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

Obligatory 'Soylent Green' reference

[trailerparkcassanova]

Isaac Berzin's algae IS people!!!!

Cheap Solar Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fuel -> Power Plant -> Emissions
2. Emissions -> Algea -> Fuel
3. Profit!

New advertising campaign

[eclectro]

Now -- With the cleaning power of Slime!!!

covered on PBS

[LEPP]

They had a Scientific American segment on this. Here is the segment transcript. It was quite interesting.

LEPP

How does this really help?

[Bob_Villa]

From reading the article, the algae suck up the CO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides from the power plant emissions. That's obviously a good thing. The algae are then used to create methanol and biodiesel. What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

Does it take less pollution to create methanol and biodiesel this way, versus drilling them from the earth?

Re:How does this really help?

[j1m 5n0w]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, it ends up in the atmosphere in the end, but you get to use it twice. If you're going to polute, you might as well pollute in a way that maximises the energy generated per quantity of carbon dioxide produced. Also, this could partially solve a political problem of reliance on foreign fuel.

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

I assume that the algae grows better in an environment with a high concentration of carbon dioxide, such as power plant exhaust. The gains from pumping regular air through an algae filter would be less dramatic (and you could probably acheive a similar result by, say, planting a tree).

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Politburo]

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.

Well gee, please do enlighten the biologists then.

The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Did you miss this part in the summary in your rush for FP? "Emissions are filtered through the algae."

Re:UNH Biodeisel?

[PaintyThePirate]

The UNH study is based on a ~20 year U.S. DoE study on algae biodiesel. Anyway, while it is true that there is enough land in the United States to grow enough algae to replace all gasoline and diesel fuel use, it's not the ideal solution. The problem is that the algae requires something around 13% CO2 gas to grow in any useful amount. The level of CO2 naturally occuring in the atmosphere is about 0.035%. The only economical source to generate that much CO2 is burning Coal. So, the entire process still yields tremendoes amounts of CO2, contributing to global warming. Certainly, it is better to harness CO2 from existing Coal power plants for biodiesel instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, but it is not a permanent solution.

Real world implementation

[ikornalot]

This has been under discussion here since 2004.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[arivanov]

Nope you are not wrong. Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow. They require loads of sun, loads of CO2 and the moment their concentration reaches a usefull level the broth tends to start dieing out, bacteria take over and contaminate the broth. So on. Of course, growing them for fuel is different from growing them for biotech where you need them "pure", but still. The idea of using algae is wildly optimistic.