Green Happens Now

drohilm asked:


In recent years, many people raise the idea of growing algae for biofuels. now, when alternative energy become a necessity, and biodiesel production and use is increasing, we would like to reconsider this option, here I’ll give five reason why growing algae for biodiesel instead of regular crops, might be a good idea.

1. price

growing algae is much cheaper than growing plants. all you need is a large water reservoir, sun light and some waste material. algae are very simple life form, and can grow more easily than plants. it is also cheaper and easier to harvest them.

2. speed

Algae grow much faster than plants, and we can produce biodiesel from their cell extracts, and not from the seeds, like we do with plants. Since we can grow unicellular algae like bacteria, in the right conditions, the rte of growth, and the production of oil per cell mass, is much higher than we can expect from plants.

3. ease of production

Since we produce the biodiesel, from total cell extracts, and not from purified oil, that was manufactured from seeds, we can save a lot of production stages, and reducing the production complexity and time.

4. efficiency.

The production of oil in algae is more efficient, considering the farmer needs. plants invest most of their harvested energy in production of many other biological molecules, use for building their bodies, flowers, roots, seeds and more. Algae use more of their energy to build simple cell membranes, composed from fats, that can be used for the production of bio fuel.

5. easy to genetic manipulate.

Since the genomes and body plans of algae are much simpler than those of plants, it is also very easy to genetically manipulate their photosynthesis and oil production apparatuses, to become more efficient. By doing so, we can expect a great advance in this field. Genetic manipulation of algae is also less dangerous than manipulating plants, since they usually do not use as food source.

To conclude, Algae seems like a good source of oil for the future, but it is still not completely ready for mass production. I believe that in a few years we will have the agricultural technology to make them a new renewable source of energy, for our oil thirsty planet.