New Fuel

There is possibly a new fuel on the market, algae biofuel. Algae biofuel could possibly be the solution to the world's energy crisis. Why? Because perhaps one day we will fill our cars with Algae instead of gas or diesel. There are other forms of renewable energy like solar or wind, but no methods that can be compacted to fit in our cars. Luckily algae may be the new oil and gas.

Biofuel is simply an alternative to hydrocarbons. In fact, the gasoline we fill our cars with is a hydrocarbon named ethanol. Algae works as this substitute. But what are the benefits? First of all, the facilities used to "grow" algae can go on land that is infertile for farming. For example, droughts do not bother the growth of algae. Also, because algae is a plant, if it were to spill, there would be less damage to the wildlife. This is unlike oil because it has been processed and is synthetic.

Also, if the United States were to completely cut off their use of oil, the amount of land necessary to be used up to make algae biofuel to replace gasoline would be less than the state of Maryland. This land would be easy to find out in the mid-west where much of the land is unusable for farming. Not to mention cutting off the U.S. dependency on oil could lead to less conflict and debt to other countries.

Finally, when algae biofuel is burned it is much less harmful to the atmosphere. When we burn gas, we give off horrific amounts of carbon dioxide. In replacing the amount of gas we pump into our cars to algae we might slow the process of global warming and even cleans a little of it.

This is a group of photobioreactors


But, how do algae become a fuel? There are two processes of growing algae open pond or photobioreactors. The open pond method is exactly as it sounds; the algae are grown in an open-air pool. The photobioreactors are the most scientific-sounding method. A photobioreactor pumps water through  plastic tubes that are exposed to sunlight. This shrinks down the algae growing process to a more manageable size.

So, why are we not pumping algae into our cars? The process of producing algae for biofuel is still too expensive. However, major gas corporation, Exxon Mobile, has funded research to continue the study of algae biofuel. So maybe in 20 years our cars will literally all go green.