Originally published February 23 2006
Algae helps companies run cleaner
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A few companies looking to run cleaner and greener operations are turning to algae for help; algae farms can absorb CO2 emissions, then the plants can be harvested and squeezed to produce a vegetable oil that can serve as automobile biodiesel.
The tiny, single-celled plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut global warming.
A 'GREEN' SCRUBBER: Isaac Berzin, an MIT scientist, is using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust.
Enter Dr. Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, he came up with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.
Bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a brick-and-glass 20-megawatt power plant behind MIT's campus are rows of fat, clear tubes, each with green algae soup simmering inside.
The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.
From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles.
Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained.
"You want to do good for the environment, of course, but we're not forcing people to do it for that reason - and that's the key," says the founder of GreenFuel Technologies, in Cambridge, Mass.
Just 60 gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the major biodiesel crops today.
A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic meters of flue gas per minute, an amount equal to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt power plant, Greenshift said in a statement.
For his part, Berzin calculates that just one 1,000 megawatt power plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year.
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