NASA’s BioFuel Proposal: Off-shore Algae Harvesting in Plastic Bags
Picture: Offshore Algae Harvesting in Semi-permeable bags
NASA’s design calls for using large plastic bags, made of forward-osmosis membranes, and filled with sewage for offshore harvesting of algae for bio-fuel.
My earlier post about leveraging nanotechnology for increasing the commercial viability of Algal bio-fuel opened me up a fantastic world of realizations. The wonderful technologies being developed by NASA have been time and again used to improve the quality of life for the people who inhabit this world and not just the journeys and stays of astronauts in the space. And particularly, because I felt that my hope for algae as commercially viable source of alternate energy had an even greater chance of being realized because NASA researchers too are pitching their effots in the same direction.
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Just to recall the two major questions that bother us in extracting oil from algae:
- How to grow algae so that it minimizes dependence on earth’s resources, either cultivable land (an issue in bio-fuels today) or water (an increasingly scarce resource)?
- How to extract oil with minimal damage to algae so that growth lapses are minimized?
Equally as hope-inspiring as the nanotechnology based approaches for algal fuel extraction is NASA’s plan for algae harvesting in the ocean. Large plastic bags filled with sewage would be placed in the ocean to grow algae. These bags devised and used by NASA would have semi-permeable membranes that willprovide home for algae to grow (using up sewage for this purpose) and will allow fresh water to flow out, thus not getting encumbered by evaporation and refill issues that plague closed bioreactors.
These plastic bags or enclosures will be made of the same membranes that NASA is currently exploring for recycling dirty water in space missions using forward-osmosis. NASA engineers would like to call it yet another example of using the technology developed for space travel, instead for making the “Spaceship Earth” more sustainable.
The big gain is that these plastic bags float in the ocean and so we do not draw-away water to irrigate in a different spot and we do not impose costs of additional losses of water, through evaporation, either on way to or in the bio reactors. This win-win situation – where a by-product is cleanliness because dirt or sewage is used by algae for its growth – is made ever better because algae uses up CO2 and releases oxygen in turn, thus helping better our environment. Eventually residue sewage can be extracted-out (by pulling-up the plastic bags) to keep them clean and efficient. This Offshore membranes’ technique, that NASA plans to use to grow algae and harvest oil from, leaves me ever more hopeful of a superior energy solution. What a wonderful world the algae – and those working on it – promise to create for us.
Picture Credits: Offshore Algae Harvesting in Semi-permeable bags courstey: NASA
To learn more about the fast-track to commercialization of the algae industry, you may want to check out this website: http://www.nationalalgaeassociation.com
They are the first algae trade association in the U.S.
I know that in my search for alternative fuels, it has been a contentious issue in many places over whether oil is even biotic at all and this article removed any skepticism I had on this part.
Accordingly, I am now questioning what the lifeline oil will give us is. Being that oil is (at least in part) biotic, that indicates that it is renewable and what more whether petroleum itself is the result of a biotic process.
Nevertheless, I would prefer to minimize my use of combustible energy sources, well, except for hydrogen!
AN ALTERNATIVE TO SOME OF THE ALTERNATIVES COULD BE SOMETHING GROWING IN THE BACKYARD:GRASS.IN ACREAGE AS COMPARED TO OTHER CROPS IT WOULD DWARF ANY OTHER.SIMPLY PUT ; USE IT FOR DISTILATION.ALCHOHOL AS I UNDERSTAND IT COULD BE USED AT UP TO 40% WITHOUT HAVING TO MODIFY THE ENGINE.VERY PRACTICAL.I WOULD PROPOSE DISTILLERIES IN, FOR EXAMPLE, EVERY COUNTY INSTEAD OF IT GOING TO A LANDFILL ETC.I WOULD PROVIDE LOCAL JOBS,SAVE FUEL AND SHIPPING COSTS AND SINCE THE RAW MATERIALS ARE THERE AND ITS ALMOST FREE THERE SHOULD BE A SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS OVER GASOLINE.SIDES OF ROADS, PARKS, SCHOOLS,HOMES,LOTS, ALL HAVE GRASS THAT NEEDS AND DOES GET CUT.USE THIS CELLULOSE TO MAKE ALCHOHOL LOCALLY.THERE ARE SOME PROBLEMS THAT NEED TO BE ADRESSED BUT THERE ALWAYS ARE.A SMALL STIPEND OR TAX BREAK CAN GO TO THE CITIZENS WHO PROVIDE THIS BAGGED UP SOURCE OF FUEL FOR INCENTIVE.
Bottom Line: no matter what alternative energies we use, absolutely none will work whatsoever towards THE PACE OF OUR AMERICAN SOCIETIES. We need to define and constitutionalize PEACE AND WHOLENESS a relaxation consciousness in alignment with Natural Order the same Order that processes energies from Algaes. It is a Natural Governing Process conducted from the principles of REST. Energy created from natural sources works only because it is like our sleep and rest process. When we are Restfull or asleep Our bodies create / process energy!!! Therefore having societies promoting Peace and Rest would have us living in a more Restfull slowed down State of existance requiring less external energies for sustaining all life on earth. CLOUDSofPEACE.