in Check It Out, Green

Algae as a fuel source

Long-time MT.Net reader ‘Mom” sent me a link to a company that’s breeding algae that produces lipids for fuel. According to Valcent, the company, one acre of New Mexico land could produce 20,000 gallons of oil annually. Watch the video to learn more.

My engineering mindset loves finding novel uses for everyday things. I loved Lloyd Godson’s biosphere experiment where he breathed oxygen generated by an algae tank. Generating fuel from algae seems like another great step.

  1. Somewhere I have a handout from a couple of years ago from a presentation I saw by an engineering professor at Oregon St. University about how much oil you could get from one acre of corn, sugar cane, etc… all the way down to algae. I remember that one acre of corn would fuel something like 2.5 gas tanks while algae would fuel a couple hundred of them!

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