October 4, 2018 • 51 mins
Just a couple years ago, algae was touted as the green, plentiful biofuel of the future. But that didn’t pan out. Why? And is algae down for the count? Don’t bet on it. Only a fool would bet against green water.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and I just want to
remind you that we are releasing a brand new podcast
called Short Stuff. It's got its own feed and everything,
but it's still the same great kind of stuff you
should know that you love. It's got Me and Chuck
and Jerry, but the topics are briefer and the episodes
(00:20):
are shorter, and we hope you like it. It's its
own thing. It comes out every Wednesday, and you can
find it by going to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you get your podcasts and searching for short Stuff. Enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:48):
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. And Jerry said, go,
so this is stuff you should know which America loves
because it rhymes. Mmmm what rhymes? Jerry said, go, so
it's stuff you should not and Americans love rhymes. Isn't
that the new uh reality show America Loves Rhyming? That'd
(01:11):
be cool, would be like a hip hop kind of
talent show. Yeah, I think that'd be neat. America's got rhymes. Yes,
that's going pretty good. How about you, man, I'm good.
I'm I'm finally uh all cleared up for my weird
Australian gold. Oh that's good. You sound much better. You
(01:33):
look good. Yeah. Just loving life again. Uh well, not that,
but I feel physically able. It's life and stuff right now.
But it is, You're like in the grips of it.
Jerry's all strung out. I'm a little tired kind of
what going on. If I keep saying, if you see
me live in November, then that means all as well.
Yeah almost there, chuck, Just another monthsh yeah, yeah, I
(01:59):
would stays is. October is my favorite month generally, but
this October's is the suck. Oh yeah, you're Halloween is
your favorite holiday kind of person? Huh? I love it.
Just Halloween football's cranking up, that first fall breeze blows
in the whole thing of October. But of course it's Atlanta,
so it's still you know, in the nineties. It's a
(02:20):
weirdly hot, ridiculous Atlanta has got some odd weather. I'll
give you that. My friend I was telling Jerry the
other day that I saw a thing. I believe it
was the New York Times had this interactive feature where
you could see how many days above ninety degrees where
you lived was when you were born compared to now.
And in nineteen seventy one, Atlanta had fifty five days
(02:42):
above ninety Now it has seventy seven, and in another
like ten years, I think it'll be ninety days above
ninety degrees because the climate change. Or is that just
the New York Times editorial opinion. No, I mean this
is These are the facts. They didn't say. Why if
we could devay that if you want, because it sounds
fake to me. No, I mean, that's just the reality
(03:05):
of the temperature. They weren't saying. I think let's just
draw around conclusions. Sure, sure, I know. The point is
it's hot. It is hot, and you know what happens
when it's hot, Chuck, I love this segue. Algae blooms. Yep,
you know what happens when algae blooms. Fuel is born.
(03:26):
All kinds of things. Potentially you're born, cosmetics, mayonnaise, um, food, livestock, sushi, succi,
all that stuff. All of it is born when algae blooms.
Sushi sandwiches, sushi, shushi sandwich. Oh, Steve brule our heart. Yeah,
(03:50):
I had a very flirted with greatness when a publicist
for John c Riley said that he might be on
movie crush and it did not happen. So oh, I'm
sorry about that. That's right. That would have been That
would have been pretty exciting. You were broken up for
a little while there, weren't you, right though? Yeah? You
recovered just like it was an Australian cold. Nothing. All right,
(04:11):
So let's talk algae. This is pretty remarkable. Yes, So, um,
we should kind of set the states here because just
in the last couple of years, the bottom has kind
of dropped out on the algae. Is bio fuel um
push among venture capitalists and oil companies dropped out? Is
in not happening. It's not happening, at least not right now.
(04:34):
There was this There was this moment in time about
two thousand and eleven to say, I think two thousand fifteen,
where it looked like at least as as far as
like money and attention and media exposure that was being
thrown at algae was that it was it was the
next great bio fuel, and that it was going to
(04:54):
happen really soon. But the thing that I was learning
about venture capitalists is like they know like soon, they
like right now. And so as it became very clear
that a lot of the early preliminary results from the
lab we're not necessarily translating into the real world, a
lot of people walked away. But in doing that that
(05:14):
it's not to say that algae as a biofuel isn't
going to be a viable fuel of the future. It's
just going to take a lot more money and a
lot more time than everybody at first was kind of
hyped up for over the last couple of years. So
it's still there, the promise is still there. It's just
not happening tomorrow. Some people predict it might not even
happen this century, but I take issue with that. I
(05:35):
think it will happen in the twenty one century. Well,
it's funny because I did UM occasionally for stuff like this,
I will search just news uh on the old Google,
and today they're popped up an article about a company
in Hawaii that is in fact pushing forward UM. After
all they're testing and everything, they're pushing forward with with
(05:56):
a with the plant with a bio diesel production plant
from algae. So that's awesome. At least one place is
doing it in Hawaii. Yeah, I think I think there
are a few companies that are like, we're staying the course,
we're going to figure this out. But for what I
saw in the parlance of venture capitalists, the industry is
pivoted to UM food production more than um food, and
(06:19):
food and additive production more than um fuel. But from
the research, they're learning how to grow more algae faster
and better and harvesting it more cheaply and processing it
more cheaply. All of those lessons can be extrapolated over
to the fuel industry as well. So as long as
people are messing around with algae, there's a lot of
(06:39):
good stuff that's going to come from it. And I
can understand after researching this article where all that hype
came from, because it's just like beautiful stuff. Yeah, it
really is, and we should we should specify here, and
we're talking algae. There's something like a hundred thousand or
more different genetically diverse strains of algae um but typically
(07:03):
you can kind of divide it into two categories. There's microalgae,
which is what makes water green and it's a microscopic,
single cell plant and then there's macro algae, which is
like you think of with seaweed or kelp or sea
lettuce or something like that. Yeah. And you know, for
this show, we're talking about alga culture. Um. And this
(07:25):
is not any I mean it's new in the sense
that we are rampant gump efforts into studying like bi
fuels and stuff like that. But the Japanese have been
cultivating algae for a long long time, like years or more. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
it's always been a big thing there. Uh. In the
(07:47):
British Isles, like in in sixteen century Mexico with the Aztecs,
people have been eating algae, using algae. We're gonna talk
a lot about spilina, which has been consumed in harvest
it for thousands of years. Uh, and so you know
we've been eating it, using it for fertilizers, um, thickening
(08:08):
agents for food like you said with mayonnaise, and like
in things like toothpaste. It's a big, big business. I believe,
about a six billion dollar worldwide business, a couple of
billion of which is for seaweed paper alone for nori. Yeah,
just for the stuff they wrap sushi. And it's two
billion dollars two billion dollars for those delicious green sheets
(08:33):
that look like paper that you eat. Yeah, So as
it stands, even without the idea of it being like
the next alternative energy, it's still a six billion dollar business, right,
so there's a lot of reason for people to keep
paying attention. Is there's money to be made in algae
in other words, right, Yeah, but you can you know,
like we said, with a bio fuel and we'll get
into this more. One of the cool things about algae
(08:54):
is how versatile it is. Beyond the fact that you
can eat it and you can well we'll talk about
all the myriad things you can do with it, but
you can squeeze oil out of that stuff that can
be turned into gasoline or jet fuel, which is amazing. Yeah,
you can replace kerosene with biofuel form algy and you
can use the waste product that you get as a result.
(09:15):
It's it's really sort of a wonderful thing. And here
goes it sounds like a big, long setup, So it was.
It was a beautiful one man way to go um
so with with algae with either type. What we're talking
about our plants, right, and just like any other plants,
(09:36):
they produce uh, they produce their own food through photosynthesis.
Green plants they use chlorophyll and sunlight, and they convert um.
They also use carbon dioxide and they convert all that
into energy stores and they give off as a byproduct oxygen.
So you can start to see why algae is a
(09:57):
bit of a darling of the environmentalists set, because is
first of all, it's drawing C O two from the
air and it's putting out oxygen as a byproduct, and
then it's a darling of the energy set. These are
two different sets that sometimes overlap um because you can
actually take the energy store and which is stored largely
(10:19):
in the form of oil, but we'll see other kinds
and unlock it, like you said, in different types of fuel.
That's easier said than done. But you can also do
a lot of this stuff with lamb based plants to right,
and there actually was a big push there were Algae
represents the third generation of bio fuels. The first generation
was UM basically like cellulosic ethanol, using like corn to
(10:42):
turn into um fuel, which a lot of people were like,
this is really great. And then if you'll remember those
food riots in like Egypt and Haiti, and I think
two thousand and eight, you like, diverting corn from the
food supply over to the energy sector is really really bad.
So people said, Okay, we don't want to we don't
want to mess with our food supply. We can't use
(11:02):
food for energy, but we can use waste from that stuff.
So like you can take the um corn stalks that
nobody's eating and turn them into a biofuel, which is great,
but it requires several extra expensive steps, so it's just
not cost efficient. Now algae came along and it has
a lot of things going for it compared to land
(11:23):
based plants that made it really really attractive for a
number of reasons. Well, yeah, for sure. Uh it's and
when we when we say something is fast growing algae,
we need a new word for how fast algae can grow.
Ultra fast growing. Yeah, like that turbo turbo growth. Uh.
Land plants like you were talking about, sometimes it takes
(11:45):
years or months maybe to reach maturity. Um algae can
do this. That can complete a life cycle sometimes in
a day. Algae can well. Some algae because I think
there are more than seventy thousand species. I saw a
hundred thousand. Really they probably found thirty this morning. Um.
Some algae, though, can double their biomass in an hour. Uh.
