Posted on 04/16/2012 7:11:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae (OMEGA) is an innovative method to grow algae, clean wastewater, capture carbon dioxide and ultimately produce biofuel. Using treated sewage as a growth medium, OMEGA would not compete with agriculture for water, fertilizer or land. NASAs OMEGA system consists of large flexible plastic tubes, called photobioreactors. Floating in seawater, the photobioreactors contain freshwater algae growing in wastewater. These algae are among the fastest growing plants on Earth.
Wastewater with oil-producing algae circulate through photobioreactors (green tubes) floating in a seawater tank at the San Francisco Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant, where NASA has set up one of its OMEGA research facilities.
Reports thus far show that algae farms set up in this manner would be capable of producing over two and a half million gallons of fuel annually in an area just under two square miles.
At that rate, we'll need to use the entire surface of all the oceans on earth just to break even.........
I heard they doubled the total fuel they produced from 50ml to 100ml.
/sarc
Biofuel ping!............
Takes more energy to produce that stuff and it’s been proven it is a pollutant. Good grief! The US is awash in oil and we have to resort to this? At one time we were an oil exporting country. Didn’t the oil embargo of the Seventies during Carter show the need for developing our own resources? Every president since has done absolutely nothing. Now we have Obamalamadingdong.
This another scam that will come to pass. Start using our natural resources instead of this pie in the sky crap.
Oh No! Where will we put the offshore windfarms?
I remember when NASA looked to the heavens, and launched rockets to other celestial bodies.
Now they sit around a pond, poking at the scum with a stick.
Well, as you know, most new technologies underperform at the outset, but get better over time. At least this is in the right general direction, algae is loaded with oil content but the trick is to find a way to grew and harvest it essentially for free, with close to zero input costs.
Just because the earth has had a few billion years to develop the fuel that’s in the ground, doesn’t mean that it’s cheaper. All we are doing is acting like we have a trust fund, in terms of how we use it.
At some point, even if that point is 500 years in the future, we will have to consider alternatives. I’d rather have 500 years of technology and knowledge behind us on how to develop those alternatives then wait until we need it and then start to consider them.
I do agree with you that it’s more pie in the sky at the moment, but that doesn’t mean it will always be so.
to create oilgae:
1. You need the bottom of the pool sealed (like a swimming pool)
2. You need the top covered to prevent foreign plants from sprouting.
3. You need 350 gallons of water to create one gallon of oilgae.
All of this pie in the sky alternative stuff would be a whole lot more impressive, if it weren’t pie in the sky stuff.
Offer it at the corner filling station, and you’ve got something.
Until then, it’s vaporware.
I’d hate to have it come down to a panic thing. Those people who say no more oil don’t realize what other products come from oil. Out of a barrel of oil you get just two gallons of gasoline. Everything from oil is taken out and what’s left you pave roads with it. Maybe the technology isn’t around right now to produce super batteries for cars and trucks that allow them to go four hundred miles on a ten minute or less charge. But perhaps in the future there will be.
And just how much taxpayer money will be flushed down this algae hole?...
>> each bag is four meters long and has been seeded with wastewater
The *newest* grad student on the team gets *that* job. :-)
To algae farts and Muslim Outreach. Anyone else out there think we've lost some ground here? Now I'm really depressed.
How many acres of algae pond per car will it take to fuel a car for a year?
only cost you $425.00 a gallon to fill up your car LOL
In the Photo, why are all those guys on the catwalk wearing UN helmets?
That’s my position. We should’t be propagandized into supporting technological development, but we shouldn’t be avoiding it either, just because there’s no real need for it.
By my calculations it would take an area of ocean roughly twice the size of the Great Lakes to make enough to cover U.S. Consumption.
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