Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[JesterX]

It’s true, biofuels will never completely replace petroleum, most experts agree that the transition to alternative transportation will not occur with a single medium. It seems likely that a variety of technologies will be part of the petroleum replacement process. Biofuels, hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, electrics and more will all compete for majority of the road. The place for biofuels in the future will likely be commercial and industrial vehicles. Aircraft are an excellent example, Virgin Fuels and Boeing are already working in partnership to develop jet engines that will burn biofuel derived from algae. As for the difficulties involved in growing algae, many companies (including my own) have developed methods for growing in an open environment with temperature control that uses naturally produced carbon-free energy. In my company’s system we grow a hardy strain that can withstand temperature changes of 30F from the optimal growing temp. and can be harvested every twelve hours. The algae is constantly fed carbon and has a 92% consumption rate, we are currently working on ways to absorb the other 8%. Oil extracted from the algae contains only 60-80% of the carbon consumed during it’s lifetime and the fuel produced from it can only emit that amount, making algae fuel carbon negative. We are currently exploring the mechanics of a large scale operation and whether we are able to maintain a negative carbon footprint by using renewable energy to meet the demands of the operation. I think that an alternative energy source such as focus fusion will be required to make electrical vehicles the road majority. As much as 52% of the US is still powered by coal accounting for 40% of our total carbon output, with numbers like this it doesn’t make since to switch to an electrically powered vehicle fleet. With any luck we will see focus fusion or some other variety of fusion become the mainstream of power generation in our lifetimes and the opportunities will abound.