Obama an Ally, Algaculture Pictures, Korea Ups Biodiesel Mandate
Korea will increase mandated biodiesel content standard from 1% to 3% by 2012. If that sounds like good news to you, perhaps you have been too long in the government sector where "temporary" office buildings last 50 or 60 years. It is this kind of watery-and-weak regulations that make "transition" away from fossil-carbon fuels feel more like slashing one's wrists than a rescue plan.
This isn't Monty Python's Flying Circus, (though there is a resemblance from time to time) so I won't say that what I'm off to this week is something "completely different". Indeed it is substantially the same, except to say that this time out, I'm going to try to show you a bit of "evidence" along with some preliminary conclusions. If conclusion jumping were a sport, I'd probably be world-class at it, but in any case you may apportion your salt however you see fit with this news.
Scientific method was not strictly followed, but unfortunately, the strict adherence to the rigorous methods of "science" is usually at least somewhat at variance with the elements of actually having to deal with that messy stuff we call "reality" out there in the "real" world. One of the world's great experts on algae and biofuels, the man who literally "wrote the book" is David Seig. He teaches in Vietnam, and over the last several years has had hundreds of students doing experiments with growing algae and creating biodiesel. One of his suggestions that I thought was worth my time to test was his idea that if you could find a locally indigenous species of algae that was surviving the onslaught of local contaminants then you may well have solved the "problem" of using open pond cultivation systems because if they are a species hardy enough to survive in the wild, then you can probably grow them without keeping them covered, cloistered and virginal. So it came about that a few months ago I went out seeking wayward waifs of greenish hues in my own neighborhood.
I didn't have to go far. My own backyard fountain was well coated with sticky green stuff, adhering to every moist surface. Since my company's design for concentrated algae cultivation expects algae with that characteristic, I selected this one as one of my candidates. After all, you can hardly get more "native" than your own back yard.
The second discovery was reported as contaminating a fountain at one of the neighborhood houses of worship. The report was that the fountain was "thick" with this variety, but, in fact, upon arrival they had recently cleaned out the pond, so the few days crop from newly airborne troops of green was thin. Exceptionally thin; it barely tinted the water. These, however, were clearly and obviously a very different breed than my backyard algal samples, so I took home a bucket of sample water. This species was of the "nano" variety.
nano species algae attached to aquarium glass.jpg)
Okay, for you Robin Williams fans: no, this was not the "Nanu-Nano" type, just minutely small cells, on the scale of nanometers which are millionths of a meter in length (invisibly small) and of the species that are therefore frequently named for their size using the "nano" prefix. They had to be no more than a few, or at most a few dozen microns in diameter, thousands of them fit into the grooves of my fingerprint ridges on the tip of my finger. If the number of cells increased 1000 fold, it might amount to a single gram of algae, but it seemed like with all the optimistic talk about doubling in 24 hours or less, that I could have a boxcar full of the stuff by the end of a month if it was growing that well. (You know the old story of eastern lore about the clever mathematician who asked for one grain of rice on the first square of chess board on the first day, and double the previous day's total for each of the squares on the board ... which, or course, at 2 to the 63rd power is about as much as all the rice in China.)
Meanwhile, after taking about an ounce (28 grams) as a sample, I left the rest of the algae growing in my own fountain.
Algae Aquarium (mixed species) after 1 week
This weekend I "harvested" both crops: The mixed crop from a 10 gallon aquarium (containing both backyard and "nano" varieties) and the straight uncultivated crop from my fountain. Now, "cultivation" in this case consisted of feeding the mixed culture a steady diet of additional air for one week (hard to see if that had any effect at all), additional air 24 hours a day and 20% carbon dioxide for ˝ an hour per day for 3 more weeks, with daily supplements of ammonia for soluble nitrogen in liquid form (only about one quarter to one half an ounce a day). Following the obviously disappointing results for a month of cultivation, the colonies were both neglected entirely for approximately 6 weeks.
Cloth Filter 300 thread count cotton sheeting - NOTE: Bright Green on edge is NANO algae
Assuming starter cultures of an ounce (approximately 28 grams) of wild common algae in both the fountain and the aquarium, and a fraction of a gram of the nano-algae mixed into the aquarium, the resulting harvests were, how shall I put it ... dismal and disappointing, on the one hand, but informative on the other, and the "informative" aspect was far more important. Although there are some other experiments I want to perform on the "crop", the main conclusion thus far is that both of these were relatively slow growing, or that I did not manage to create "ideal" growing conditions for either species. In the eleven (11) weeks of this test, the fountain grew approximately 100 grams of algae (in addition to the initial 28 grams). Quadrupling total biomass over 11 weeks is hardly impressive. Remember that a carrot seed (one of the smallest of the most common garden variety species) will grow several thousands of times its original size in about 11 weeks. If the "double overnight" growth curve had proved true, I should have had a least a dump truck full of the stuff in 11 weeks (2 to the 77th power)!!
Wild Species Harvest TOTAL 100 grams after 11 weeks (est. 20 - 30 % moisture after 1 day drying)
Moreover, most of the algae did NOT float, indicative of very low oil content. Even a fairly modest oil content would likely have caused the algae to be surface dwellers, but these sunk to the bottom as long as they were undisturbed, though they were only marginally denser than water and stayed in a turbid state for as long as an hour when stirred. This was no surprise since the algae, although adhered to surfaces when discovered, were mainly accumulated at the bottom of the fountain. The mixed colony which received some significant "cultivation" at the early stages did better overall, but hardly significantly in light of the reputation for algal species to "double overnight". The mixed colony produced (approximately 300 grams) three times what the entirely wild and neglected colony did. For all the expense and attention it received, cultivation results were 10 times the original amount compared to four times increase in the hands-off colony for the whole 11 week period.
Another observation which seemed to make it all worthwhile, however, was that the nano-species also adhered to the glass surfaces of the aquarium (far more so than the garden variety). The obvious (super-obvious) overall conclusion is that while local species may be hardy, and tolerant of local contaminations, they are not necessarily fast growing, nor sufficiently oily to justify attempts to cultivate them. One should seek species that naturally float, indicating a density that probably has a significant proportion of lipids. Non-nano species are fairly easily filtered from the water (i.e. growth medium) by mechanical filtering (in this case cotton cloth) though I would suggest that a progressive series of medium to finer filters would be a better longer term harvesting method since the fine filters clogged rather quickly with just the few hundred grams of these tests. However the 300 thread count cotton sheeting material was also fine enough to filter almost all of the nano-algae as well, which again was a better than expected result.
The nano-species while only slightly tinting the color of the water when disperse in the volume of a gallon or more of water actually was much darker than the other larger cells when gathered together in high concentrations. I scraped the aquarium sides with a dry-wall taper´s tool and smeared the algae on a paper towel. As you will see from the picture, the concentrated algae appear nearly black to the naked eye. Spread thin, however, they produce a brighter more vibrant shade of green than the larger species did (which was more of a "pea-soup green").
Nano Species from Aquarium Walls total Harvest- smears on Paper Towel - less than 1 gram
To end on an upbeat note as usual, here's a site you might want to bookmark to visit from time to time, just for fun. They have "celebrity" videos, but in this case they have "hybrid" videos, and point out that, although most of us haven't thought of it that way, a "Moped" (motorized bicycle) is actually an early form of "HYBRID vehicle", a hybridization of human and motor power.
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://energy.psyrk.us
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