Jones Beene wrote:
That is an artificial distinction. You definitely do NOT need, nor even want "tanks".
There are tanks in most of the prototypes now on line, such as this one: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/worlds_first_ca.php
In fact there are already plans and suggestions from NREL that almost every power plant in the USA which now burns coal or natural gas could and should be piping CO2 into an adjoining algae pond.
In the U.S. outdoors it is too cold in winter for algae to grow naturally. (I have several ponds and streams, and I am quite familiar with the stuff.) You need to keep it warm, and exposed to sunlight. Therefore, a growing pond would have to be covered or heated with waste heat from the generator plant. I said "tanks" but I had in mind covered ponds or the plastic bags now being used for this application. There is plenty of waste heat at plants, not to mention CO2, so that is a promising technology. But you cannot have ponds thousands of hectares wide in natural conditions that are heated and that produce algae year-round in natural conditions (that is, without massive infusions of man-made heat or CO2).
Algae grown at fossil fuel generator plants is probably a great idea, but it cannot begin to supply all of the liquid fuel we need for transportation (14,080 GWh/day). Naturally, it could if we were to reduce liquid fuel demand by a factor of 5 or 10, which we could easily do with plug-in hybrid cars. In a plug-in hybrid world, something like algae from fossil fuel plants would fit in perfectly, because it would reduce CO by half. That is to say, assuming the algae recovers all of the CO2 from the fossil fuel plants, it would end up using the same oxygen twice before finally converting it to CO2.
- Jed
