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Israeli company Seambiotic has developed a revolutionary system that enables the production of biofuel from algae. Already in the testing stage, the company plans to build its first large-scale biofuel reactor by next year with a large international partner.  

By Karin Kloosterman  

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whoisabs i'm not sure
Guess who's back?

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The negative side is that it's not reversing carbon dioxide output because they're killing the algae for their oil. They need to be reseeding the oceans as much as they need to find cheaper oil.

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"Algae grow fast and continuously," says Seambiotic CEO Amnon Bechar. "An algal pond can produce oil 365 days a year and much more oil per hectare of land than traditional plant crops."  

This tells me that most if not all the algae used in the process will be cultivated in ponds not harvested from the Oceans.

Post edited at 4:51 am on Aug. 27, 2008 by Killarny

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Yes, but none is being put back in the oceans. We currently have a large shortage of algae - entire seas devoid of algae - and this company, instead of reseeding the oceans, is growing the stuff to kill it, to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which algae is the major natural counteractive measure of.

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What exactly are they growing to kill algae?  How will this process be putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?  Algae absorbs carbon dioxide and uses it as food.  The biofuel created burns clean.  They are using the natural process found in algae to cultivate it on land in man made ponds to create a completely biodegradeable fuel source.  They want to build the algae ponds next to coal burning facilities because they absorb carbon dioxide and use it as food.  The end product of this fuel is environmentally friendly, biodegradeable and contains no sulphur so it is infinitely more beneficial to our environment than current fossil fuels.  I'm looking but I've yet to come across any source be it news articles, technological reviews or environmental reviews that seem to point to algae biofuels as a negative environmental issue.

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Destroy the oxygen cycle?

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Do you realize the SIZE of the oceans? and the number of contributing prokaryotes? Drilling for oil in one, or even many spots will not even BEGIN to begin destroying the oxygen cycle. That is not to say that the idea should be abused, but until they start dredging or combing, I think it's fine.

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.It's the transition
that's troublesome.   --Isaac Asimov

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Unless the combustion of the biofuel is 100% efficient the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere would be less than the carbon withdrawn from the atmosphere by the algae.

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But still far less than the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels