Wild algal blooms for fuel-Company ?

[Wilma]

Is it possible to use wild algal blooms in freshwater ponds for fuel? Is there any company doing the same?

[sofi]

i m aware of one company - Blue Marble Energy (BME) is a Seattle based company, using wild algal blooms for fuel production.

i think Aquaflow bionomics is also producing fuel from wildalgae.

[clara]

Is it possible to use both freshwater algal blooms in ponds as well as wild blooms in ocean for fuel? Are these bluemarble energy is using freshwater algal blooms?

[sofi]

Several companies are trying out algal blooms in both fresh water as well as salt water...

Blue Marble Energy is making fuel from fresh water ponds and lakes contaminated by waste...It looks like Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant, is already growing marine algae at a pilot facility in Hawaii to produce vegetable oil for processing into bio-fuel...

[greengold09]

A company called AlgoDyne Ethanol Energy, announces that it has developed a process to harvest marine algal blooms for making ethanol.

I have seen satellite images of massive algal blooms in ocean in geology.com...... If it is possible to turn these blooms into fuel, it will be great.........

See: http://geology.com/nasa/marine-phytoplankton.shtml

[guru]

Its really amazing to watch these pictures. I read that these massive blooms cause shellfish death.... Do you know why this happens? Is because the algae produce toxins?

[greengold09]

It happens as most shellfish filter seawater for food. As they eat, they sometimes consume toxic phytoplankton and the algal toxins accumulate in their flesh causing death.

Another possibility is when some blooms deplete the resources needed by marine creatures. For instance, when a massive bloom begins to decay, the dying and decomposing algae consume the available oxygen, suffocating other plants and animals or forcing them to migrate. Prolonged blooms of non-toxic algae also can reduce light penetration to the bottom, decreasing the density of aquatic vegetation and grass beds that serve as nurseries for commercially important fish and shellfish.

please read: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=2483

[DR Johansen]

One area that has these algae blooms every year is the US Gulf coast between about New Orleans and the middle of Texas. It results on what is recognized as one of the largest dead sones in the world. If someone would develop a simple seive harvester for pleasure sailors, there may be a win-win-win situation here. The sailors would makes some $ while tooling around for fun, the fishers/shimpers/etc would not have their resourse so depleted by the bloom, and the rest of us will benefit from the fuel. Neat.

The Baltic could also benefit from this idea.

[cacofonix]

DR, you might have hit upon something really interesting...

A couple of days back I got a mail from someone in NZ suggesting something very similar for algae off the coast of NZ..I don't recall the exact area he had referred to in his mail....

Focussing on marine dead zones is sure interesting

[DR Johansen]

DR, you might have hit upon something really interesting...
A couple of days back I got a mail from someone in NZ suggesting something very similar for algae off the coast of NZ..I don't recall the exact area he had referred to in his mail....
Focussing on marine dead zones is sure interesting

Pretty much the entire Pacific south of the latitude of NZ is one of those High Nutrient, Low Chlorophyll (HNLC) zones I was talking about in other topics, though if there is a local "dead-zone" near NZ like the one off the Gulf coast I am unaware of it. HNLC zones are fairly devoid of life because of a lack of micro-nutrients like Fe (iron). The dead zone in the Gulf is the result of past blooms that die, sink, decompose, and suck up all the oxygen.

I think it would be wonderful for NZs to fertilize the HNLC ocean near NZ to cause harvestable blooms. For NOs (New Orleaners) just go out and havest the annual bloom!