Sunday, May 25, 2008

Algae Fuel

Crude oil price has been on the upswing for the past few years. As I am writing this post, it is costing more than US$130 per barrel. Scientists, governments and entrepreneurs all scramble to find alternatives to petrol oil. One possible solution is to generate biofuel from algae.

Will the horribly-looking algae be our savior?


Specially bred algae strains are not only great natural oil source, but also can be used to absorb carbon dioxide and thus slow down global warming – killing two birds with one stone.

But there are other sources of biofuels, such as corn and palm oil. What is so special about algae? Firstly, algae has very high oil yield – 7 to 30 times better than the next best crop. Secondly, unlike corn or oil palm, there is no need to clear forest for algae farming. It is estimated that if algae fuel were to fully replace petroleum in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles, which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland or 1.3 times the size of Belgium. That is less than 1/7th the area of corn harvested in the U.S. in 2000.

Algae farming


To learn more about algae fuel, click the links below:

Wikipedia: Algaculture

Wikipedia: Algae fuel


Comparing biofuels:

BusinessWeek: A Bevy of Biofuels


Companies that are producing algae fuel:

PetroAlgae

GreenFuel Technologies Corporation

8 comments:

  1. Very Good idea to generate fuel from algea. At least better than corn.

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  2. It's amazing that fuel can be generated from algae! Let's farm algae now, beat Petronas, earn billions of dollars and build the tallest twin towers!

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  3. 怎么那么好的能量发动机,书本上根本没有介绍的??

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  4. bio fuel still under trial ma. new technology.

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  5. sinji
    It sounds like you know this subject well too...

    neo
    If you want to farm algae, I invest!

    April
    Sinji has answered your question...

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  6. No ar....learn from u:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. An interesting piece of writing! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete