[Homestead] Pond scum biofeul, produced in the desert of NM
kristopher p bacon
kristopherpbacon at live.com
Sat Nov 22 16:35:15 EST 2008
That particular example is a company called Valcent Products Inc. http://www.valcent.net/s/Home.asp
This guy does a pretty good job of cutting through the exaggerated claims. http://www.stockhouse.com/columnists/2008/june/11/algae-biofuel-mania Specifically;
"Here I might point out that some of the more vociferous algae pimps are suggesting that algae need merely be introduced into a properly designed, water filled bioreactor and the organisms will multiply until the unit is packed to overflowing with tons upon tons of green biomass, all in the space of days. This is patent nonsense."
and
"Algae cannot fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, and so they require some form of nitrogenous fertilizer, whether synthetic or natural. That might be provided by landfill organic wastes or agricultural residues of various sorts or specially prepared nutrient compounds, but whatever the source, you're not getting tons and tons of living biomass unless you put in tons and tons of decomposed biomass. It's just like any other kind of farming. You get out what you put in."
My own initial reaction is this. Are the people now living in the southwestern states going to sit idlely by while their water gets diverted to grow algea?
Kris P.
_________________________________________________________________
Color coding for safety: Windows Live Hotmail alerts you to suspicious email.
http://windowslive.com/Explore/Hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_safety_112008
More information about the Homestead
mailing list