(12:08):
Super efficient as far as converting solar energy to biomass, um,
I believe land plants use like of their energy just
building like the structure like roots, structures and stems and
things needed to like support the plant itself. You don't
need this with algae. It's just floating out there, right, So,
(12:30):
I mean, if you're using of that sunlight and carbon
dioxide nutrients just to build the structure, you need to
keep doing that just to be a dumb plant. That's
extraordinarily inefficient, at least compared to algae, which it just
floats in the water, doesn't need roots, it doesn't need
much structure. It's a single celled plant. So basically all
it is is a little solar powered energy producing factory,
(12:55):
and that's what it does and it doesn't so it's
extraordinarily efficient compared to land plants, for sure. Uh. Compared
to land plants, you can grow algae and very very
tight concentrated spaces. Uh. I have here that they produce
up to a hundred times more oil breaker a hundred
times than land plants. Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah, that's pretty
substantial too. Plus, um, there's different types of algae that
(13:20):
produce oils are edible for food. Um. I don't think
they very frequently overlap. But from all these different types
of algae, you can say, well, all I have is
the salt marsh pond to grow algae in what kind
of algae can I have? God? And God goes here,
take this algae. It's pretty great. I'll give you a
(13:41):
pretty good buzz too if you dry it out. And uh,
the guy takes it from God, puts it in a
salt marsh pond, harvests it, saves a little bit for
his head stash, and then sells the rest to Rex Tillerson.
That's right, and that's the end of the Bible. And uh,
the other cool thing is algae doesn't compete. It's not
(14:02):
like an either or with land plants. It grows in
the water, So it's not like, oh, I need all
this land that you need for corn to grow my algae.
It's a big one. Don't even need fresh water there.
It can grow in in gross water, dirty water, polluted water,
salt water. And not all algae, but certain kinds of algae.
(14:23):
Uh So it's not like there there they can coexist,
you know, they can all just be friendly. You can
still have your corn fields in your algae ponds. Yeah.
And again it's like it's unlike the first generation of
bio fuels. It's not competing directly with the food supply.
It's not saying, well, we need this land to grow algae,
(14:43):
so we can't grow corn on it. It's we've got
all this land to grow corn, and we've got this
stupid pond that's not doing anything for anybody. Let's grow
algae in there too, baby, And then you've got a
farmer that's growing both. One of the other things about
algae too, Chuck, is that a lot of those things overlap, right.
You can you can you can actually set up a
kind of algae that is not only like producing oil.
(15:09):
You can use the leftover stuff after you've extracted the
oil to feed your cows on your on your land,
or to feed the corn that's going to feed the cows.
And then all the while you're also drawing carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. So it's pretty it's pretty great. It's
pretty versatile, and there's a lot of reasons people like
it so on all that, I think we set it
(15:30):
up pretty well. You want to take a break, Yeah,
I get you know how excited I get when we
talk about efficient systems. I know you do. You get jazz?
I need to like, I need to go calm down.
All right? Oh all right? So we set up that
(16:07):
algae is basically the miracle of miracles here on planet Earth. Uh,
if you've got water, you've got a sun in the sky,
and some nutrients, then you can harvest I mean, you
can harvest algae. But algae, you don't, like, it'll grow
on its own, right, Oh yeah, I mean that's I mean,
it grows naturally. It's not like we created this stuff.
(16:29):
But you can grow it on your own. You can't. Well,
there's there's I think what you're saying, what it's like,
there's there's techniques you can do to improve the growth
of algae, right yeah, or like you can you know,
you can harvest is stuff from the ocean. But there
are many many ways to actually like have your own
little algae farm, right, especially if you're making um, if
you're if you're doing um micro algae, like the tiny
(16:52):
single celled stuff that you actually can't see. It's just
you know, when water turns green, Yeah, that's that's algae
in it. It's not like you can you can see
it or anything. The stuff you can see that's considered
macro algae. Microalgae is again single celled, microscopic individual plants
that there's so many of them they just tint the
water green. So if you want to grow those, there's
(17:14):
a few different techniques available to actually farming um algae. Again,
it's called alga culture, which is not a beautiful word,
but it's like it works. Do you I like, I
like how it looks more than I like how it sounds.
Alga culture. I like it. Yeah, it's like you like,
you like choked on something in the middle of the
word alga culture. All right, So we have the three methods.
(17:37):
Like you're saying, um, you have your standard open pond,
your standard clothes pond, and your standard bio photo reactor. UM.
An open pond is exactly what you think. That's the
cheapest way to do it. Obviously, the simplest way, the
sort of old fashioned way, is in a big shallow pond. Um.
And it's you know, it's not just willy nilly that
(17:58):
will usually divide this thing up in to um almost
like I mean, they say race ways, which is really
kind of dumb. In this article, I would say it's
more like lines of like planted rows of corn. Let's say, yeah,
kind except it's algae. And the thing is is sunlight,
uh is great for algae, but it only you know,
once you get a lot of algae going, it only
(18:19):
penetrates so far into the water. So what you need
to do is you need to agitate it and stir
that algae up to make sure everything gets a little
taste of that sweet sweet sunlight. Uh. And in case
of an open pond, you have a system like a
paddle wheel system, agitating and stuff, exposing everything to the
light all the while. It's almost like composting in a way.
(18:40):
You're you're mixing and nutrients and c O two into
the liquid um. It's a great system, but it's it's
the one that produces the least biomass um. It loses
water to evaporation, so you continually need to add water.
And this is the one where contamination or predators can
come in and you know, p or eat or yeah, yeah,
(19:03):
I guess either one would be a problem. Huh. Yeah,
you've got a wolf pean in your algae pond or
eating the algae. You don't want either one of those. Ye,
So that's the open pond. UM close pond is about
the same, but you've you've covered it up sort of
like a greenhouse, which means a little more costs, but
you have a lot more control you do, and the
cost would be mostly up front if you if you
(19:25):
build the greenhouse correctly, it's not too expensive to build
a greenhouse, although if you're doing it on a very
very large scale, you either need a lot of ponds
with a lot of greenhouses or one big pond with
a massive greenhouse over it. Either way, the point is
is you're exerting your human right to control nature over
the pond that you're growing algae, and it has your
(19:48):
wolf friend can't get in um, it's not going to
get contaminated by other algae. It's just a it's just
a lot easier to control, and it's not, i would guess,
not too terribly much more expensive than the and pond method. Yeah,
if you've got if money is no object, if you're
a person of means and you want to allow your friends, Yeah,
(20:09):
and you want to really want to show off and
annoy your neighbor. Although I think these things look really cool,
Actually I do too. It looks like something that the
Ghostbusters would have trapped some you know, it looks like ectoplasm.
It's very bright green. Um. The bio photoreactor method, this
is completely closed. Um. Basically you're growing algae in these tubes.
(20:30):
It's all I mean, I say artificial. It's not artificial
because it's still water, but you're you're completely manipulating what's
going on with pumps and nutrients and water and light
in these clear tubes. Um. Sometimes it's like an automatic
system that's all completely set up. You know, it's a
lot of money, but it's a really like it's the
(20:53):
most efficient way to do it, even though it's the
most expensive it is. But I mean, like if you
if you're you know, growing algae for commercial purposes and
you've got a little sweet VC money, you might as
well set up a bio photo reactor. You're right, you've
got I mean, you've got light coming from all directions right, um,
(21:14):
and you have uh a controlled closed system. Because one
of the things ABOi alogay is it grows and it
grows really fast. But if you can, if you make
sure it has nutrients it needs, the pH is just
right like it like slightly alkaline water of a pH
between seven and nine I believe, with a temperature of
(21:35):
sixty eight degrees fahrenheight. You like, you can control all
this stuff very easily with the biophoto reactor. Again, the
problem is the upfront cost, yeah, for sure. But the
thing is is with these three methods you can grow algae.
That's some methods are better than others, but you know
(21:55):
that you can grow algae in here. The problem really
comes in in getting the algae out of the water
and then getting the oil or whatever you're trying to
get from the algae out of the algae. There's a
lot of um, there's a lot of steps you need
to take in and some of like the more steps
you add, the more involved each step becomes, the more
(22:18):
expensive the processes. And when the process gets expensive, those
VC guys start to walk away. So you have to
figure out these this process and that's kind of where
it's at right now. In part. That's kind of where um,
the at least algae biofuel industry is stalled out right now. Yeah.
So those three methods that's for cultivating the micro algae
(22:40):
um the macro algae that we talked about, which is
kelp and sea lettuce and the stuff that like when
you're in the ocean, like, oh, get that stuff away
from me, Like I don't want the miracle plant on
my leg um. That stuff has been cultivated for centuries,
thousands and thousands of years in the open sea um,
(23:01):
the ocean, the sunlight, everything that it needs is in there,
and it grows like crazy. It's great. Harvesting this stuff
is a little tough. Uh. They've been doing it, like
I said, for thousands of years and in coastal areas
all over the place, all over the world. But they,
you know, begin to think like hey, we we maybe
want to cultivate this stuff. Uh so what do we do?
(23:25):
Maybe you know, it'll attach to a rope, like the
spore attaches to a rope and it grows on that.
So let's just throw these rope lines down on anchors
and it's basically a vertical growth rope. Uh, the same
like with a large net. It grows on that rope
and they basically can just like anchor the stuff down
(23:48):
have it grow along these rope lines and then pull
those in when you want to harvest it, right exactly,
that's a pretty that's a a traditional way of cultivating it. Um.
If you're up and knees, you think, well, I guess
I'll just invent a really awesome machine that mows the
law and of a kelp forest underwater and just harvest
(24:09):
it like that. So there's that technique as well. Uh.
And then you also like there's just walking out into
the water and and grabbing whether it's kelp or um
floating kind of mucky algae um, you can just harvest
it as simply as that. The difference is you're talking
about macro alergae is something you can put your hands
(24:30):
on and just kind of put into like a bucket
or a bag or a basket or something some receptacle
of some type um. Whereas with my with microalgay, if
you try to do that, it's just gonna you've got
a bucket full of water. You still have this harvesting
technique that makes microalergy so much more difficult that you
(24:51):
you can't just use traditional techniques to harvest it. It's
you have to basically set up some big time machines. Yeah,
so let's talk about the harvesting and processing a little bit. Um.
Like you said, with the micrology, you're just pulling this
stuff off. But ultimately what you want to do is
end up with a paste, with an algae paste. Yeah,
(25:12):
that's the good stuff, that's the real good stuff. So
in order to do that, you need to obviously you
need to remove the moisture um and that will leave
you with this dense biomastic paste um. Micro Algae presents
a unique problem, like you said, because it's just like
it looks like a bucket of water, green water. So
(25:33):
it makes sense that one of the methods is filtration.
You just feed it through a filter and it's got
the tiniest little membrane that these pores won't fit through
these algae cells, and so it just filters it out.
