Shrimp Farm Turns to Biofuel Producer
An Arizona shrimp farmer has emptied the crustaceans from some of his ponds and filled them instead with algae to turn to biofuel.
Gary Wood’s Phoenix-area shrimp farm was highly profitable in the 90’s, but after an increase of imports from Asia, Wood went looking for something else to fill his ponds. Now that biodiesel is cost-competitive with its petroleum cousin, algae-farms have been popping up around Arizona and other warm areas. But Wood has an advantage: his shrimp already eat algae, so he knows exactly how to grow it.
“We will harvest the algae in a very similar way we took the buildup from the shrimp ponds,” Wood said. “It is just amazing we are in this position right now. Up until a couple of years ago, we didn’t realize we’d done so much of this research.”
The next step is to process the green gunk into fuel. Wood said he plans to process it on-site, with hopes to produce 15,000 barrels per acre, three times what is necessary to make a profit.
While so far algae-based biofuel has not faced the same political scrutiny as food crop fuels, Wood’s decision presents an interesting situation where he’s choosing to produce algae instead of shrimp.
Imported shrimp is often fed a harmful antibiotic called chloramphenicol, while shrimp raised in America cannot be fed the drug. Check your labels, since under a new law, all shrimp should now be labeled with its country of origin.
Photo Credit: Verou on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
Wow, who would have think it! thats way cool.
Jiff
http://www.privacy-center.ru.tc
What a smart move to make algae biofuel out of their “problem” algae.
I did some research on various aspects of setting up a biodiesel plant about 4 years ago, the following are some details readers of this article may benefit from.
There was a major government research project about 15 years ago that looked into algae as a source of oil (as in lipids not petroleum). The research was eventually dropped due to funding, however the numbers they suggested hinted that algea as a source of oil could far outproduce other crops.
Other common issues faced by algae producers include finding the most efficient type of algae for the growing region (somewhere that genetic engineering could really pay off - check out Floragenex - a company that can speed the process of finding matching strains…)
Another item that I have come across on the topic is pairing algae production with coal power plants. The massive amount of C2O can be fed into the algae dramatically increasing production and offsetting the carbon footprint of an otherwise polluting technology.
Read Menu of Meaning a multi-media article about a chef who is growing algae in the kitchen of his top-flight Chicago restaurant, Moto–his name is Homaru Cantu and here’s the link to the story:
http://www.flypmedia.com pp. 30-38
Fear of the future can make us find some strange resolves cant it? We can be quite a resourceful people. Its a shame that technology seems to have made so many minds lazy or we’d likely have already perfected this idea. Dont know if technology has been a helper or our detriment.