Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[JesterX]

Making Biofuels from biomass is now of highest priority in the biofuels research community because we all admit the food crops can only replace a tiny fraction of oil usage while biomass could replace as much as 30% with moderate estimates and higher.

While biomass is a promising alternative feedstock, a 30% displacement puts it lower on the list than other frontiers such as algae. A NREL study conducted from 1978-1985 concluded that 15 million sq miles of algae farming could displace the entire US fuel demand (on road vehicles). Currently, US agriculture uses over 400 million sq miles of land, 270% of the land requirement for algae. The numbers have changed since 1985, however algae based feedstocks still offer the highest oil displacement. Due to rapid growth rates and high lipid content algae presents the highest per-acre oil yield of any know agriculture based feedstock and algae can be used for both ethanol and biodiesel.