae competitive with other agricultural products:

• Algae produce 100 times more oil per acre than traditional food oilseed crops such as soy, etc. (Note: Algae produces 4,000 gallons of oil per acre per year versus 50 gallons per acre for soy.)
• Algae eat CO2, the major Global Warming Gas, and produce oxygen.
• Algae require only sunshine and non-drinkable (salt or brackish) water.
• Algae do not compete with food crops for either agricultural land or fresh water.
• Algae can reproduce themselves and their oil every 6 hours, while it takes Mother Nature millions of years to produce crude oil in the ground.
• Algae oil byproduct is a highly nutritious protein-rich food (30-50%), which will someday help feed the world
• Algae can produce high protein food at the rate of over 50 times (5,000%) faster than traditional food crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat.