Monday, October 15, 2007

Algae ethanol

I read an online article on the New York Times that discussed how ethanol production might harm the water industry. Well, not all ethanol, just corn-based ethanol. The article said that because so many companies are now beginning to jump on the corn bandwagon, my guess is because of the subsidies our government is now paying farmers, it is having negative effects on water in this country. The author wrote that in a report the National Research Council, financed by the EPA and National Science Foundation, claimed that more ethanol-production plants are contaminating ground water at higher levels and using a lot more water that would have been used as "drinking, industry, hydropower, fish habitat and recreation." The author did not explain how or go into any great detail about fertilizers and their impact on ground water contamination, but I checked out the actual report itself to find out. The report says, "corn has the greatest application rates of both fertilizer and pesticides per acre, higher than for soybeans and mixed-species grassland biomass."

The UNH said in report how efficient algae is at producing biodiesel. The report talks about the hurdles that would need to be overcome for algae to work as a mass-produced biofuel, but the author said the problems are already in the process of being solved. The article starts out by talking about how much land is used for corn production in the United States and how we could eventually rid ourselves of our dependency on foreign petroleum. The second section describes algae production and the problems that could arise. What caught my attention first is the fact that we are currently using 450 million acres for crop farming and 550 million for farm animal grazing. The author than says that only 9.5 million acres of algae producing land would satisfy every single persons and cars need for petroleum! 140.8 billion gallons to be exact.

It gets better though. THe author writes, "algae farms could also be constructed to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms) as a food source, which would provide a beautiful way of spreading algae production around the country." He also says that it could create a loop because a high-in-nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizer. So by using algae, one can recycle fertilizer as well. And where is a good place to start this wide-spread algae production? The author says none other than the Sonoran Desert. He said it would be a good place due to the amount of sun we get every year. If a plant is built, than he said it could go around the Salton Sea in Southern California.

Financially, there is no question we should embrace this biofuel. He said to produce enough algae (pay employees, run plants, land) to run every car in America, it would cost a total of $46.2 billion per year. We distribute $100-150 billion to foreign countries every year for petroleum. So not only are we no longer harming the environment, we are also creating more jobs at home and all the money is going back into our economy.

The next couple of years could be quite interesting in terms of when and how we realize that we have alternatives to petroleum readily at our disposal and how fast we choose to embrace them.

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