Algae, Biodesel and Environment

Dec

Filed under: Energy

There is a new post on Slashdot titled Newest Energy Source on the usage of algae as a source of biodiesel. I was surprised, maybe worried, that everybody seems to welcome this new source without any problem, after all you can get 10,000 gallons per acre for algae compared to 75 to 125 gallons for canola or 50 to 60 gallons for Soybeans. Well, the usage of algae as source of energy isn’t new at all for energetists and bio-energetists, and when the news sources talk about environmental benefits I have to stop there and understand what they mean but benefits. Thought I’m not understanding what is this all about.

Biodiesel is known also as alky1 ester4 in chemistry, it’s properties are close to petroleum diesel fuel as shown in the figure below :

The point is not in Biodiesel and its benefits compared to petroleum diesel, which include a low emissions of CO2, high emission of NOx, and highly biodegradable which should be great for environment - that’s what all the news are talking about, and it’s just half of the truth. In the other side, the industrial process to produce this fuel is highly polluting, to become a real danger for the climate - this feature is never mentioned to promote biofuel. I have noticed also that biodiesel is already used in Europe, where governments encourage its production and use, but they don’t support the idea of creating biodiesel from algae yet. I didn’t found lot of details about it, but I’ll be interested to read more on the subject. For example Brazil’s biodiesel is mainly from sugar cane residue, France from sugar beet, US from corn …etc.

The case of Brazil for example is very interesting to study where 80% of greenhouse gas emission come from deforestation and effort to destroy forest in order to grow biofuel production. It’s clear that the industry behind it could become harmful to the world climate, if forests are supposed to absorb the CO2 emissions, in this case when I say emission of CO2 is low for biodiesel compared to petroleum diesel, I have to mention also that this CO2 will not find anymore the biodiversity and forests to absorb it, that can find before with petroleum fuel.

Now back to the algae again, I think there is lot of missing information, or that industrials are trying to hide so they can launch their business with some governments support. The study of energy production using algae is very interesting, since it have the best performance overall to produce fuel similar to the one we use today.

My first conclusions is that biofuel cannot be a renewable energy as claimed, biofuel is not less harmful than petroleum fuel, and it looks like the issue is more mediatized by politicians than scientists. Certainly because if a scientists talk about it they may reveal what shouldn’t be revealed.