Government spending got you down? It's algae to the rescue

People across America grumble about government spending and government using our money for development projects as if those projects were not in the public interest.

And yet, these same people live protected (government military spending), drive to work (government roads), fly to appointments (FAA sky safety and government plane development), phone friends (government wiring pathways and investment), use the Internet (government investment and planning), watch TV (government radio waves and component development), and so on.

In fact, there is nothing anyone does short of bodily functions that has not been made possible in this modern world without government investment, development, testing and licensing.

Instead of whining about government development, people should be telling their congressmen and women to invest more. Why? Because the state of the nation and the nation’s future is 100 percent bound to our ability to develop and nurture new technology, new businesses and new beginnings. America is all about the frontier, the new, the better and tomorrow’s world.

So, what’s new on the government horizon? Let’s take a look at bio-fuels. No, not the misuse of arable farmland to grow corn for cars. Instead, NASA has a project underway in trials using public funds allocated by the past and this administration called Omega.

Omega stands for Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae. With a budget of just $10 million from NASA and $8 million from the state of California (Arnold’s contribution), what they have done is amazing and shows great promise.

First off, you need to know that many states, including the one I live in, New Mexico, have been building algae ponds next to sewage plants. The purpose? Using the fuel (sewage), adding algae and special fertilizer, mixing thoroughly (aerators) and letting the sun go to work has produced impressive amounts of bio-fuel (oil squeezed from the harvested algae). What’s left? Clean water, clean sewage (landfill soil) and money from sewage.

The problem with these systems is that they are both delicate to run (algae is very sensitive to hot and cold), use millions of gallons of water and gobble up expensive fertilizer, take up acres of valuable municipal land and require constant maintenance and monitoring. If things get too cold, the whole algae process dies and you have to start over again. Too hot, and the water evaporates, the algae dies and you have to start all over again.

What NASA has developed is a clear flexible plastic membrane that, when made into a very large container, can be floated in the ocean. This large container will serve as a photo-bioreactor (PBR). Into the PBR you add the basic ingredients: sewage, algae and, instead of special fertilizer, you pump factory flue gas (carbon dioxide mainly — the stuff your car pumps out).

By floating these filled, transparent-topped PBR containers in the ocean, you have natural agitation and you keep the temperature much more constant than the algae needs, so the algae is happy to go to work.

Using photosynthesis while absorbing the carbon dioxide from the flue gas and nutrients from the wastewater, the algae produces biomass, oxygen and fresh water. Anything the algae does not use stays in the container. The biomass is lifted out and processed into oil, bio fuel.

And the rest? NASA’s secret plastic allows oxygen to escape into the atmosphere (good for the planet) and, surprise, the extra fresh water is released into the ocean in a forward-osmosis process. The ocean can absorb the fresh water easily. And what’s more, the whole thing is beneficial to the environment.

So far, the trial project has been running perfectly. Due to end in 2011, NASA is gearing up for a full-scale system, testing really large PBRs and getting industry and municipalities involved. One day it could be that coastal communities from Maine to Miami, from Tampa to Galveston, from San Diego to Seattle, make their annual budgets as part of the petroleum industry.

Still think government investment in our future is a waste? Love or hate the stimulus, there is no denying success — and planning for a better future.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.

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