and then processed into fuel. But the process is expensive and difficult. Now a company in Texas, LiveFuels, Inc., hopes that it will be able to change all that. The idea is to create a biofuel based on the oils from the fish that eat the algae.


LiveFuels plans to make use of natural food chains in order to get biofuels. Gas 2.0 reports on the facilities used by the Brownsville company:

The company-who develops renewable algae-based biofuels-has a test facility in Brownsville, TX. At the location they have 45 acres of open saltwater ponds which will be used for optimizing the algal production.... LiveFuels plans to grow a mix of regional species in low-cost, open-water systems. The algae will be "harvested" with filter-feeding fish and other aquatic herbivores.

The idea is that the fish can harvest the algae, grazing on it, and then those fish can in turn be processed for the biofuel base. This is a different approach from current algae-based biofuel processes that may have some merit. After all, something similar is being done in Greenland, where sharks caught in fishing nets are being processed as biofuel.
It will be interesting to see whether this process saves on costs and creates a more cost-efficient biofuel.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

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The verdict by Britain's prestigious Royal Society came little more than three months before a UN showdown in Copenhagen on how to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

John Shepherd, a professor at Britain's University of Southampton, who chaired a 12-member panel which assessed the evidence, said geo-engineering was filling a perilous political void.

"Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems -- yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them," he said.
The report cautiously said some geo-engineering schemes were technically feasible but were shadowed by safety worries and doubts about affordability.

Provided these questions were answered, such projects could be a useful tool as part of a worldwide switch to a low-carbon economy, it said.

But, the report warned, other geo-engineering schemes are so costly or so freighted with risk and unknowns that they should only be considered a last-ditch fix.
Just five years ago, geo-engineering was widely dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as quirky or delusional. As recently as 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned of its potential risk and unquantified cost.
But the schemes are now getting a serious hearing in many quarters, helped by mounting evidence that climate change is advancing faster than thought while progress towards a carbon-curbing UN treaty is moving at glacial speed.

Supporters say geo-engineering can buy time to let politicians hammer out a deal or wean the global economy off polluting fossil fuels.

The report, "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty," was based mainly on peer-reviewed literature.

It took a year to carry out, and the Royal Society came under fire from green groups who accused it of handing a cloak of respectability to a once-mocked scientific fringe.

Ibid

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