Algae That Cleans Emissions and Produces Fuel

**$tarDu$t** writes "Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at MIT has come up with an idea for using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust. His research began 3 years ago in an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station. His idea consists of building algae farms near power plants to provide a means to reduce CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions. Emissions are filtered through the algae. Then the CO2 saturated algae is harvested and squeezed to produce a combustible vegetable oil (biodiesel) and a dried green substance that can be further processed into ethanol."

Comments

Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[eldavojohn]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2. I have seen lectures given where Alzheimer's susceptible genes were spliced into the genes of mice neurons using a strain of the herpes virus that had previously infected neurons of Alzheimer's patients.

Does anyone know if there are techniques like this to use to directly alter the genes of other organisms (like algae) using perhaps similar tricks?

Furthermore, what if this could be used for gases other than nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide?

Is there maybe a possibility of coating hot air balloons or zeppelins with this algae and letting them float about in the atmosphere until they become so heavy with algae they descend? I know it's kind of farfetched to propose that but stranger things that once were science fiction have become useful. The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[PaintyThePirate]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I remember reading that to produce a useful amount of algae, the air needs to be at least 13% CO2. Coal plant emissions reach that level. So it would be possible to run the nation's diesel fleet off 15,000 square miles of desert if that desert contained a few dozen coal power plants and a system of pipes to carry exhaust to the algae ponds.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[kesuki]

well, if one grows algea on land you run into the issue of harvesting enough, unless you're using controlled environments where every nutrient level is precisely tuned to the needs of the algea. in which case you're not producing a huge volume, but it's very useful for cleaning emissions from coal power plants. and if every coal plant in the us used algea tanks insted of conventional 'scrubbers' enough algea to produce enough biodiesel to run a large segment of our diesel market would be produced. now that's not using a lot of land at all, to replace a large portion (say as much diesel as every farmer in the US uses annually, plus every schoolbus)

growing algea on land is kinda silly though, when it grows on the ocean. but you're right 'algea' needs to be seperated from the sea water, it's harvesting and it would take a lot of acres of ocean to produce enough algea to say fill a harverster tanker, since you are probally only taking the top inch of water, and getting about 1% of the content of that inch of water back as 'concentrated' algea.

Unless of course you harvest at 'low tide' daily through some sort of automated growing field that's anchored off shore... you'd be expending a lot of energy just trying to collect the algea. it's something that's never beeen tried before, something that's never ben tested, and never been proven, Of course it's full of uncertainty. the only certainty though is that as long as everyone says 'it's unproven' and looks for more ways to exploit fossile fuels the longer it will 'stay' unproven.

BTW, on land algea production in controlled raceways has been researched, and is considered viable, but only at a 'certain' price point historically that price point has always been above the price of oil, but that's changing. the most heavily exploited fields have long since peaked, many fields are projected to peak soon, and the number of untapped fields are projected to grow a lot less slowly than the old over tapped sites begin to run dry, at least here in the US. and in certain parts of the mid-east as well. the united states is likely to 'hit' a new peak somewhere between 10-30 years from now, and if there had been a large outcry against possibly the worst oil spill in the history of mankind, our offshore rigs (the largest sector of field growth potential in the US) could cause that peak to hit even earlier.

I strongly believe that someone is going to come up with a viable business model to produce enough algea from free floating ocean harvesting to make it commercially viable. there is just too much 'under utilized' ocean water. some slow release 'wires' on boyoys could 'fertilize' the crop of algea, as slow moving harvester ships make 'runs' that allow them to harvest whichever 'field' was ripe, to concentrate the useful algea for processing into diesel and ethanol and oils and fertilizers etc. what would really get this going though are subsudies on production of biodiesel and/or ethanol. everyone likes no risk investments, so a government promising that you'll make a profit makes it a no brainer. I believe once the methods are designed, tested and proven, the 'need' for government assurances will go away. Consider sugar farming, sugar was once something only the rich could afford, but increasing production has reduced costs associated so much that it's now a very cheap commodity, so cheap that some growers would rather turn their sugar into ethanol in the hopes that they'll make more profit.

The same should also be true for algea, it will take time, and money, and research and risk taking to make algea viable, but once that has been done it will seem so easy some people will be wondering why we didn't do it 30 years ago. it took some bold risk takers in the 1980's to make soybeans the commodity they are today, and it will take bold risk takers to make algea the commodity it can be in the future.

Algae

[mysqlrocks]

Can't algae itself get out of control and cause environmental problems?
http://www.google.com/search?q=algae+blooms

UNH Biodeisel?

[ydnar]

This sounds very similar to a similar process documented by the UNH Biodeisel Group.

Energy policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy security advocates like the idea because algae can reduce US dependence on foreign oil. "There's a lot of interest in algae right now," says John Sheehan, who helped lead the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) research project into using algae on smokestack emissions until budget cuts ended the program in 1996.

Wasn't that during Clinton's term ?

More CO2 scrubbing/sequestering

[greg_barton]

Check out this dangerous idea

Re:How does this really help?

[jcorno]

But what about the other emissions? Coal plants put out a lot of arsenic and radioisotopes, among other things. Releasing it from smoke stacks is bad enough. When it's coming out of exaust pipes on busy streets, we're gonna have some problems.

This might actually work. But does it scale?

[Animats]

It's not actually processing any significant fraction of the flue gases. It's just connected to a sampling line from the smokestack. The big question is how much equipment you need to process the output from a power plant. Numbers like a thousand acres of tube field are mentioned. And how much manual servicing does this gear take?

Here's the technical paper.

Check out the original

[brianerst]

I've long been fascinated by the UNH and GreenFuel proposals for algal biodiesel, so everytime it pops up, I take a look. No big changes lately, but the GreenFuel process still seems like the one that could actually have a real impact in our lifetimes.

Check out the original Slashdot thread on GreenFuel from back in May, 2005. The news.com article link has changed.

News.com had a few followup articles as well here (about investing in clean tech) and here (about J. Craig Venter looking at bioengineering more effective microbes for doing this kind of stuff).

Re:His idea?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

A coal plant with a 2000 acre algae farm might produce 40 million gallons of biodiesel. Sold at market value, that's $100million USD. Per year. Amortized over a period of many years, just how much could the system cost for that one coal plant, before it's not worth it?

Especially considering that it means staving off new regulatory costs when we have a non-asshat president and something like Kyoto goes through? (If we were going to have to spend $25 million per year starting in 2009 anyway, just to be clean...)

Economically, it reduces demand for oil, once there's less pressure on supply from all the diesel guzzlers out there, the economy would improve.

There are too many reasons to do this to list, supposing it works at all.

Re:people please

[dbIII]

so, review: modern nuclear tech has no greenhouse gases

Please stick with reality - the fuel is made from a rock dug out of the ground and processed, so there are greenhouse gasses, but with high grade fuel it comes out at about one third less than the next contender (gas turbines). This still makes nuclear look very good on that point but has the advantage of being real and not just being advertising spin. If you want to advocate nuclear power on an unrelated article first learn about how it works and the entire process.