Oil, Gas and Water: BAGS FULL OF BUBBLIN' BIOCRUDE

Crude oil as we know it is going to run out. That’s a given, it’s a finite resource and no matter how good we, as a species, get at finding it and removing it from the earth, it will eventually go. But we like crude oil, it’s essential for our lives without it we’d literally grind to a halt. No more driving, no more flying, no more ocean travel and trade, no more plastics, medicines and so on and so forth. We’ll be back in the 17th century.

So, with this doomsday scenario walking up the garden path, expecting to be let in at some point, engineers and scientists are working on ways of creating viable alternatives.

Corn based biofuel has been around for a while and through the breaking down of its sugars it creates ethanol. But this has several problems. The biggest of which is the huge amount of land that’s required for a relatively small amount of fuel: 50 gallons of Ethanol are produced per acre of corn, therefore to make the 140billion gallons required annually for the US, 2.8 billion acres of land would be needed. This is five times the amount of land that would ever be available. Other problems include the fact that it’s toxic and requires protective clothing to be handled and that since 99% of corn is fertilized and the fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are made from fossil fuel we still need traditional crude to make the “green” biofuel. All in all, despite the millions of dollars being thrown at it, it is never going to be a viable alternative and will in all likelihood only ever represent the 1% of the fuel market that it currently occupies.

But with these problems, and the realization that we’ll never be able to fuel the planet on high starch sugar vegetables, scientists have decided to look at nature. As any elementary school pupil can tell you, crude oil is made from the compression of dead plants and animals over millions of years. Scientists at the University ofMichigan have discovered that if they take a small amount of green marine micro-algae and heat it to 550 degrees Fahrenheit in a minute they can make the most efficient form of biocrude. This time saving process means that eventually it may be a lot cheaper to produce than the current $20 per gallon price tag.

However, they aren’t the only people experimenting and manufacturing this form of oil, Solazyme have also been working on this technology, but for more commercial reasons, and as such have produced products that use micro-algae to replace petroleum. As well as biodiesels, which have been successfully road and air tested for commercial and military use, they have also used the algae in chemicals, nutritional supplements and personal grooming with products such as makeup, hair care, skin care and toiletries.

The good thing about algae is that it’s easy to grow, in fact as any pond owner will tell you itgrows without any encouragement and is a real menace. But, because of quality control issues, open ponds aren’t the most efficient way of growing it for commercial use. Therefore, what many companies are doing is growing it in plastic bags suspended from supports where it can be grown in controlled conditions with precise temperature and sunlight levels.

Companies are investing a lot of money in this, and because of the relatively little noise being made we can assume that Mother Nature knew what she was doing and we still have a bit of catching up to do. But unless we try, we may have to go back to riding horses and sailing ships to get around.