And the problem with that is is probably what you
would think is it's really easy for that stuff to
become clogged up. Right. I don't even know why they
(25:56):
would try this. It would just clog immediately, you know. Yeah,
but I'm sure it's not I'm sure it takes out
a consideration with its design. Sure, I guess you want
to talk about flaculation. Flaculation that sounds dirty. It really does.
It's not, though. It's just basically clumping algae. Like some
algae naturally clumps, but not necessarily the algae you want.
(26:20):
So if you throw in the algae that clumps with
the algae you want, it can make the other algae clump.
There's also chemicals that will make algae clump, and then
you're basically taking micro algay and and converting it into
something you can manipulate like a macro algae. So that helps.
That's good, but then now you have microalgae that has
(26:40):
some sort of clumping chemicals or algae that you don't
really want mixed in with it. It's not that it's
not fool proof method, right. And the other problem with
flocculation is if if you do it too much, you
will grow hair on your pumps. It's true, it makes
the saints cry when you flaculate. Uh. Flotation is another
(27:01):
h is another method. So this is when you use
compressed air and you put it in the water and
you bubble it up and that makes things that makes
the micro algy kind of go to the surface where
you can just sort of skim it off. Like uh
like uh like uh foam grit chaff. Well, it's grit
(27:21):
chaff like you know when you make slow cook Southern
style grits. Do that. Yeah, yeah, you got you gotta
rinse it, same with like sushi rice. You rinse it
in cold water. And that the husk I guess it is.
I guess it's the husk kind of floats on the top.
That's starch and you get a little Yeah, you get
a little strainer and skim that stuff off. If you
(27:43):
can end up with good soft grits or good soft rice,
what do you do with the stuff you skim off? Yeah?
I wonder if there's a use for that. Surely I'll
bet people feed it to their pigs or something like that. Well,
there'd be a lot of grits that you're that you're cooking.
Well no, I mean it's not like you're making the
grits two feed the pigs, but rather than just throwing
(28:04):
it out to the pig, you know what I mean?
All Right, there's also chuck I love this one. There's
also the centrifuge method. Yeah, that makes sense. Just where
you you get that bucket, but your bucket spins around
and has tiny holes in it, and it's basically do
you remember the salad spinner? Remember I've got one. Okay,
So it's a salad spinner for your microalgy basically, yeah,
(28:26):
just flings it all to the outside. The thing is,
unlike your salad spinner, you can't get it at a
discount Marshall's or t J Max. You probably have to
build it yourself for buy one. That's very expensive. When
you start adding the word centrifuge rather than salad spinner,
the prices automatically goes up. Yeah, and here's the thing.
(28:47):
The cool thing is you don't have to do just
one of these. A lot of times. Uh, they might
be like, well, let's flocculate for a little while, but
I don't want my palms to grow, Harry, So I
will then throw it in a centrifuge because I'm drowning
in VC juice. And they bought me one, Um so
they can. They can combine methods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
(29:08):
lot of people will combine methods, and I'm sure they
combine methods out of necessity because none of the methods
worked by themselves. Yeah, for macro, you'd really just need
to dry this stuff out and I get the sense
that a lot of it is sort of the old
fashioned way just by kind of put like laying it
out or hanging it out in the sun. Is that
about right? I would guess, yeah, surely that's the traditional method.
(29:30):
You know what was the one that we did? Oh,
coffee coffee beans? Right? Did they just lay those out
in the sun? Yeah? I think we did a show
on that, and like the traditional method is just like
just beans just laid out baking. Am I wrong? Do
you remember that? I don't remember at this point. I
just remember that goats eat them, and some people pick
(29:51):
them out of the goats poop and then sell them
for a million dollars a pound. Uh. Should we take
a break? I think so, Charles, all right, well let's
do Let's do that and then we'll talk about, um,
some of the many, many uses of algae right after this.
Oh all right, dude, we're back, Chuck, And I have
(30:35):
to say, I'm I'm a fan of algae. Now, so
there's a lot of different things you can use it for.
We'll talk first about the ways you can use algae
for fuel. And you might think at first, like, whoa
are you going to use algae for fuel. Again, that
energy store that some types of algae, not all algae,
(30:57):
but some types, and then other types even more than others,
take the energy that they're converting sunlight, c O two
and other nutrients into these energy stores they converted as
an oil within their tiny little single cell body. And
if you get enough of these single cell bodies together
in the form of these allergies that you've gotten the
(31:19):
water out of, you can extract that oil out of it.
And there's a lot of different ways to do it.
You can break the cell walls basically what you're trying
to do, either chemically or shaking or um or physically yea, yeah, physically. Um,
you could also hit it with some sound waves. There's
a lot of things you can do and you can't
(31:39):
some um ted nugent I think really really causes them
to split open um and then you get the oil.
So when you take that oil, you then have to
refine it, and there's depending on what you want to
do with it, there's different techniques. Yeah, for sure. I
mean we've been championing the biodiesel, well that's really not true.
(32:01):
We've been saying it would be great if they could
figure this out. Uh, and you know the key to
all this stuff. Anytime we've done anything, We've done other
episodes on other bio fuels, it's all like it would
it would be the one of choice if you could
figure out a way to do it and make the
most money. That's the only stumbling black every is when
(32:22):
are you going to get the big companies involved? It's
when you can say, hey, we've really figured out such
that it's a genuine threat to um whatever crude oil.
Well what's crazy is up until very recently um x
on Mobile and Chevron were both like invested in. So
I mean the big companies were involved and they all
(32:42):
just kind of walked away because it wasn't happening like
in the next ten or twenty years. Yeah. I mean
you get that in a certain way because they're there
to make money. But I don't know, sometimes it be
nice if someone sort of went out on a limb
and maybe that's how it ends up happening. Well, they are,
it's the little guys in Hawaii who are doing it,
you know. So who deserved to be billionaires after this
(33:04):
for trying to save the earth? Um So we talked
a little bit about bio diesel. It can also be
refined uh as an as an additive right for gasoline
and jet fuel. Yeah. UM. The cool thing about that
is if you're going to convert it into jet fuel,
you can actually use existing refineries and that does something
(33:24):
very important. It cuts down on costs. Right. UM. When
cellulistic ethanol was huge in like two thousand seven eight two, UM,
there was a one huge problem with it where if
you were just pumping pure ethanol through existing pipelines, they
were gonna wear down in like just a few years.
(33:44):
That is not true apparently with um refined biodiesel from
algae or jet fuel from algae, because it does not
corrode the pipes and it doesn't corrode the systems that
you used to refine it, so you don't have to
build entire new pipe lines or entire new refiners. You
can just switch over to algae at some points. That Yeah,
(34:07):
that's that's a huge mark in its favor. And I
think well like seven years ago they actually there was
a flight from Houston to Chicago an entire commercial jet
powered by Algil oil, Algil algyl Man. I hate this.
I guess Algil Algil oil yeah, okay, I would say
(34:30):
that they delivered the Rangers to get beat by the Cubs.
But it's not Alga. It's not Alga culture, though, um
it could be if we if we make it. We
have a lot of listeners all right. By the way,
the Houston is the Astros, not the Rangers. Oh where
do the where do the Rangers player? They out of Dallas.
It's the Texas Rangers. But they yeah, they're like Dallas
(34:54):
Metropolitan team. Yeah. Well, sorry Astros fans. And I should
know that too, because I think they have the greatest
uniform of all time, the seventies one. Oh the orange stripes.
Man's just beautiful. It was pretty good. So uh okay,
So you can turn into jet fuel. And I don't
(35:15):
think we've talked about ethanol really, have we No, And
so ethanol again, it's basically just breaking down the cellulose
that remember how you said plants like spend of their
energy building the structures that support them and let them live.
If you take those structures and that support them and
let them live and break them down, you can turn that.
That's what cellulosic ethanol is. So it's basically plant material
(35:39):
that those carbohydrates are what they use to build those walls,
and you can break them down and use them for energy.
And you can do the same thing with with algae. Two. Yeah,
and the great size. The great thing is aside from
the oil because algae, algae is made up from carbohydrates, uh,
and cellulose. You can actually ferment this stuff into grain alcohol. Yeah,
(36:04):
and that tastes like, I don't know, like seaweed that
gets you wasted. I don't know. I would try it, sure,
um you mean? And I were coming back from hilton
Had this past weekend and there was a billboard for
a liquor store outside of Savannah, and um, it said
(36:25):
it's a corn whiskey but in the um Coca cola
font for some inexplicable wreaths. Oh really Yeah. It was
really weird to see, was how it's hilton Head. It
was it storm ravaged or not. It must have hit
above it because it was totally fine, beautiful, not a
not a leaf out of place. And you know, because
(36:47):
of your hilton Head leaf turtle. I counted them before,
you mean, they're all here, They're all like they're all
president account of for all right, be back in six
months right, no, and move. Uh. And the methane I
think is the final uh, one of the final uses. Um,
everyone knows. We talked about methane plenty, that's one of
(37:10):
the main ingredients and natural gas, and it's you know,
it's it's uh, it's what cows make when they when
they have a twoty booty. It is. And it says
here that it's um that it's a clean fuel that
I don't understand that at all. Methane is like one
of the worst greenhouse gases there are. There's it's worse
(37:31):
than carbon dioxide as far as trapping heat. It's it's
just there's less of it than carbon dioxide. I just
thought that was really weird. But the thing I love
about producing methane through algae is that you're not actually
using the algae. You're actual you are using the algae.
You're using the algae as a feedstock for bacteria. Because
(37:53):
when bacteria consume algae, they produce methane. So you're taking
the algae and feeding it to bacteria. It's seems pretty
cold and calculating, perfect for an oil company. Uh. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um. We also talked earlier. I
think I teased out that you can that algae even
loves really gross polluted water. Um. It thrives in polluted water,
(38:16):
So they could use it potentially, and I think they
maybe or are they They are they're using it for
wastewater treatment in in certain places. Yes, you can use
it for wastewater treatment. They're using it. I think there's
an experiment in an old tin mine in Cornwall in
the UK where um they have they've added some algae
(38:39):
to see if they can bio remediate the cadmium and
the arsenic in the water that's flooded the mine. And
the great thing about algae is some of it just
absorbs heavy metals and pollutants. It just absorbs it and
hangs onto it and then you go, um, just put
it away for a billion years or something like that.
