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| Science & Technology |
| Interview with Algae to Fuel Dude |
| 2008-05-19 |
| From a May 16 article in Haaretz ------------ When Dr. Isaac Berzin talks about algae, he forgets everything else. He starts talking a mile a minute, and sometimes he talks about true love. "When I look at them through the microscope, I see them doing belly dances, and they have this small mustache that they wave. They are really cute," he says with a passion that he makes no effort to hide... Time magazine this month included Berzin in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world for 2008. He is in the company of George Bush, Hillary Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (as a couple)... In the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the fuel crises that were spawned by political crises, the national laboratory for alternative energy in the United States decided to try to produce fuel from algae...After 20 years of research and tens of millions of dollars.. I discovered that they had worked for 20 years and produced zero gallons of fuel. Twenty years and how many scientific articles? Hundreds. I realized that the project was an academic platform for them, that no one there was really determined to make fuel from algae."... "As soon as one energy farm proves itself economically - and that will happen within a year and a half [somebody posted something on this a few weeks ago, it is a project in AZ or NM - it might have been me] we will be able to establish similar farms all over the world.... |
| Posted by:mhw |
| #6 Perhaps, but nan0-fusion will require much less bio-mass and leak almost zero CO2 into the atmosphere. The modularity of nan0-fusion will make it possible to build power plants into areas as small as a large condo. |
| Posted by: George Smiley 2008-05-19 19:45 |
| #5 I see algae farming as a situation of using optimums to produce a product. You want to achieve maximum algae growth, harvesting and processing. Production needs to be year around. You need the best water temperature and circulation, mix of gases, light bandwidth exposure--natural or artificial, and continual harvesting and processing of algae oil with sodium hydroxide and alcohol to produce biodiesel, with the remainder made into animal fodder. That being said, you want to do it at the lowest cost. Perhaps the best model is the use of "self-cleaning glass" pipes, lined with nanoparticles that prevent adhesion. The pipes have rudders in them that make the water turn in a spiral pattern as it flows. This serves the dual function of evenly distributing the light through the water and keeping the CO2 and NOx gases dissolved to feed the algae. At intervals, the algae water reaches areas with slow current, where much of the algae is filtered out and sent for processing. After the last filtration, the water is purified for re-use, likely also with nanotechnology filters, and the water is cooled or heated as need be. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-05-19 17:51 |
| #4 Dr. Berzin has a lovely sense of humour: belly dancers and cute wavy mustaches! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-05-19 15:46 |
| #3 and an article from a Fortune Magazine reporter here (it notes some engineering & scaling & management problems the company had in 2007) |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-05-19 14:18 |
| #2 I think he's been watching too much SpongeBob. |
| Posted by: Jitch, Scourge of the Veal Cutlets 2008-05-19 13:14 |
| #1 the earlier article |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-05-19 11:40 |