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Renewable Energy From Algae?
Ravalox writes "With alternate fuel becoming a fairly hot trend in recent months, some academics may have applied their theoretical know-how to give us a practical solution. They offer up the idea that certain types of algae are well-suited to biodiesel production as they are nearly 50 percent oil. The article speculates that large pools could be created to farm out biodiesel from algae in areas near waste streams and salt water. They postulate that to replace our fossil fuel usage it would take only a total of a little over ten thousand square miles, which could fit in an area like the Sonora Desert."
Some years back in New Scientist, there was an article on algae for power. The problem was, pools or lagoons are not efficient enough. So they made bioreactors consisting of ten foot tall iron frames wrapped with clear vinyl tubing. This worked well, and calculations showed that the process was good enough to compete with gas fired generators and nuclear reactors. Last I saw, the University of Sheffield was looking for money to run a 600 KW plant, which apparently didn't come through. The interesting part was that by drying and grinding the algae to dust, it could be injected into a stock turbine. Waste heat from the turbine was used
to dry the algae. All you needed was minor modification of fuel injectors. Algae with a high oil content would be just as good or better. Most oil started as diatoms, small algae like creatures tha store energy as a small droplet of oil.