Are algae fuel the answer?

Jose Bouliouris: Check out Carbon Sciences. They are a company that produces fuel from CO2 by biocatalytic conversion. They link the molecules to form long chain hydrocarbons. Ticker symbol CABN.ob I am a stock holder.

Jose Bouliouris: Thanks John. Green is fashionable. Reality is not.

Ignacio Imbier: It is a answer. Whether or not it's the answer depends on what you're trying to achieve. Most algae as a fuel source schemes involves producing biodiesel from the algae which means converting the mostly gasoline powered installed base of vehicles to diesel base.It takes 113 million BTU's of energy to produce a new car so any alternative fuel scheme that requires substantial replacement of current rolling stock would be harmful to the environment but beneficial to the economy.Ultimately, you can synthesize actual gasoline and diesel from any bio-mass by gasification and even from CO2 and H2O as Sandia Labs has done. Sandia Labs produced CO from CO2 and H! 2 from H2O liberating O2 in both cases. Once you have CO and H2, you can synthesize any hydrocarbon lengths that you want via the Fischer-Tropsche reactions which are exothermic reactions, this is technology from the 1920's and has been used to fuel entire nations (Nazi Germany and embargoed South Africa). Gasification is the production of syngas a mixture of CO and H2 by burning in a low oxygen environment, this is 19th century technology that provided street lighting (town gas) back before natural gas became available and is sometimes used to power vehicles in remote areas or during fuel shortages such as during WWII. The synthetic fuel approach avoids replacing distribution networks which hydrogen and electric vehicles requires and avoids replacing vehicles which most alternative fuel strategies requires.So is your intent to benefit the environment, benefit the economy, or appeal to the public's misconceptions. If it's the former, then synthetic fuels would be th! e logical choice but if it's the other two then roll out the f! ashionable new hybrids, electrics, hydrogen cars and to hell with the environment. It's ironic but most people's concept of being green is harmful to the environment....Show more

Lynn Mctier: I just read about the evil geniuses at Sania. Is that some Orwellian Doublespeak suggesting that they are sane?They are a .gov, a gummint agency. Suspect enough right there. And their scheme is to make CO2, a relatively harmless by-product of respitation into CO, the deadly gas of choice for garage suicides. True so far?Then somehow they are gonna make gasoline from that.I dunno. What do you think?...Show more