Week Five: Algae as Fuel??

In a lab in Southern San Fransico, researchers have developed a new way to produce cheep biofuel. Researchers place the algae in stainless-steel containers with no sunlight. They then feed te algae sugar, which makes it produce various types of oil, which can be extracted. After being extracted, they can be developed into various types of feuls, such as diesel or jet fuel. Different strains of algae can produce different types of oils. Some can produce oils very similar to those in soy beans, others oil thats very similar to light crude petroleum.

Wanna learn more about going green with algae? click here- http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20319/

Week Five VIDEO

Many people have no clue that algae could be used to produce oil and fuel. Heres an idea as to how a local Florida algae farmer is doing it.

Week Four: Ethanol, Not Just for Your Drinks Anymore

For starts, ethanol feul is ethanol, which is the same type of alcohol used in alcoholic beverages. However, it can also be used as a bioadditive for gasoline. Between the years 2000 and 2007, the use of ethanol tripled, and between 2007 and 2008, it's use increased from 3.7% to 5.4%. In 2009, worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 19.5 billion gallons.
Ethanol is mostly used in Brazil and the U.S., mostly because ethanol is produced from crops, such as sugar cane, corn, and potatos. There are still some concerns about the use of ethanol gas, mostly about how it's production may cause food prices to increase due to the large amounts of land required to grow crops. there's also worry about the pollution and labor needed to produce the amount of crops to supply ethanol, especially with corn.
However, a recent development with cellulosic ethanol has offered some hope still for ethanol because the cellulose fibers in plant walls can be used to produce ethanol. because of this, it's though that cellulosic ethanol could help ethanol to play a much bigger part in the world of fuels in the future.


Above is the machinery used in making ethanol fuel.

Ethanol can be produced in either a wet mill or a dry mill. The difference id that wet milling involves seperating grain kernals into into their componant parts before fermentaition. With the dry mill production, the entire grain kernal is ground into flour, then the starch in the flour is converted into ethanol during fermentation, creating carbon dioxide and distillers grain.

Wanna learn about the entire process, from the momment the corn arrives till it's stored away to be used in our cars? then check it out here- http://www.icminc.com/ethanol/production_process/

And if you'd like to learn more about ethanol in general (such as the other countries which produce ethanol gase and how it affects the environment) then i would suggest clicking here-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel

Week Three: Solar Energy

Since many people now know what the main idea of solar energy is, (If not, its energy from the sun that can be used for heating or to make electricity) i decided to instead talk about some of the pros and cons of solar energy. Some of the pros are that once they're installed, you have a never ending supply of energy. Also, other than the pollution produced making, transporting, and installing the panels, they create virtually NO polltion. However some of the cons are that they are expensive to install and they can also be effected by the weather and they can only produce energy during the daylight hours.

If you would like to learn more about solar energy pros and cons check it out here: http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/articles/pros_and_cons_of_solar_energy.html

Week 2: Hydroelectricity

This week I decides to talk about the use of hydroelectric power. Hydroelectricity is one of the oldest forms of power. Even though in the U.S., we get most of our energy from fossil fuels, Countries like China and Canada use an abundance of hydropower and hydroelectricity makes up as much as 19% of the electricity used, although in the U.S., only 7% of electricity is made up of hydroelectricity. Although Hydroelectricity Does have lots of advantages, like not burning fossil fuels, however, it does have dissadvantages like how dams and other hydroelectric power plants are very expensive and sometimes, towns in the area of power plants being set up will have to be moved because of the reservoirs. Even though Hydroelectricity sounds great, it still has it's let downs, such as needing a LOT of water to get set up, which is the main reason why we don't have more hydroelectric powerplants set u in the U.S.

To learn more about hydroelectric power and also how they work, check out this link: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wuhy.html

Week One: Wind Energy

This week, I wanted to talk about one of the most controversal types of alternative energy; Wind energy. Many people have only heard about wind energy and not actually looked anything up about it. When I was looking it up, I found a very helpful website that not only talks about wind turbines, but how wind is formed, how wind turbines work, and where the best, most productive areas for wind farms in the united states should be.

Check it out here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=wind_home-basics

Introduction!

Hello! Welcome to my blog, Alternative Sorces for Power. This blog is dedicated to helping readers better understand the differences between the types of energy we currently use (oil, coal, other fossil fuels), and the alternative options we have for energy (hydroelectric energy, wind turbines, ect.). Are these alternatives better than fossil fuels, or are they more trouble than they're worth?