You know, it just kind of sucks it up. There's
(39:00):
actually use the stuff too for metabolism, so it will
break down a heavy metal like cadmium that's toxic to
us into something that's totally inert to us, which is
just mind bogglingly wonderful. So they're starting to really really
kind of look into the idea of using again there's
like a hundred thousand different strains of algae to using
(39:22):
some of them for bioremediation, which is a huge plus
because right now we use chemicals to stop up chemicals. Um.
Another thing you can use algae for is for oil spills,
and there's something called herders herder chemicals, which if you
add to an oil spill, it actually moves them together
and turns it from this little thin sheen on the
(39:43):
ocean into a much more concentrated, thicker sheen that you
can actually skim off or burn or something. Well, there's
types of algae that do that too. But the plus
of algae is that it's not some chemical that stays
in the environment like the stuff we currently use. The
chemicals we currently use that we're not quite sure what
the long term effects are, right, Like, okay, no more oil,
(40:05):
but now we've got this unknown or not unknown, but
a chemical with unknown uh damage down the line, just
replacing the oil. Right with algae, that's not the case.
We know what algae will do. We're pretty much I mean,
I'm sure there's invasive species situations that we could accidentally
get ourselves into, but that's that's the last thing you're
thinking of when you're cleaning up an oil spill, you
(40:25):
know what I'm saying, And that baby penguin comes over,
it's like help me please. Uh. And then earlier in
the show, you know, I talked about the the quote
unquote waste product we're talking about if you're extracting that oil,
what you have left over after you've squeezed all that
oil out of it, you can use that as fertilizer
(40:48):
or as a supplement for animal feed. Um. And that's
that's the leftover, even if you're not using it for biofuels. Uh,
it's really good for you. Like humans eat it, cattle
eats it, marine like shrimp and shellfish love the stuff.
It is chocked like if you're talking about spiro lena,
(41:08):
it is chock full of protein, omega three, fatty acids, vitamins, iron, beta, carotene.
I think it's got more protein than meat. So for
a hundred grams U, spir lena has fifty seven grams
of protein, steak has twenty five grams of protein. Amazing,
(41:28):
And spilena has a hundred and fifty eight percent of
your daily iron. Uh, Steak has thirteen percent of it
and steaks like a high iron food. I believe spir
lena has far more iron than spinach. Even it also
has tons of calcium like you said omega three's and
like I think, in the seventies the un called it
a super food of the future, and it is extremely
(41:48):
good for you. But again, the idea of calling it
super food of the future is kind of ironic because
in the sixteenth century the Aztecs were eating it as
little cakes of spar lena um. The Welsh have been
eating something called lava bread, which is um just basically
spiraling an algae on toast. Um so good. I want
(42:11):
to try it. It looks it looks like overcooked, overcooked
mass of spinach um. But they say, like you can
tell like the different teroirs depending on where it was harvested.
But I I would love to try that. Yeah, And
you mentioned very early on the reason that um, I
guess people like Exxon have put it on hold. You
(42:31):
sent this great article where I would figure the limitation
would be like, well, it's in the processing, it's too expensive,
or we haven't figured it out yet. Apparently what's sort
of the big hold up is in the biology itself.
It's just um, I think it just you need too
much of it to go to scale. Is that about right? Yeah? Yeah,
(42:54):
Because here's the problem the stuff. If you're growing it
in a flask and a lab, it really does like
all this amazing stuff that people are saying. The problem
is when you extrapolate that into the real world, real world,
real world conditions kind of start to take over and
it doesn't necessarily translate like it should. Um. And one
(43:15):
of the big things they ran into is when you
start getting algae on a massive scale, when you start
growing it on an industrial scale, the algae starts to
compete with other algae for things like sunlight and nutrients.
So you're left with well, then that means let's say
that's having the um the amount of algae I'm trying
to grow, or the amount of oil I'm trying to harvest.
(43:38):
That means I have to double the surface area of
the pond. I have to grow twice as much algae
as I thought. And there was some some prediction I
think a few years ago that bioalgabe or biodiesel form
algae or biofuel would be running about ten percent of
the euse um transportation sector, which is just an enormous amount.
(43:59):
That would be amazing if they could do that, But
they found that Um, for that to happen, you would
need a pond. Basically, they about three times the size
of Belgium to grow that much algae as it stands
right now. So again that's not to say that like
it's just never gonna happen. It's just well, here's a
really big wall that we've hit. Now, let's figure out
how to get over it. Because Algie really could do this.
(44:22):
Yeah for sure, Um, you just need upon three times
the size of Belgium. But here's the thing is, maybe
don't like baby step it, you know, Yeah, I think
what about upon the size of just one Belgium and
not three belgiums Now, we said Belgium so many times
it sounds funny. Well, we could just flood Belgium. Oh man,
(44:44):
it would be so mean Belgium lovely. They've been asking
for it for years though, Uh, what's this other one here?
In two thousand and ten, Um, a scientist based at
Again Again University, I bet they don't have a mascot
(45:08):
the Flying Tongue Twisters. They published findings that suggested an
area about the size of the state of Maryland. H
if it was sea lettuce, you could provide enough protein
to feed the entire human population. Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
But it's sea lettuce. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would try.
(45:31):
I've never had sea lettuce as far as I know, No,
I would try to. It's just the article does say that, like,
you know, part of the problem then is like convincing
everyone to eat sea lettuce all the time. And it's
absolutely true. I mean, it'd be foolish to think otherwise,
you know. But if you're trying to solve world hunger,
I mean, you know, well that's the thing you could
also and a lot of people use spear lena powder
is like a dietary supplement because it's so good for
(45:54):
you and it's so energy dense. Um. But there are
there's also there's a couple of other things I wanted
to mentioned that before we leave. Um about the the
kind of greenness of algae. One, it's carbon neutral. I
don't think we said that. But the the CEO two
that um, the algae uses to produce it to do
(46:16):
its thing, and it's actually sucking it right out of
the air, so it releases c O two when it's
burned as biofuel. But that CEO two was just in
the air like a month ago, so it's not like
it's coming from a sequestered sink of c O two.
Like fossil fuels that we dig up that are not
part of the carbon cycle right then, that we're actually
(46:38):
adding to their So it would make it a carbon
neutral thing. And then the other thing, if we replaced
soy um with algae, livestock and fish feed, we would
no longer have to do any wild caught fish because
apparently they go out and catch wild fish, grind them
up and feed them to farmed fish as as feed
to get the omega three's. If just supplemented that with algae,
(47:01):
we wouldn't have to catch any wildfish whatsoever. And then
if we replaced cattle feed um uh made of soy
with algae, we wouldn't have to cut down forests to
grow soy to feed the cattle on. Yeah, so it
could be. I mean, if we if we really just
keep looking at algae and don't walk away from it,
don't walk away from algae. There's a bright future ahead
(47:23):
of us with it. There's so much, so much promise.
Analogaye baby. Yeah, there's a lake in Georgia that I
go to a lot and there um has been. I'm
a member of the Facebook page where people complain about stuff.
Basically sure, yeah, it's what most of those are for.
Uh And a lot of people are complaining about these
grasses in the lake now and algae blooms and they're
(47:46):
spraying chemicals in the lake to get rid of the stuff. No,
and and it's a Georgia power lake, so they have
uh like an approved list of vendors that will do this. Um.
And my whole thought is like, if there's an algae bloom,
it's like, isn't that nature trying to work something out?
I think that's nature trying to work out fertilizer runoff.
(48:06):
So the problem isn't Like, the problem isn't in the lake.
It's up on land somewhere and some like farm that's
just using too much fertilizer. But I mean that's what
my whole point though, is that like the algae is
there for a reason. Yeah, right, it's not just there
too to chick off a jet skier. Right. It's kind
of like if you've um like hit your knee on something,
(48:32):
just cutting your leg off, so you don't have any
more knee pain. That's basically what the people at that
lake are doing. Yeah, it's not the best analogy ever,
but I'm alright with it. Like it you got anything else? No,
up with algae? Up with algae? I like ones like
this because we're basically just like, what about this? Oh? Yeah,
(48:53):
what about this? What about that? Yeah? And we always
have the rosiest colored glasses, which you know, if that's
our fault, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm with you, ma'nuh.
If you want to know more about algae ghost swimming.
And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this flying by the seat of my
(49:13):
pants and just pulling up an email. Oh that's good stuff.
This is on color blindness. Though. It's a good one
and it has a picture of a cat. So hey, guys,
my dad has color blindness and it has led to
a few embarrassing mishaps in his life. This past weekend,
my brother got married. Congratulations Peter and Jackie, she says,
and all the men were supposed to wear blue suits. However,
(49:35):
my dad couldn't tell the difference between the colors, and
he packed his black suit. Uh. I wonder why your
dad didn't get help at this point with something that's
big because dad doesn't care that much. I think you're right,
and nor should he. Uh. Not a huge deal, but
he definitely stands out in the pictures. Uh. The story
that cracks me up the most, though, is that I
have an orange cat with matching amber eyes. My dad
(49:58):
likes to say how he has most beautiful green eyes,
and I really want to ask if he thinks my
cat looks like the Grinch. So I attached a picture
of Raja so you can see how his eyes matches. Uh.
For and that is one cute cat. Look at that
sure little fake mouse in his mouth? Nothing green about it, no, uh?
(50:21):
And she also finishes with like you mentioned, my mom
has always done the grilling because my dad says he
can't tell when it's done or burning. So there's a
mom around some mom you should have. Or maybe she
knew about the suit color and just didn't wanted to
embarrass her husband. I think so. Or just didn't really
like the group, the groom or the bride, I don't know.
(50:42):
Somebody did not somebody else in this wedding, I think
is what happened here. Well, that cat doesn't like that
fake mouse. I'll tell you that. It's funny. The cat
is like holding a fake mouse, but it looks like
it's looking at a real mouse. Of camera. It's a
good picture. It's got a cat condo and everything. Uh
and she finishes. Thanks for the relatable episode. Um, that
(51:03):
is from Andy. That's from Andy. All right, Andy, thanks
a lot for that. Um. Well, appreciate you writing in.
Good luck with your family. Yes, and Peter and Jackie,
way to go and get married. Yeah. If you want
to get in touch with us to let us know
hilarious family story, we love those. You can go to
(51:24):
our website www. Dot stuff you should know dot com
and find all the links to our social media accounts.
