You Know that Stuff in the Side of Your Fishtanks? Thats Fuel Now.

Hey Everyone,

So I came across an article today that I thought was pretty interesting. Being an Energy, Business and Finance Major, we are always looking at new forms of alternative energy sources and analyzing ways that we can optimize the output of the current reserves of non-renewable resources that we have.

Every since I was a little guy I would always read my father's Popular Mechanics magazines. He's an electrical engineer and a technology man, so he loves the kind of stuff they write about. Although I am away from home I still inherently stumble onto the Popular Mechanics website every now and then to check out some of the cool stuff that people are coming up with. This week, something that was particularly interesting to me is that companies are now making fuel out of algae!! Check this out:

Yep, that right there is a farm FILLED with plots of algae! Algae is becoming one of the leading components of the biofuels industry. Although algae as fuel is still a little too expensive these days as fuels (around $8 per gallon) according to the Department of Energy, algae is easy to grow and there's tons of it!

The top 5 companies that are practicing this type of energy production are:

Algenol Fuels:

• Algenol Fuels is committed to putting 850 million dollars into building a farm that will sell ethanol fuel for only three dollars!
• The company wants to harvest the algae directly from the source and they say that they can make 6000 gallons per acre per year. 
• They say they will be able to produce 1 billion gallons a year at a production cost of only $0.85!!!!

Solix Biofuels:

• They said that they could product 3000 gallons per acre
• This company uses photo-bioreactors as they grow micro-algae in temperature and light controlled containers
• They want to use acoustic focusing technology in which they will blast soundwaves to concentrate the algae into a dense mixture and then squeeze it to extract the fuel. 

Sapphire Energy:

• Has a 300 acre plant that focuses on 'green crude'

The other two companies are Solazyme and Seambiotic

One other company known as SunEco is using a similar process. They have a 1,200 acre field of algae. However, to further the chain, this company is taking advantage of the fact that the crude production process that algae goes through absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. The carbon rich algae produces LFS which is a livestock feed supplement. SunEco then takes this and sells it to cattle farmers.

Anyway, it's great that people are trying to find new ways to produce energy for our world. It seems that every day we are becoming more and more green, or, at least starting to keep the growth about equal to that of non-renewable energy consumption.

Its the products like these that change the world for the better.

Cheers,

Pat

Sources:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/biofuel/4333722

www.sunecoenergy.com.