Wanted to talk about Algae.

Interestingly enough, I have had a lot of interesting infomation being put in my head today. All from just logging in an interview with a scientist specializing in the research of algae used for fuel. As in gasoline for cars particularly.

So there's a lot of national interest in this, with a burgeting field and the roots of this sort of was in back in the late 70's to early eighties. There was a government sponsor program called the "aquatic species program" which was funded by the national energy renewable lab. They really laid a huge foundation for researchers of alternative fuel where they looked at algae as a possible source for bio fuels and did some really pioneering work. Unfortunately the funding for that program was cut in the 90's and a lot of the funding was shuttled to corn and ethonal work at that time. People have finally realized that there's some really distinctive advantages over a prop plan for fuel production and so that's why there's the shift back to this area.
Since I am not proficient in bio sciences, I definitely have a huge interest in it. So I wanted to know if using eco friendly gas, particularly algae, would ruin a car's performnance. Ultimately on the interview I found out that there is really no difference in the performance of a vehicle using a renewable bio source of fuel. The characteristics of the fuel are identical. In fact one of the pleasant benefits is that bio diesel smells a little like popcorn when it's being burned. So there's no effect what so ever; gas mileage would be the same, the perfomance would be the same, there's no difference at all between the performance aspect of the fuel.

Now as an avid driver there's the question of "are scientists experienced enough to make this happen?" It's actually been quite a while for this technology, it's nothing new. I went on wikipedia and found the first diesel engine that was commercially availible. It was back in the 1900's and the original source of fuel was peanut oil. So the technology has always been there for a long time.

We must realize that algae is availible in swamps, ponds, oceans, and the most random places. The big advantage is that it's renewable. With fossil fuels we burn the fossil fuels, we're producing co2 and have atmospheric issues with that. When you talk about using algae, it's not 100 percent recycling but it's a partial recycling of the carbon so from that aspect the societal benefits are tremendous. People are shooting it in terms of economics at this stage kind of equivalent fossil fuels that's the target. Again the biggest benefit will be that it's a renewable source of energy.

As much as we should be optimistic, there is a downfall to this and we can overcome these challenges. Today I feel pretty accomplished.