With new fuel innovations popping up seemingly every day, this truly green fuel source is gaining traction.

It seems that just about anything from nature is being tested as a potential source of fuel to reduce our reliance on petroleum based fuels these days. One of the stranger fuel sources that I have come across in my constant search for new and innovative ideas inside and outside of the automotive industry is algae. Yes, algae, the green (not the red variety) single or multi-cellular organisms that can be found where water can be found. For most of us, alga (singular form) doesn’t exactly register as an energy source, but for innovators and scientists on the front lines of fuel development, it is indeed a potential gold mine.

 

What Is Algae Again?

Before we delve into the potential of algae as a fuel source, it is probably necessary to refresh reader’s minds on what exactly algae are. I’m sure like me, it has been a while since high school science class and a long time since you have laid eyes on algae. Like most plants, alga is photosynthetic, which means that it converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. It is the sugar in algae that allows its conversion into fuel. Besides the green form of alga, which is known as algae when they are in a colony at or near the surface of water, there are over 30,000 different types of algae that can be found throughout the world in countless shapes, sizes and colours. The most identifiable form of alga is known as seaweed or kelp.

Algae As Fuel

Algae has a lot of potential as a fuel source, as it can be used to produce vegetable oil, biodiesel, bioethanol, bio gasoline, bio methanol, bio butanol and countless other biofuels. Of course, other natural products like corn and soybeans can be used to produce these same fuels, but algae have an advantage over these traditional crops. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that it would take 15,000 square miles of algae growth to produce enough “algae fuel” to completely replace petroleum based fuels as the country’s main source of energy for autos and such.

Yes, I said completely replace petroleum based fuels. That does sound quite shocking, but it is true. In essence, it would not be too hard to grow algae in such large quantities, as algae can grow in all sorts of water, from salt water in our oceans to our waste water. Algae is truly an adaptive organism. It is so adaptive in fact that it can grow on land in and on wood posts and fences, cans and bottles, in soil, mud and sand, snow and on other plants (trees, damp walls, etc…). The trouble is that converting algae into algae fuel is incredibly expensive and is not economically feasible, even for rich western nations.

Algae Oil

The secret to using algae as a source of fuel is found in the plant’s oil. Like soybeans and other natural sources of biofuel, algae produce oil that is full of sugar, which in turn can be fermented to produce ethanol. Scientists are currently testing various types of algae to determine which types yield the most oil for fuel production. But the current consensus is that it does not matter what species of algae is used, as they all produce comparable amounts of oil.

Many readers are probably wondering how algae stacks up in comparison to other plants and crops that we use to make ethanol out of. As mentioned above, besides algae’s advantage of being able to grow almost anywhere, it also produces far more convertible oil than any other plant or crop in use. For example, let’s take a look at some other high yield plants and algae. The following lists the plant and the amount of oil produced per plant in litres per hectare in parenthesis: soy (446), safflower (779), sunflower (952), castor (1413), coconut (2689) and palm (5950). In comparison, algae produce 100,000 litres of oil per hectare!

Fill Up With Algae?

If the technological and economic challenges can be overcome in the coming years and decades it would not surprise me to find algae as our new main source of fuel in the west and throughout the world.

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