Mr. Green Car: Is there a slime pond in your future? By Allen
Penticoff First of all, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas
and is looking forward to a prosperous New Year. Back to
biofuels. The last two Mr. Green Car columns were about
biodiesel and plants that produce oil. We’ll continue that vein,
and look at the future of farmed fuel with an exploration of
algae-sourced fuel. What I’ve found so far is that there is a
great deal of promise in algae, but so many technical and
economic hurdles that we may not see common usage unless there
are some breakthroughs. Most of the research is focused on
micro-algae, those that are very small, your typical backyard
pond scum. This is quite unlike macro-algae, of which seaweed is
a type, though the latter holds some promise, too. Algae can be
grown in waste-water-treatment-released water, where there are
many nutrients, and it can be grown in saltwater and water with
high salinity, freeing freshwater sources from energy production
needs. To “turbo-charge” the growth