You'll love Woods' Edge at Salt Creek Golf Retreat, Brown County, Indiana.
Isaac Berzin’s Algae Growing Smokestacks
An MIT rocket scientist has discovered something really cool. You can grow algae in smokestacks, and it reduces CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions, and the algae can be used productively!
Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant’s exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.
After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials - one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for transportation.
Not only that, it could be profitable!
Being a good Samaritan on air quality usually costs a bundle. But Berzin’s pitch is one hard-nosed utility executives and climate-change skeptics might like: It can make a tidy profit.
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One key is selecting an algae with a high oil density - about 50 percent of its weight. Because this kind of algae also grows so fast, it can produce 15,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Just 60 gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the major biodiesel crops today.
http://myopiczeal.blogsome.com/2006/01/15/isaac-berzins-algae-growing-smokestacks/trackback/
