Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

Do you remember how Tai Lake in Jiangsu, China turned all greenish with mucky algae floating around back in June this year?

Well, China might just be able to harvest all that algae into fuel for energy, if algaes ever come to pass as the biofuel of the future.

EnvironmentalGraffiti reports that a company has come up with a system of growing algae with simple agricultural components. The mucky stuff naturally produces oils and starches, which are then processed into biofuel for us humans to burn in our petrol guzzlers. As a side effect, since these stuff actually photosynthesise (take in carbon dioxide and sunlight to create the starches), it also helps to mitigate all that carbon dioxide that’s contributing to global warming right now.

When you begin to think about how algae blooms have always been seen as a man-made menace (these things thrive on the nitrates in untreated sewage to grow), now’s a chance for all the countries that don’t treat their toilet water to gain a cheap source of energy. Heck, they even save money from the costs of building a treatment plant; just find a dead body of water, pump the sewage in, pipe in the exhast from the nearby power plant, and wait for the harvest!

This is probably the first time that power generation will become this efficient, if this is ever done on an economical scale. We should watch this development very closely.

Filed under: The Environment