You can find us there, or you can send us
an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(51:45):
it how stuff works dot com
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and I just want to
remind you that we are releasing a brand new podcast
called Short Stuff. It's got its own feed and everything,
but it's still the same great kind of stuff you
should know that you love. It's got Me and Chuck
and Jerry, but the topics are briefer and the episodes
(00:20):
are shorter, and we hope you like it. It's its
own thing. It comes out every Wednesday, and you can
find it by going to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you get your podcasts and searching for short Stuff. Enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
(00:48):
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. And Jerry said, go,
so this is stuff you should know which America loves
because it rhymes. Mmmm what rhymes? Jerry said, go, so
it's stuff you should not and Americans love rhymes. Isn't
that the new uh reality show America Loves Rhyming? That'd
(01:11):
be cool, would be like a hip hop kind of
talent show. Yeah, I think that'd be neat. America's got rhymes. Yes,
that's going pretty good. How about you, man, I'm good.
I'm I'm finally uh all cleared up for my weird
Australian gold. Oh that's good. You sound much better. You
(01:33):
look good. Yeah. Just loving life again. Uh well, not that,
but I feel physically able. It's life and stuff right now.
But it is, You're like in the grips of it.
Jerry's all strung out. I'm a little tired kind of
what going on. If I keep saying, if you see
me live in November, then that means all as well.
Yeah almost there, chuck, Just another monthsh yeah, yeah, I
(01:59):
would stays is. October is my favorite month generally, but
this October's is the suck. Oh yeah, you're Halloween is
your favorite holiday kind of person? Huh? I love it.
Just Halloween football's cranking up, that first fall breeze blows
in the whole thing of October. But of course it's Atlanta,
so it's still you know, in the nineties. It's a
(02:20):
weirdly hot, ridiculous Atlanta has got some odd weather. I'll
give you that. My friend I was telling Jerry the
other day that I saw a thing. I believe it
was the New York Times had this interactive feature where
you could see how many days above ninety degrees where
you lived was when you were born compared to now.
And in nineteen seventy one, Atlanta had fifty five days
(02:42):
above ninety Now it has seventy seven, and in another
like ten years, I think it'll be ninety days above
ninety degrees because the climate change. Or is that just
the New York Times editorial opinion. No, I mean this
is These are the facts. They didn't say. Why if
we could devay that if you want, because it sounds
fake to me. No, I mean, that's just the reality
(03:05):
of the temperature. They weren't saying. I think let's just
draw around conclusions. Sure, sure, I know. The point is
it's hot. It is hot, and you know what happens
when it's hot, Chuck, I love this segue. Algae blooms. Yep,
you know what happens when algae blooms. Fuel is born.
(03:26):
All kinds of things. Potentially you're born, cosmetics, mayonnaise, um, food, livestock, sushi, succi,
all that stuff. All of it is born when algae blooms.
Sushi sandwiches, sushi, shushi sandwich. Oh, Steve brule our heart. Yeah,
(03:50):
I had a very flirted with greatness when a publicist
for John c Riley said that he might be on
movie crush and it did not happen. So oh, I'm
sorry about that. That's right. That would have been That
would have been pretty exciting. You were broken up for
a little while there, weren't you, right though? Yeah? You
recovered just like it was an Australian cold. Nothing. All right,
(04:11):
So let's talk algae. This is pretty remarkable. Yes, So, um,
we should kind of set the states here because just
in the last couple of years, the bottom has kind
of dropped out on the algae. Is bio fuel um
push among venture capitalists and oil companies dropped out? Is
in not happening. It's not happening, at least not right now.
(04:34):
There was this There was this moment in time about
two thousand and eleven to say, I think two thousand fifteen,
where it looked like at least as as far as
like money and attention and media exposure that was being
thrown at algae was that it was it was the
next great bio fuel, and that it was going to
(04:54):
happen really soon. But the thing that I was learning
about venture capitalists is like they know like soon, they
like right now. And so as it became very clear
that a lot of the early preliminary results from the
lab we're not necessarily translating into the real world, a
lot of people walked away. But in doing that that
(05:14):
it's not to say that algae as a biofuel isn't
going to be a viable fuel of the future. It's
just going to take a lot more money and a
lot more time than everybody at first was kind of
hyped up for over the last couple of years. So
it's still there, the promise is still there. It's just
not happening tomorrow. Some people predict it might not even
happen this century, but I take issue with that. I
(05:35):
think it will happen in the twenty one century. Well,
it's funny because I did UM occasionally for stuff like this,
I will search just news uh on the old Google,
and today they're popped up an article about a company
in Hawaii that is in fact pushing forward UM. After
all they're testing and everything, they're pushing forward with with
(05:56):
a with the plant with a bio diesel production plant
from algae. So that's awesome. At least one place is
doing it in Hawaii. Yeah, I think I think there
are a few companies that are like, we're staying the course,
we're going to figure this out. But for what I
saw in the parlance of venture capitalists, the industry is
pivoted to UM food production more than um food, and
(06:19):
food and additive production more than um fuel. But from
the research, they're learning how to grow more algae faster
and better and harvesting it more cheaply and processing it
more cheaply. All of those lessons can be extrapolated over
to the fuel industry as well. So as long as
people are messing around with algae, there's a lot of
(06:39):
good stuff that's going to come from it. And I
can understand after researching this article where all that hype
came from, because it's just like beautiful stuff. Yeah, it
really is, and we should we should specify here, and
we're talking algae. There's something like a hundred thousand or
more different genetically diverse strains of algae um but typically
(07:03):
you can kind of divide it into two categories. There's microalgae,
which is what makes water green and it's a microscopic,
single cell plant and then there's macro algae, which is
like you think of with seaweed or kelp or sea
lettuce or something like that. Yeah. And you know, for
this show, we're talking about alga culture. Um. And this
(07:25):
is not any I mean it's new in the sense
that we are rampant gump efforts into studying like bi
fuels and stuff like that. But the Japanese have been
cultivating algae for a long long time, like years or more. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
it's always been a big thing there. Uh. In the
(07:47):
British Isles, like in in sixteen century Mexico with the Aztecs,
people have been eating algae, using algae. We're gonna talk
a lot about spilina, which has been consumed in harvest
it for thousands of years. Uh, and so you know
we've been eating it, using it for fertilizers, um, thickening
(08:08):
agents for food like you said with mayonnaise, and like
in things like toothpaste. It's a big, big business. I believe,
about a six billion dollar worldwide business, a couple of
billion of which is for seaweed paper alone for nori. Yeah,
just for the stuff they wrap sushi. And it's two
billion dollars two billion dollars for those delicious green sheets
(08:33):
that look like paper that you eat. Yeah, So as
it stands, even without the idea of it being like
the next alternative energy, it's still a six billion dollar business, right,
so there's a lot of reason for people to keep
paying attention. Is there's money to be made in algae
in other words, right, Yeah, but you can you know,
like we said, with a bio fuel and we'll get
into this more. One of the cool things about algae
(08:54):
is how versatile it is. Beyond the fact that you
can eat it and you can well we'll talk about
all the myriad things you can do with it, but
you can squeeze oil out of that stuff that can
be turned into gasoline or jet fuel, which is amazing. Yeah,
you can replace kerosene with biofuel form algy and you
can use the waste product that you get as a result.
(09:15):
It's it's really sort of a wonderful thing. And here
goes it sounds like a big, long setup, So it was.
It was a beautiful one man way to go um
so with with algae with either type. What we're talking
about our plants, right, and just like any other plants,
(09:36):
they produce uh, they produce their own food through photosynthesis.
Green plants they use chlorophyll and sunlight, and they convert um.
They also use carbon dioxide and they convert all that
into energy stores and they give off as a byproduct oxygen.
So you can start to see why algae is a
(09:57):
bit of a darling of the environmentalists set, because is
first of all, it's drawing C O two from the
air and it's putting out oxygen as a byproduct, and
then it's a darling of the energy set. These are
two different sets that sometimes overlap um because you can
actually take the energy store and which is stored largely
(10:19):
in the form of oil, but we'll see other kinds
and unlock it, like you said, in different types of fuel.
That's easier said than done. But you can also do
a lot of this stuff with lamb based plants to right,
and there actually was a big push there were Algae
represents the third generation of bio fuels. The first generation
was UM basically like cellulosic ethanol, using like corn to
(10:42):
turn into um fuel, which a lot of people were like,
this is really great. And then if you'll remember those
food riots in like Egypt and Haiti, and I think
two thousand and eight, you like, diverting corn from the
food supply over to the energy sector is really really bad.
So people said, Okay, we don't want to we don't
want to mess with our food supply. We can't use
(11:02):
food for energy, but we can use waste from that stuff.
So like you can take the um corn stalks that
nobody's eating and turn them into a biofuel, which is great,
but it requires several extra expensive steps, so it's just
not cost efficient. Now algae came along and it has
a lot of things going for it compared to land
(11:23):
based plants that made it really really attractive for a
number of reasons. Well, yeah, for sure. Uh it's and
when we when we say something is fast growing algae,
we need a new word for how fast algae can grow.
Ultra fast growing. Yeah, like that turbo turbo growth. Uh.
Land plants like you were talking about, sometimes it takes
(11:45):
years or months maybe to reach maturity. Um algae can
do this. That can complete a life cycle sometimes in
a day. Algae can well. Some algae because I think
there are more than seventy thousand species. I saw a
hundred thousand. Really they probably found thirty this morning. Um.
Some algae, though, can double their biomass in an hour. Uh.
(12:08):
Super efficient as far as converting solar energy to biomass, um,
I believe land plants use like of their energy just
building like the structure like roots, structures and stems and
things needed to like support the plant itself. You don't
need this with algae. It's just floating out there, right, So,
(12:30):
I mean, if you're using of that sunlight and carbon
dioxide nutrients just to build the structure, you need to
keep doing that just to be a dumb plant. That's
extraordinarily inefficient, at least compared to algae, which it just
floats in the water, doesn't need roots, it doesn't need
much structure. It's a single celled plant. So basically all
it is is a little solar powered energy producing factory,
(12:55):
and that's what it does and it doesn't so it's
extraordinarily efficient compared to land plants, for sure. Uh. Compared
to land plants, you can grow algae and very very
tight concentrated spaces. Uh. I have here that they produce
up to a hundred times more oil breaker a hundred
times than land plants. Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah, that's pretty
substantial too. Plus, um, there's different types of algae that
(13:20):
produce oils are edible for food. Um. I don't think
they very frequently overlap. But from all these different types
of algae, you can say, well, all I have is
the salt marsh pond to grow algae in what kind
of algae can I have? God? And God goes here,
take this algae. It's pretty great. I'll give you a
(13:41):
pretty good buzz too if you dry it out. And uh,
the guy takes it from God, puts it in a
salt marsh pond, harvests it, saves a little bit for
his head stash, and then sells the rest to Rex Tillerson.
