We Can Power The World With Algae!
You know when you're minding your own business, swimming in a lake or ocean and that green blob touches you and you're NOT DOWN. That stuff could power your house, your car, and it could even stop global warming. Hey there muckrakers, thanks for watching DNews, I'm Trace. Algae is plural. It encompasses a large number of stemless, rootless, leafless usually monocellular plants that get energy from photosynthesis. Algae exist in many colors, red, yellow, purple, brown, black, and of course, green and blue-green. All of these absorb light and turn it into energy. Algae are a basic food source for both salt and freshwater animals and birds, their decomposition releases minerals into the water, and their mass provides a refuge for small fish and invertebrates. If nature loves it so much, why don't humans? it's a completely renewable source, and it's made from sunlight and carbon dioxide and water. It's a very sustainable, renewable fuel. That's Dave Hazleback, founder of Global Algae Innovations. He thinks these tiny plants can be way more valuable than they are already. Steve Woods is a mechanical engineer and he works with Dave, turning algae into fuel for cars, trucks, and airplanes….
The ones that we deal with are micro algae, so it's a little single-cell and you could start with just a single cell and grow it all the way out and just have it multiply and everything, just growing plants. You just feed them what they need, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen and stuff. They just grow and they multiply like crazy. For some DNews episodes that's a bad thing, but for this? You WANT it to multiply. Eventually, it will fill up these pools they call raceways, and Steve will pull them out, drain the water, and dry it all out. That's actually really hard by the way. The dry algae can be turned into food for animals (or people), but… When you feed them certain things or stress them in certain ways they can produce oils and different things that are beneficial for nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals stuff and everything, so it's cool. There are over 100,000 different types of algae, and they store energy in the form of oil. ...the oil can be easily converted into drop-in fuels which means it can be converted into gasoline, diesel, and jet that can be used directly in current engines. You don't need any special modifications or anything to run an algae biofuel. The fuel that we're producing is equivalent, is exactly the same in terms of performance as gasoline or diesel or jet. Renewable diesel actually performs better than petroleum-based diesels. Biofuels, like these, are energy sources that come from living matter. They stand apart from fossil fuels (which, by the way, also come from living matter) because biofuels are made now, and not over millions of years. You've probably heard of ethanol, a fuel made from corn; it's easy to make with the industry we already have, but it's not the best biofuel… It takes a lot of time to grow a whole field of corn, but to grow-out a lot of algae is a lot faster and it's just a plant.
On top of that, the U.S. Department of Energy believes algae could be 10 or 100 times more productive than other bioenergies! Biofuels aren't new; Henry Ford's Model-T was designed to run on ethanol, but ethanol only packs half the punch of gasoline. As people recognize the issues with global warming and climate change, biofuel technology has only gotten better. Fossil fuels crelease carbon that was trapped inside of our planet for millions of years, but because biofuels are plants... ... you're capturing the carbon dioxide, so it's not being released and that's part of it. // You can grow algae 40 times more algae per acre than you can with terrestrial crops and as a result you don't have all the deforestation. On top of that, these biofuel farmers only need the oil. Algae can be used for industrial applications and in food and drugs. The algae even contains omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that are required for healthy humans, but difficult to find in the food chain. Algae are pretty incredible little organisms, but this process isn't perfect yet. In the past, biofuel has been very expensive. Though, according to Dave, they're down to two or three dollars a gallon to make it now, but they still can't make enough to compete with larger petrogas companies. Hopefully, someday in the future, algae raceways could replace oil fields, and gas stations will pump out biofuel! Algae could also stop global warming in it's tracks! Seeker Stories got to actually GO to the plant in Hawaii where this biofuel is made, they learned about how algae plants plus power plants equal a healthier Earth.
The ones that we deal with are micro algae, so it's a little single-cell and you could start with just a single cell and grow it all the way out and just have it multiply and everything, just growing plants. You just feed them what they need, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen and stuff. They just grow and they multiply like crazy. For some DNews episodes that's a bad thing, but for this? You WANT it to multiply. Eventually, it will fill up these pools they call raceways, and Steve will pull them out, drain the water, and dry it all out. That's actually really hard by the way. The dry algae can be turned into food for animals (or people), but… When you feed them certain things or stress them in certain ways they can produce oils and different things that are beneficial for nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals stuff and everything, so it's cool. There are over 100,000 different types of algae, and they store energy in the form of oil. ...the oil can be easily converted into drop-in fuels which means it can be converted into gasoline, diesel, and jet that can be used directly in current engines. You don't need any special modifications or anything to run an algae biofuel. The fuel that we're producing is equivalent, is exactly the same in terms of performance as gasoline or diesel or jet. Renewable diesel actually performs better than petroleum-based diesels. Biofuels, like these, are energy sources that come from living matter. They stand apart from fossil fuels (which, by the way, also come from living matter) because biofuels are made now, and not over millions of years. You've probably heard of ethanol, a fuel made from corn; it's easy to make with the industry we already have, but it's not the best biofuel… It takes a lot of time to grow a whole field of corn, but to grow-out a lot of algae is a lot faster and it's just a plant.
On top of that, the U.S. Department of Energy believes algae could be 10 or 100 times more productive than other bioenergies! Biofuels aren't new; Henry Ford's Model-T was designed to run on ethanol, but ethanol only packs half the punch of gasoline. As people recognize the issues with global warming and climate change, biofuel technology has only gotten better. Fossil fuels crelease carbon that was trapped inside of our planet for millions of years, but because biofuels are plants... ... you're capturing the carbon dioxide, so it's not being released and that's part of it. // You can grow algae 40 times more algae per acre than you can with terrestrial crops and as a result you don't have all the deforestation. On top of that, these biofuel farmers only need the oil. Algae can be used for industrial applications and in food and drugs. The algae even contains omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that are required for healthy humans, but difficult to find in the food chain. Algae are pretty incredible little organisms, but this process isn't perfect yet. In the past, biofuel has been very expensive. Though, according to Dave, they're down to two or three dollars a gallon to make it now, but they still can't make enough to compete with larger petrogas companies. Hopefully, someday in the future, algae raceways could replace oil fields, and gas stations will pump out biofuel! Algae could also stop global warming in it's tracks! Seeker Stories got to actually GO to the plant in Hawaii where this biofuel is made, they learned about how algae plants plus power plants equal a healthier Earth.
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