Bio-fuels of the Future - New Cheaper Fuel From Algae Could Halt Food Crisis

With the cost of oil at $143.01 a barrel we are always striving to find cheaper fuels for the future that have the least effect on the environment. Currently there has been a major push towards bio-fuels with many subsidies being given to farmers growing these crops. This however backfired and land set aside for this purpose has made it less feasible to grow crops contributing to the global food crisis affecting many parts of the world. Since 1989 scientists in Toronto have been developing technologies to utilise algae as a model organism to produce ethanol.

Algae is easy and inexpensive to cultivate and represents a more environmentally friendly organism to use. Dr Coleman has metabolically enhanced this particular algae to be resistant to high temperatures, high salinity and high ethanol concentrations enabling it to be a commercially suitable strain. Critically it has also been selected for its rapid growth cycle, high photosynthetic ability and large sugar storage capabilities. The key ability of this is it has been genetically engineered using transformed DNA to convert glucose to ethanol in the same way bread, beer and wine are produced. These genetic changes do not represent a threat to humans or the environment and the algae is incapable of survival outside its incubators which are being built in the Mexican desert.

The beauty of this design is that the CO2 needed by the algae is recycled from a nearby power station and when deceased the algae can be used for nitrogenous fertiliser.

This system, still in its infancy, is said to be able to produce up to 40,000 gallons/acre/year and could provide an extremely cheap solution to the current fuel crisis.

Currently the UK is lagging in it use of ethanol as a bio-fuel because people are reluctant to change from petrol and diesel compared with drivers in Europe and in particular South American countries like Brazil and Argentina. With depleting stocks and political instability oil may well be on the way out and this could well be the future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Car and Van Info. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.