That's right, and that's the end of the Bible. And uh,
the other cool thing is algae doesn't compete. It's not
(14:02):
like an either or with land plants. It grows in
the water, So it's not like, oh, I need all
this land that you need for corn to grow my algae.
It's a big one. Don't even need fresh water there.
It can grow in in gross water, dirty water, polluted water,
salt water. And not all algae, but certain kinds of algae.
(14:23):
Uh So it's not like there there they can coexist,
you know, they can all just be friendly. You can
still have your corn fields in your algae ponds. Yeah.
And again it's like it's unlike the first generation of
bio fuels. It's not competing directly with the food supply.
It's not saying, well, we need this land to grow algae,
(14:43):
so we can't grow corn on it. It's we've got
all this land to grow corn, and we've got this
stupid pond that's not doing anything for anybody. Let's grow
algae in there too, baby, And then you've got a
farmer that's growing both. One of the other things about
algae too, Chuck, is that a lot of those things overlap, right.
You can you can you can actually set up a
kind of algae that is not only like producing oil.
(15:09):
You can use the leftover stuff after you've extracted the
oil to feed your cows on your on your land,
or to feed the corn that's going to feed the cows.
And then all the while you're also drawing carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. So it's pretty it's pretty great. It's
pretty versatile, and there's a lot of reasons people like
it so on all that, I think we set it
(15:30):
up pretty well. You want to take a break, Yeah,
I get you know how excited I get when we
talk about efficient systems. I know you do. You get jazz?
I need to like, I need to go calm down.
All right? Oh all right? So we set up that
(16:07):
algae is basically the miracle of miracles here on planet Earth. Uh,
if you've got water, you've got a sun in the sky,
and some nutrients, then you can harvest I mean, you
can harvest algae. But algae, you don't, like, it'll grow
on its own, right, Oh yeah, I mean that's I mean,
it grows naturally. It's not like we created this stuff.
(16:29):
But you can grow it on your own. You can't. Well,
there's there's I think what you're saying, what it's like,
there's there's techniques you can do to improve the growth
of algae, right yeah, or like you can you know,
you can harvest is stuff from the ocean. But there
are many many ways to actually like have your own
little algae farm, right, especially if you're making um, if
you're if you're doing um micro algae, like the tiny
(16:52):
single celled stuff that you actually can't see. It's just
you know, when water turns green, Yeah, that's that's algae
in it. It's not like you can you can see
it or anything. The stuff you can see that's considered
macro algae. Microalgae is again single celled, microscopic individual plants
that there's so many of them they just tint the
water green. So if you want to grow those, there's
(17:14):
a few different techniques available to actually farming um algae. Again,
it's called alga culture, which is not a beautiful word,
but it's like it works. Do you I like, I
like how it looks more than I like how it sounds.
Alga culture. I like it. Yeah, it's like you like,
you like choked on something in the middle of the
word alga culture. All right, So we have the three methods.
(17:37):
Like you're saying, um, you have your standard open pond,
your standard clothes pond, and your standard bio photo reactor. UM.
An open pond is exactly what you think. That's the
cheapest way to do it. Obviously, the simplest way, the
sort of old fashioned way, is in a big shallow pond. Um.
And it's you know, it's not just willy nilly that
(17:58):
will usually divide this thing up in to um almost
like I mean, they say race ways, which is really
kind of dumb. In this article, I would say it's
more like lines of like planted rows of corn. Let's say, yeah,
kind except it's algae. And the thing is is sunlight,
uh is great for algae, but it only you know,
once you get a lot of algae going, it only
(18:19):
penetrates so far into the water. So what you need
to do is you need to agitate it and stir
that algae up to make sure everything gets a little
taste of that sweet sweet sunlight. Uh. And in case
of an open pond, you have a system like a
paddle wheel system, agitating and stuff, exposing everything to the
light all the while. It's almost like composting in a way.
(18:40):
You're you're mixing and nutrients and c O two into
the liquid um. It's a great system, but it's it's
the one that produces the least biomass um. It loses
water to evaporation, so you continually need to add water.
And this is the one where contamination or predators can
come in and you know, p or eat or yeah, yeah,
(19:03):
I guess either one would be a problem. Huh. Yeah,
you've got a wolf pean in your algae pond or
eating the algae. You don't want either one of those. Ye,
So that's the open pond. UM close pond is about
the same, but you've you've covered it up sort of
like a greenhouse, which means a little more costs, but
you have a lot more control you do, and the
cost would be mostly up front if you if you
(19:25):
build the greenhouse correctly, it's not too expensive to build
a greenhouse, although if you're doing it on a very
very large scale, you either need a lot of ponds
with a lot of greenhouses or one big pond with
a massive greenhouse over it. Either way, the point is
is you're exerting your human right to control nature over
the pond that you're growing algae, and it has your
(19:48):
wolf friend can't get in um, it's not going to
get contaminated by other algae. It's just a it's just
a lot easier to control, and it's not, i would guess,
not too terribly much more expensive than the and pond method. Yeah,
if you've got if money is no object, if you're
a person of means and you want to allow your friends, Yeah,
(20:09):
and you want to really want to show off and
annoy your neighbor. Although I think these things look really cool,
Actually I do too. It looks like something that the
Ghostbusters would have trapped some you know, it looks like ectoplasm.
It's very bright green. Um. The bio photoreactor method, this
is completely closed. Um. Basically you're growing algae in these tubes.
(20:30):
It's all I mean, I say artificial. It's not artificial
because it's still water, but you're you're completely manipulating what's
going on with pumps and nutrients and water and light
in these clear tubes. Um. Sometimes it's like an automatic
system that's all completely set up. You know, it's a
lot of money, but it's a really like it's the
(20:53):
most efficient way to do it, even though it's the
most expensive it is. But I mean, like if you
if you're you know, growing algae for commercial purposes and
you've got a little sweet VC money, you might as
well set up a bio photo reactor. You're right, you've
got I mean, you've got light coming from all directions right, um,
(21:14):
and you have uh a controlled closed system. Because one
of the things ABOi alogay is it grows and it
grows really fast. But if you can, if you make
sure it has nutrients it needs, the pH is just
right like it like slightly alkaline water of a pH
between seven and nine I believe, with a temperature of
(21:35):
sixty eight degrees fahrenheight. You like, you can control all
this stuff very easily with the biophoto reactor. Again, the
problem is the upfront cost, yeah, for sure. But the
thing is is with these three methods you can grow algae.
That's some methods are better than others, but you know
(21:55):
that you can grow algae in here. The problem really
comes in in getting the algae out of the water
and then getting the oil or whatever you're trying to
get from the algae out of the algae. There's a
lot of um, there's a lot of steps you need
to take in and some of like the more steps
you add, the more involved each step becomes, the more
(22:18):
expensive the processes. And when the process gets expensive, those
VC guys start to walk away. So you have to
figure out these this process and that's kind of where
it's at right now. In part. That's kind of where um,
the at least algae biofuel industry is stalled out right now. Yeah.
So those three methods that's for cultivating the micro algae
(22:40):
um the macro algae that we talked about, which is
kelp and sea lettuce and the stuff that like when
you're in the ocean, like, oh, get that stuff away
from me, Like I don't want the miracle plant on
my leg um. That stuff has been cultivated for centuries,
thousands and thousands of years in the open sea um,
(23:01):
the ocean, the sunlight, everything that it needs is in there,
and it grows like crazy. It's great. Harvesting this stuff
is a little tough. Uh. They've been doing it, like
I said, for thousands of years and in coastal areas
all over the place, all over the world. But they,
you know, begin to think like hey, we we maybe
want to cultivate this stuff. Uh so what do we do?
(23:25):
Maybe you know, it'll attach to a rope, like the
spore attaches to a rope and it grows on that.
So let's just throw these rope lines down on anchors
and it's basically a vertical growth rope. Uh, the same
like with a large net. It grows on that rope
and they basically can just like anchor the stuff down
(23:48):
have it grow along these rope lines and then pull
those in when you want to harvest it, right exactly,
that's a pretty that's a a traditional way of cultivating it. Um.
If you're up and knees, you think, well, I guess
I'll just invent a really awesome machine that mows the
law and of a kelp forest underwater and just harvest
(24:09):
it like that. So there's that technique as well. Uh.
And then you also like there's just walking out into
the water and and grabbing whether it's kelp or um
floating kind of mucky algae um, you can just harvest
it as simply as that. The difference is you're talking
about macro alergae is something you can put your hands
(24:30):
on and just kind of put into like a bucket
or a bag or a basket or something some receptacle
of some type um. Whereas with my with microalgay, if
you try to do that, it's just gonna you've got
a bucket full of water. You still have this harvesting
technique that makes microalergy so much more difficult that you
(24:51):
you can't just use traditional techniques to harvest it. It's
you have to basically set up some big time machines. Yeah,
so let's talk about the harvesting and processing a little bit. Um.
Like you said, with the micrology, you're just pulling this
stuff off. But ultimately what you want to do is
end up with a paste, with an algae paste. Yeah,
(25:12):
that's the good stuff, that's the real good stuff. So
in order to do that, you need to obviously you
need to remove the moisture um and that will leave
you with this dense biomastic paste um. Micro Algae presents
a unique problem, like you said, because it's just like
it looks like a bucket of water, green water. So
(25:33):
it makes sense that one of the methods is filtration.
You just feed it through a filter and it's got
the tiniest little membrane that these pores won't fit through
these algae cells, and so it just filters it out.
And the problem with that is is probably what you
would think is it's really easy for that stuff to
become clogged up. Right. I don't even know why they
(25:56):
would try this. It would just clog immediately, you know. Yeah,
but I'm sure it's not I'm sure it takes out
a consideration with its design. Sure, I guess you want
to talk about flaculation. Flaculation that sounds dirty. It really does.
