Algae And Its Effects On The Environment

Switching from the expensive oil to alternative fuels has moved from a dream to reality. Today, there are dozens of alternatives to oil that are currently available us to be used. One alternative to oil that is being used more today is ethanol. Derived from plant materials, ethanol can be a cheaper, cleaner alternative to the gasoline that our vehicles run off. When going to gas pumps, one will notice that much of the gasoline is up to 10 percent of ethanol. According to our text, most ethanol in the U.S. is made from corn, yet ethanol can be made from any biomes-- including garbage. (Turk & Bensel, 2011)

Did you know that over 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge is made from coal each year.(www.ucsasa.org, 2014)? The amount of polution that has been released into the air has caused spending of over 40 billion dollars (www.cleanerandgreener.org, 2014). Just image what the whole world could do with 40 billion dollars? That money could help with so many problems. It could pay for schools in Africa, funding for more Eco safe fuel and tons more. All of that could have been done if we hadn’t spent over 40 billion dollars just to try and fix a problem we created. To help slow down the spending on the air pollution and air pollution scientists have invented biofuel made from algae. Algae is a small plant micro-organism that lives in water. It is one of the

Anything containing oil has been an increasing problem to the environment and to people. The toxicants that the oil produce harms people with their health. In the film Fuel, the director Josh Tickell talks about how crops can produce fuel, which produces cleaner air and is safer for the public. There are also other ways that Biofuel could be produced, such as adding human waste onto algae. The way that society utilizes oil is hurting the world, which in fact is affecting the human population and environment, but people only realize it until it is too late. With biofuel people would not be in danger and it could be produced without struggling to find oil.

For over forty years now, scientists and researchers have been tirelessly searching for an alternative to fossil fuels. Biofuels have become an interesting contender in the search for the replacement of the non-renewable energy source. Biofuels have been used throughout history for over thousands of years. There is a large debate over biofuels and its true impact on the environment. Those involved in the discussion debating whether biofuels have any real overwhelming benefits compared to fossil fuels could argue for its usage. According to recent research performed by the University of Michigan, biofuels may not be the best alternative for fossil fuels. Regardless of its impact on the environment, biofuels are becoming more popular particularly when the price of oil rises.

Several experimenters have found the CO2 from a smokestack works well for growing algae. To be economical, some experts think that algae farming for biofuels will have to be done as part of cogeneration, where it can make use of waste heat, and help soak up pollution.

Two renewable alternatives to oil that are available are solar power and ethanol. Solar power will prevent the need of burning a lot of pounds of coal. The good thing with solar power is that there’s no acid rain, no urban smog overall no pollution of any kind. This will be amazing for our ecosystem. The government is trying to help with this because they know that investing in this can have environmental benefits. “Even long before society’s very existence is threatened by global warming, within the coming decades, global warming is projected to cost society trillions of dollars if left unabated. So, even ignoring the very long-term threat of societal suicide, fighting global warming with solar power will likely save society billions or even trillions of dollars”.(Shahan, 2013)

Pollution negatively effects an organism’s growth because it introduces harmful chemicals or products that cause damage to its environment. The environmental pollution experiment that was performed tested the effects of pollutants, more specifically sodium chloride, on Ankistrodesmus, which is a species of fresh water algae. The experiment investigated the effects of different concentrations of sodium chloride to examine if it promoted or suppressed Ankistrodesmus growth. The importance of this experiment was to determine if sodium chloride could be classified as a pollutant for this species of algae. Experiments conducted in 1968 show

–Algae can have high bio-fuel yield: algae can store energy in the form of oils and carbohydrates, which, combined with their high productivity, also can grow quickly at a large scale and can generate up to 50 times more the amount of oil per acre than row crops, like corn and soybeans, which produce vegetable oil.

Chemical Contaminants is another big cause of algae decreasing, the main cause of this are dumping non-water substances into the bay. Examples being: Mercury, PCBs, PAHs, pesticides. Almost three-quarters of Chesapeake Bay Is covered in Chemical Contaminants.

Although dredging can be expensive, this price can stop algal blooms before they occur. Some mitigation measures could also be taken to stop HAB’s these include; physical removal of the plant and adding algaecides to the water and changing the aquatic food web in the lake or pond. Flocculation, coagulation, sedimentation and filtration are basic ways to make our drinking water clean and free of toxins but although they work most filtration and cleaning techniques have problems. The issue that we need to research and find new ways to prevent the algae from forming in the first place. This is because although there are ways of fixing it, it does not get the job entirely done. ("Control And

Increased energy demands, the need for dependence on oil imports, and rising oil prices have created a new found interest in renewable, biomass fuels. The U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) added onto the Renewable Fuel Standard that required that all U.S. transportation fuels contain at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. Algae biofuels have the potential to make a significant contribution to achieving these goals and having our nation become an energy independent country. The U.S. federal government has invested over $800 million in biofuels research as part of the American Recovery and Renewal Act. These funds have been given to the Department of Energy - Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Biomass Program to invest in research, development, and finding ways to create an algae-to-biomass a commercialized farm and product. A few private companies are also making substantial investments in the algae to biomass area. With all the interest in algae as biomass, it is possible that algae could become the best sustainable oil option for the United States.

The first advantage of biofuels is that it can reduce the carbon emissions by 50 to 60%. This is a great advantage due to the fact that the world is currently facing major climate change issues, which is becoming a problem, as carbon dioxide is part of the gases on earth. Every day we release an amount of carbon dioxide. As we burn certain substances to create Energy they release are harmful amounts of gases. The earth then starts to warm up as when the sunlight reaches the earths surface it's either reflected back into space or it can be absorbed by the earth, as it is absorbed it releases some energy back into the atmosphere as heat. This is then how are the earth is slowly heating up and makes it clear as to why biofuels are a better source

It can be used as a food ingredient that contains excellent characteristics and rich in nutrients. It can also be used as a bio-fuel, thus offering endless future possibilities for the Earth.

14 of the 15 hottest years on earth have occurred in the 21st century. Most of this environmental phenomenon has been the catalyst for countless debates on climate change, upheaval about our current inefficient production of energy, and the frightening realization that our once precious symbols of capitalist success, our automobiles, are becoming the tightening hands choking our planet with toxic pollutants. While one silver bullet to our Industrial Revolution induced dilemma doesn’t exist, biofuels could be the miniscule relief our civilization needs to buy time to tackle the larger issues at hand. Biofuels, like cellulosic biofuel, created using switch grasses and in marginal land, and algae biofuels, created by collecting algae grown in

What environmental benefits do we receive form an influx in ethanol as an alternative fuel? First let’s look