Algae, Algae, Algae.

Algae is a renewable resource with lots of potential

Here at the Green-Racer office we recently had an argument about long-term human sustainability. We focused on the inevitable food shortages resulting from a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2040. My suggestion – we all need to start eating algae. It’s a renewable resource, it’s very healthy, it grows fast, and it grows in the ocean so it doesn’t take up land area. World crisis averted.

Yes, algae can be used to create biofuel.

Now comes the even better news. Algae can be used to make biofuels and yes, it can fuel your vehicle. Some are betting that algae-based biodiesel fuels will fuel our future cars. These biofuels have the potential to be high-yield, efficiently produced, renewable fuels. In combustion of biodiesel and straight vegetable oil (SVO), formation of pollutants such as NOx and soot are concern enough that $325,000 was just granted to Anthony Marchase and Azer Yalin from the National Science Foundation to determine the pollutant formation chemistry of algae-derived biofuels. The study is to determine what the consequences would be if we suddenly went from zero to 20 billion gallons of algae-based biofuel per year over the next 20 years. The study will perform combustion and pollution experiments in a controlled environment to study exhaust particles and gasses. I wonder if these tests were done in the 1880’s when the first mass-produced internal combustion engined motorcoaches were being produced. I guess at the very least we’ve learned to study the effects of new technologies and the foresight to reconsider implementing polluting ones.