It's not, though. It's just basically clumping algae. Like some
algae naturally clumps, but not necessarily the algae you want.
(26:20):
So if you throw in the algae that clumps with
the algae you want, it can make the other algae clump.
There's also chemicals that will make algae clump, and then
you're basically taking micro algay and and converting it into
something you can manipulate like a macro algae. So that helps.
That's good, but then now you have microalgae that has
(26:40):
some sort of clumping chemicals or algae that you don't
really want mixed in with it. It's not that it's
not fool proof method, right. And the other problem with
flocculation is if if you do it too much, you
will grow hair on your pumps. It's true, it makes
the saints cry when you flaculate. Uh. Flotation is another
(27:01):
h is another method. So this is when you use
compressed air and you put it in the water and
you bubble it up and that makes things that makes
the micro algy kind of go to the surface where
you can just sort of skim it off. Like uh
like uh like uh foam grit chaff. Well, it's grit
(27:21):
chaff like you know when you make slow cook Southern
style grits. Do that. Yeah, yeah, you got you gotta
rinse it, same with like sushi rice. You rinse it
in cold water. And that the husk I guess it is.
I guess it's the husk kind of floats on the top.
That's starch and you get a little Yeah, you get
a little strainer and skim that stuff off. If you
(27:43):
can end up with good soft grits or good soft rice,
what do you do with the stuff you skim off? Yeah?
I wonder if there's a use for that. Surely I'll
bet people feed it to their pigs or something like that. Well,
there'd be a lot of grits that you're that you're cooking.
Well no, I mean it's not like you're making the
grits two feed the pigs, but rather than just throwing
(28:04):
it out to the pig, you know what I mean?
All Right, there's also chuck I love this one. There's
also the centrifuge method. Yeah, that makes sense. Just where
you you get that bucket, but your bucket spins around
and has tiny holes in it, and it's basically do
you remember the salad spinner? Remember I've got one. Okay,
So it's a salad spinner for your microalgy basically, yeah,
(28:26):
just flings it all to the outside. The thing is,
unlike your salad spinner, you can't get it at a
discount Marshall's or t J Max. You probably have to
build it yourself for buy one. That's very expensive. When
you start adding the word centrifuge rather than salad spinner,
the prices automatically goes up. Yeah, and here's the thing.
(28:47):
The cool thing is you don't have to do just
one of these. A lot of times. Uh, they might
be like, well, let's flocculate for a little while, but
I don't want my palms to grow, Harry, So I
will then throw it in a centrifuge because I'm drowning
in VC juice. And they bought me one, Um so
they can. They can combine methods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
(29:08):
lot of people will combine methods, and I'm sure they
combine methods out of necessity because none of the methods
worked by themselves. Yeah, for macro, you'd really just need
to dry this stuff out and I get the sense
that a lot of it is sort of the old
fashioned way just by kind of put like laying it
out or hanging it out in the sun. Is that
about right? I would guess, yeah, surely that's the traditional method.
(29:30):
You know what was the one that we did? Oh,
coffee coffee beans? Right? Did they just lay those out
in the sun? Yeah? I think we did a show
on that, and like the traditional method is just like
just beans just laid out baking. Am I wrong? Do
you remember that? I don't remember at this point. I
just remember that goats eat them, and some people pick
(29:51):
them out of the goats poop and then sell them
for a million dollars a pound. Uh. Should we take
a break? I think so, Charles, all right, well let's
do Let's do that and then we'll talk about, um,
some of the many, many uses of algae right after this.
Oh all right, dude, we're back, Chuck, And I have
(30:35):
to say, I'm I'm a fan of algae. Now, so
there's a lot of different things you can use it for.
We'll talk first about the ways you can use algae
for fuel. And you might think at first, like, whoa
are you going to use algae for fuel. Again, that
energy store that some types of algae, not all algae,
(30:57):
but some types, and then other types even more than others,
take the energy that they're converting sunlight, c O two
and other nutrients into these energy stores they converted as
an oil within their tiny little single cell body. And
if you get enough of these single cell bodies together
in the form of these allergies that you've gotten the
(31:19):
water out of, you can extract that oil out of it.
And there's a lot of different ways to do it.
You can break the cell walls basically what you're trying
to do, either chemically or shaking or um or physically yea, yeah, physically. Um,
you could also hit it with some sound waves. There's
a lot of things you can do and you can't
(31:39):
some um ted nugent I think really really causes them
to split open um and then you get the oil.
So when you take that oil, you then have to
refine it, and there's depending on what you want to
do with it, there's different techniques. Yeah, for sure. I
mean we've been championing the biodiesel, well that's really not true.
(32:01):
We've been saying it would be great if they could
figure this out. Uh, and you know the key to
all this stuff. Anytime we've done anything, We've done other
episodes on other bio fuels, it's all like it would
it would be the one of choice if you could
figure out a way to do it and make the
most money. That's the only stumbling black every is when
(32:22):
are you going to get the big companies involved? It's
when you can say, hey, we've really figured out such
that it's a genuine threat to um whatever crude oil.
Well what's crazy is up until very recently um x
on Mobile and Chevron were both like invested in. So
I mean the big companies were involved and they all
(32:42):
just kind of walked away because it wasn't happening like
in the next ten or twenty years. Yeah. I mean
you get that in a certain way because they're there
to make money. But I don't know, sometimes it be
nice if someone sort of went out on a limb
and maybe that's how it ends up happening. Well, they are,
it's the little guys in Hawaii who are doing it,
you know. So who deserved to be billionaires after this
(33:04):
for trying to save the earth? Um So we talked
a little bit about bio diesel. It can also be
refined uh as an as an additive right for gasoline
and jet fuel. Yeah. UM. The cool thing about that
is if you're going to convert it into jet fuel,
you can actually use existing refineries and that does something
(33:24):
very important. It cuts down on costs. Right. UM. When
cellulistic ethanol was huge in like two thousand seven eight two, UM,
there was a one huge problem with it where if
you were just pumping pure ethanol through existing pipelines, they
were gonna wear down in like just a few years.
(33:44):
That is not true apparently with um refined biodiesel from
algae or jet fuel from algae, because it does not
corrode the pipes and it doesn't corrode the systems that
you used to refine it, so you don't have to
build entire new pipe lines or entire new refiners. You
can just switch over to algae at some points. That Yeah,
(34:07):
that's that's a huge mark in its favor. And I
think well like seven years ago they actually there was
a flight from Houston to Chicago an entire commercial jet
powered by Algil oil, Algil algyl Man. I hate this.
I guess Algil Algil oil yeah, okay, I would say
(34:30):
that they delivered the Rangers to get beat by the Cubs.
But it's not Alga. It's not Alga culture, though, um
it could be if we if we make it. We
have a lot of listeners all right. By the way,
the Houston is the Astros, not the Rangers. Oh where
do the where do the Rangers player? They out of Dallas.
It's the Texas Rangers. But they yeah, they're like Dallas
(34:54):
Metropolitan team. Yeah. Well, sorry Astros fans. And I should
know that too, because I think they have the greatest
uniform of all time, the seventies one. Oh the orange stripes.
Man's just beautiful. It was pretty good. So uh okay,
So you can turn into jet fuel. And I don't
(35:15):
think we've talked about ethanol really, have we No, And
so ethanol again, it's basically just breaking down the cellulose
that remember how you said plants like spend of their
energy building the structures that support them and let them live.
If you take those structures and that support them and
let them live and break them down, you can turn that.
That's what cellulosic ethanol is. So it's basically plant material
(35:39):
that those carbohydrates are what they use to build those walls,
and you can break them down and use them for energy.
And you can do the same thing with with algae. Two. Yeah,
and the great size. The great thing is aside from
the oil because algae, algae is made up from carbohydrates, uh,
and cellulose. You can actually ferment this stuff into grain alcohol. Yeah,
(36:04):
and that tastes like, I don't know, like seaweed that
gets you wasted. I don't know. I would try it, sure,
um you mean? And I were coming back from hilton
Had this past weekend and there was a billboard for
a liquor store outside of Savannah, and um, it said
(36:25):
it's a corn whiskey but in the um Coca cola
font for some inexplicable wreaths. Oh really Yeah. It was
really weird to see, was how it's hilton Head. It
was it storm ravaged or not. It must have hit
above it because it was totally fine, beautiful, not a
not a leaf out of place. And you know, because
(36:47):
of your hilton Head leaf turtle. I counted them before,
you mean, they're all here, They're all like they're all
president account of for all right, be back in six
months right, no, and move. Uh. And the methane I
think is the final uh, one of the final uses. Um,
everyone knows. We talked about methane plenty, that's one of
(37:10):
the main ingredients and natural gas, and it's you know,
it's it's uh, it's what cows make when they when
they have a twoty booty. It is. And it says
here that it's um that it's a clean fuel that
I don't understand that at all. Methane is like one
of the worst greenhouse gases there are. There's it's worse
(37:31):
than carbon dioxide as far as trapping heat. It's it's
just there's less of it than carbon dioxide. I just
thought that was really weird. But the thing I love
about producing methane through algae is that you're not actually
using the algae. You're actual you are using the algae.
You're using the algae as a feedstock for bacteria. Because
(37:53):
when bacteria consume algae, they produce methane. So you're taking
the algae and feeding it to bacteria. It's seems pretty
cold and calculating, perfect for an oil company. Uh. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um. We also talked earlier. I
think I teased out that you can that algae even
loves really gross polluted water. Um. It thrives in polluted water,
(38:16):
So they could use it potentially, and I think they
maybe or are they They are they're using it for
wastewater treatment in in certain places. Yes, you can use
it for wastewater treatment. They're using it. I think there's
an experiment in an old tin mine in Cornwall in
the UK where um they have they've added some algae
(38:39):
to see if they can bio remediate the cadmium and
the arsenic in the water that's flooded the mine. And
the great thing about algae is some of it just
absorbs heavy metals and pollutants. It just absorbs it and
hangs onto it and then you go, um, just put
it away for a billion years or something like that.
