Taking A Look At Algae to Fuel
The other night the History Channel was airing a special on global warming and pollution. In addition there was some information on some very interesting alternative energy sources that scientists and engineers have and are currently developing. On such thing is algae biofuel. Now some of the people reading this may think that this is some sort of a crazy made up idea, but its not.
One such company that is utilizing this relatively new form of potential energy is based in Arizona. The company is a natural gas burning power plant. Now this is where things get very interesting. All power plants produce Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a bi product from their electricity generation. CO2 is then put into the air through smoke stacks, and scientists believe that Carbon Dioxide is a major source of the global warming theory. At the Arizona power plant, they are collecting some of this CO2 before it goes into the air and essentially using this as food for the algae. The algae is grown in big tanks next to the power plant outside. After a while once the algae grows enough it is drained out and converted into fuel. Any remaining left over algae bi products are then used for food for animals.
There are many benefits that algae biofuel has. These include: wastewater and saltwater can be used to grow the algae in, it doesn’t compete with land which otherwise could be used for other alternative energy sources or food, there also seems to be scientific evidence that supports that algae has a signifcantly higher yield per acre than compared with any crop used for alternative fuel. In addition like the Arizona power plant talked about above, this whole process reduces the amount of CO2 that otherwise would go into the air from the plant.
There appears that there are some kinks in the process, but engineers and scientists are working hard to work these out. Regardless this is a great example of people are coming up with potential new alternative energy sources.
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