Bio-Diesel from Algae: An Acceptable Answer to Our Prayers

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Recommended: Alternative source of energy

Imagine a future in which you can fill your car with a liquid that has more mileage than gasoline and is just as biodegradable as sugar. This is the future of bio-diesel, and is well on its way to becoming the future we will live in. Bio-diesel has always been an area of study for researchers looking for renewable fuels, usually biodiesel is produced from plant waste, like corn husks, but recently it was discovered that bio-diesel could be produced with oils found in algae, which many people are considering to be our best option when it comes to alternative fuels.

This new-found source of bio-diesel is causing a lot of excitement in the scientific community not only because of how renewable it is but because of its easy integration into today’s fuel guzzling population, the potential it has to stimulate economic growth, and its lack of negative environmental impact.

Today there are over “200,000,000 passenger vehicles being used in America alone” (Stasenko), the majority of these vehicles run on gasoline a smaller group runs on diesel and the smallest runs on alternative energies like vegetable oil, hydrogen fuel cells, electricity and bio-diesel. What the supporters of alternative energies like electricity and hydrogen don’t realize is that replacing today’s vehicles with those that can make use of their fuels, is an expensive and nearly insurmountable task. Not only would it be difficult to replace those vehicles, but after replacing them, the older vehicles would all have to be scrapped, which would inevitably produce a fair amount of pollution and waste. Bio-diesel can be used in all of today’s diesel vehicles. Of course it would still be difficult to convert gasoline vehicles to diesel, (converting from one to the other r...

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O'dell, John. "Biodiesel: The Good and the Bad." Editorial. www.autoobserver.com. N.p., 4 Jan. 2008. Web. 13 Sept. 2011.

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"Our auxillary fuel tank project." Editorial. www.officialbiodiesel.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2011.

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Stasenko, Marina. "Number of Cars." Editorial. www.hypertextbook.com. Ed. Glenn Elert. N.p., 16 Aug. 2006. Web. 20 Sept. 2011.

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Strasburg, Jeff McIntire. "Ethanol vs. Biodiesel: Just the Facts." Editorial. www.treehugger.com. N.p., 4 July 2006. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

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