Bio Fuel
By Chris Tilley
High Density Vertical Bioreactor (photo courtesy Global Green Solutions)
First of all what is Bio Fuel? Bio Fuel is any fuel that is made from recently deceased biological material. Now this is a carbon based fuel. Like we talked about back in ‘What is One Tonne of Carbon?‘ plants take in water sunlight carbon dioxide and using photosynthesis produce sugar. That sugar is what the plant use to grow and contains the carbon. When we burn it the carbon comes out as carbon dioxide. The advantage is that since it was just grown the carbon it contains was absorbed out of the atmosphere as apposed to fossil fuels that are plant material, but ages old.(source)
Now that is the ideal, the reality isn’t quite as pretty although there is hope. Some of the problems are clearing of land in order to plant fuel crops. Orangutans are being killed in the name of palm oil for bio- diesel.(source) Another is displacing food crops to grow fuel crops.(source) The production of bio-fuel is also water intensive creating demand on a resource that is already stressed. A large amount of electricity is need to make ethanol and increasingly the source of choice is coal. (source)
Ok enough of the negative, those where all first generation bio fuels. Third generation bio-fuels are based on algae.
Acre-by-acre microalgae can produce 30-100 times the oil yield of soybeans on marginal land and in brackish water.(source)
PetrolSun went in to production in April of 2008. This is very promising in that it isn’t a food crop, its partially using water that isn’t fit for drinking or even crops and uses land that wouldn’t be crop land.
Another company in Global Green Solutions. They have a high density vertical bioreactor. (pictured above) This a closed loop system so the water use is very minimal and it doesn’t require arable land. They estimate that they can remove 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per acre.(source)
Bio-fuel has a bright future and adding checks to make sure that the entire carbon content is accounted for will make it even greener. We can improve bio-fuels by using green electricity like wind and solar to power the plants. The algae is just starting but it will grow and the prices related to it will fall as it grows.