Algae for Wastewater Treatment & Biofuels
Algae grow best off waste streams - agricultural, animal, or human. All over the world, municipalities and utilities spend enormous sums to treat wastewater and sewage and remove them of pollutants and impurities. Some of the pollutants in the wastewater and sewage are nutrients on which algae thrive. Yet another fact is that the algae that grow in human-sewage tend to have a lot of oil. Combine the above three facts and you get a rather interesting solution:
Grow algae in sewage/wastewater to clean the medium while producing biofuels!
Algae, especially microalgae can bio-filter nutrient-laden, CO2-laden and low-oxygen water and turn it into oxygen-rich, CO2-low water as it flows back into the ecosystem, while simultaneously producing oil.
One of the key advantages is that, apart from the fact that expensive reactor systems are not required, unlike other algal-biofuel technologies this approach relies on "wild algae" - i.e., algae that naturally colonize sewage ponds already.
The advantage of algae-based waste water treatment is the end-product in the process - algae biomass, which can be used as a biofuel feedstock.
Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Microalgae are the earth's most productive plants - 10 to 15 times more prolific in biomass than the fastest growing land plant exploited for biofuel production. While soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons, algae can produce up to 15,000 gallons per acre per year. In addition, up to 50 percent of biomass for some microalgae is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees - currently the most efficient large-scale source of feedstock oil to make biofuels - yield approximately 20 percent of their weight in oil.
The following table gives some typical yields in US gallons of biodiesel per acre Plant Yield of Biodiesel(gallons per acre)
Algae 5000 and higher Oil from microalgae can easily be converted to biofuels such as biodiesel through the same technology used with oil from oil seeds which is currently used to convert vegetable oil to biodiesel (transesterification is the main conversion process). In addition, it is possible to hydro-treat the algae oil to produce other fuels such as JP-8 and other jet fuels.
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Brant Positive Action Group -a positive community affirmative action group that promotes goodwill and timely cost effective creative solutions to enhance the competitive well being of Brant Brantford and Six Nations