You know, it just kind of sucks it up. There's
(39:00):
actually use the stuff too for metabolism, so it will
break down a heavy metal like cadmium that's toxic to
us into something that's totally inert to us, which is
just mind bogglingly wonderful. So they're starting to really really
kind of look into the idea of using again there's
like a hundred thousand different strains of algae to using
(39:22):
some of them for bioremediation, which is a huge plus
because right now we use chemicals to stop up chemicals. Um.
Another thing you can use algae for is for oil spills,
and there's something called herders herder chemicals, which if you
add to an oil spill, it actually moves them together
and turns it from this little thin sheen on the
(39:43):
ocean into a much more concentrated, thicker sheen that you
can actually skim off or burn or something. Well, there's
types of algae that do that too. But the plus
of algae is that it's not some chemical that stays
in the environment like the stuff we currently use. The
chemicals we currently use that we're not quite sure what
the long term effects are, right, Like, okay, no more oil,
(40:05):
but now we've got this unknown or not unknown, but
a chemical with unknown uh damage down the line, just
replacing the oil. Right with algae, that's not the case.
We know what algae will do. We're pretty much I mean,
I'm sure there's invasive species situations that we could accidentally
get ourselves into, but that's that's the last thing you're
thinking of when you're cleaning up an oil spill, you
(40:25):
know what I'm saying, And that baby penguin comes over,
it's like help me please. Uh. And then earlier in
the show, you know, I talked about the the quote
unquote waste product we're talking about if you're extracting that oil,
what you have left over after you've squeezed all that
oil out of it, you can use that as fertilizer
(40:48):
or as a supplement for animal feed. Um. And that's
that's the leftover, even if you're not using it for biofuels. Uh,
it's really good for you. Like humans eat it, cattle
eats it, marine like shrimp and shellfish love the stuff.
It is chocked like if you're talking about spiro lena,
(41:08):
it is chock full of protein, omega three, fatty acids, vitamins, iron, beta, carotene.
I think it's got more protein than meat. So for
a hundred grams U, spir lena has fifty seven grams
of protein, steak has twenty five grams of protein. Amazing,
(41:28):
And spilena has a hundred and fifty eight percent of
your daily iron. Uh, Steak has thirteen percent of it
and steaks like a high iron food. I believe spir
lena has far more iron than spinach. Even it also
has tons of calcium like you said omega three's and
like I think, in the seventies the un called it
a super food of the future, and it is extremely
(41:48):
good for you. But again, the idea of calling it
super food of the future is kind of ironic because
in the sixteenth century the Aztecs were eating it as
little cakes of spar lena um. The Welsh have been
eating something called lava bread, which is um just basically
spiraling an algae on toast. Um so good. I want
(42:11):
to try it. It looks it looks like overcooked, overcooked
mass of spinach um. But they say, like you can
tell like the different teroirs depending on where it was harvested.
But I I would love to try that. Yeah, And
you mentioned very early on the reason that um, I
guess people like Exxon have put it on hold. You
(42:31):
sent this great article where I would figure the limitation
would be like, well, it's in the processing, it's too expensive,
or we haven't figured it out yet. Apparently what's sort
of the big hold up is in the biology itself.
It's just um, I think it just you need too
much of it to go to scale. Is that about right? Yeah? Yeah,
(42:54):
Because here's the problem the stuff. If you're growing it
in a flask and a lab, it really does like
all this amazing stuff that people are saying. The problem
is when you extrapolate that into the real world, real world,
real world conditions kind of start to take over and
it doesn't necessarily translate like it should. Um. And one
(43:15):
of the big things they ran into is when you
start getting algae on a massive scale, when you start
growing it on an industrial scale, the algae starts to
compete with other algae for things like sunlight and nutrients.
So you're left with well, then that means let's say
that's having the um the amount of algae I'm trying
to grow, or the amount of oil I'm trying to harvest.
(43:38):
That means I have to double the surface area of
the pond. I have to grow twice as much algae
as I thought. And there was some some prediction I
think a few years ago that bioalgabe or biodiesel form
algae or biofuel would be running about ten percent of
the euse um transportation sector, which is just an enormous amount.
(43:59):
That would be amazing if they could do that, But
they found that Um, for that to happen, you would
need a pond. Basically, they about three times the size
of Belgium to grow that much algae as it stands
right now. So again that's not to say that like
it's just never gonna happen. It's just well, here's a
really big wall that we've hit. Now, let's figure out
how to get over it. Because Algie really could do this.
(44:22):
Yeah for sure, Um, you just need upon three times
the size of Belgium. But here's the thing is, maybe
don't like baby step it, you know, Yeah, I think
what about upon the size of just one Belgium and
not three belgiums Now, we said Belgium so many times
it sounds funny. Well, we could just flood Belgium. Oh man,
(44:44):
it would be so mean Belgium lovely. They've been asking
for it for years though, Uh, what's this other one here?
In two thousand and ten, Um, a scientist based at
Again Again University, I bet they don't have a mascot
(45:08):
the Flying Tongue Twisters. They published findings that suggested an
area about the size of the state of Maryland. H
if it was sea lettuce, you could provide enough protein
to feed the entire human population. Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
But it's sea lettuce. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would try.
(45:31):
I've never had sea lettuce as far as I know, No,
I would try to. It's just the article does say that, like,
you know, part of the problem then is like convincing
everyone to eat sea lettuce all the time. And it's
absolutely true. I mean, it'd be foolish to think otherwise,
you know. But if you're trying to solve world hunger,
I mean, you know, well that's the thing you could
also and a lot of people use spear lena powder
is like a dietary supplement because it's so good for
(45:54):
you and it's so energy dense. Um. But there are
there's also there's a couple of other things I wanted
to mentioned that before we leave. Um about the the
kind of greenness of algae. One, it's carbon neutral. I
don't think we said that. But the the CEO two
that um, the algae uses to produce it to do
(46:16):
its thing, and it's actually sucking it right out of
the air, so it releases c O two when it's
burned as biofuel. But that CEO two was just in
the air like a month ago, so it's not like
it's coming from a sequestered sink of c O two.
Like fossil fuels that we dig up that are not
part of the carbon cycle right then, that we're actually
(46:38):
adding to their So it would make it a carbon
neutral thing. And then the other thing, if we replaced
soy um with algae, livestock and fish feed, we would
no longer have to do any wild caught fish because
apparently they go out and catch wild fish, grind them
up and feed them to farmed fish as as feed
to get the omega three's. If just supplemented that with algae,
(47:01):
we wouldn't have to catch any wildfish whatsoever. And then
if we replaced cattle feed um uh made of soy
with algae, we wouldn't have to cut down forests to
grow soy to feed the cattle on. Yeah, so it
could be. I mean, if we if we really just
keep looking at algae and don't walk away from it,
don't walk away from algae. There's a bright future ahead
(47:23):
of us with it. There's so much, so much promise.
Analogaye baby. Yeah, there's a lake in Georgia that I
go to a lot and there um has been. I'm
a member of the Facebook page where people complain about stuff.
Basically sure, yeah, it's what most of those are for.
Uh And a lot of people are complaining about these
grasses in the lake now and algae blooms and they're
(47:46):
spraying chemicals in the lake to get rid of the stuff. No,
and and it's a Georgia power lake, so they have
uh like an approved list of vendors that will do this. Um.
And my whole thought is like, if there's an algae bloom,
it's like, isn't that nature trying to work something out?
I think that's nature trying to work out fertilizer runoff.
(48:06):
So the problem isn't Like, the problem isn't in the lake.
It's up on land somewhere and some like farm that's
just using too much fertilizer. But I mean that's what
my whole point though, is that like the algae is
there for a reason. Yeah, right, it's not just there
too to chick off a jet skier. Right. It's kind
of like if you've um like hit your knee on something,
(48:32):
just cutting your leg off, so you don't have any
more knee pain. That's basically what the people at that
lake are doing. Yeah, it's not the best analogy ever,
but I'm alright with it. Like it you got anything else? No,
up with algae? Up with algae? I like ones like
this because we're basically just like, what about this? Oh? Yeah,
(48:53):
what about this? What about that? Yeah? And we always
have the rosiest colored glasses, which you know, if that's
our fault, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm with you, ma'nuh.
If you want to know more about algae ghost swimming.
And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this flying by the seat of my
(49:13):
pants and just pulling up an email. Oh that's good stuff.
This is on color blindness. Though. It's a good one
and it has a picture of a cat. So hey, guys,
my dad has color blindness and it has led to
a few embarrassing mishaps in his life. This past weekend,
my brother got married. Congratulations Peter and Jackie, she says,
and all the men were supposed to wear blue suits. However,
(49:35):
my dad couldn't tell the difference between the colors, and
he packed his black suit. Uh. I wonder why your
dad didn't get help at this point with something that's
big because dad doesn't care that much. I think you're right,
and nor should he. Uh. Not a huge deal, but
he definitely stands out in the pictures. Uh. The story
that cracks me up the most, though, is that I
have an orange cat with matching amber eyes. My dad
(49:58):
likes to say how he has most beautiful green eyes,
and I really want to ask if he thinks my
cat looks like the Grinch. So I attached a picture
of Raja so you can see how his eyes matches. Uh.
For and that is one cute cat. Look at that
sure little fake mouse in his mouth? Nothing green about it, no, uh?
(50:21):
And she also finishes with like you mentioned, my mom
has always done the grilling because my dad says he
can't tell when it's done or burning. So there's a
mom around some mom you should have. Or maybe she
knew about the suit color and just didn't wanted to
embarrass her husband. I think so. Or just didn't really
like the group, the groom or the bride, I don't know.
(50:42):
Somebody did not somebody else in this wedding, I think
is what happened here. Well, that cat doesn't like that
fake mouse. I'll tell you that. It's funny. The cat
is like holding a fake mouse, but it looks like
it's looking at a real mouse. Of camera. It's a
good picture. It's got a cat condo and everything. Uh
and she finishes. Thanks for the relatable episode. Um, that
(51:03):
is from Andy. That's from Andy. All right, Andy, thanks
a lot for that. Um. Well, appreciate you writing in.
Good luck with your family. Yes, and Peter and Jackie,
way to go and get married. Yeah. If you want
to get in touch with us to let us know
hilarious family story, we love those. You can go to
(51:24):
our website www. Dot stuff you should know dot com
and find all the links to our social media accounts.
You can find us there, or you can send us
an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
(51:45):
it how stuff works dot com
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