Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
I think what gets overlooked in all these "bacteria/algae convert CO2 to..." schemes is that it takes energy to do the conversion. That energy has to come from sunlight, and there's only so much energy per square meter to be had. So it's really no different in principle than growing corn or sugar cane and converting it to ethanol, just that the conversion/separation might be more efficient. But no matter what they do, it's still not going to get more than the 1000 or so watts per square meter that's in the sunlight.
|
But it is still worth the investment, many algae strains are valuable be it for their health effects as food or for their vegetable oil. Also algae can be grown vertically in clear columns within the power plants existing footprint to reduce emissions and as stated above even in existing forms a tank of ocean creatures could remove emissions without any sunlight at all.
The costs of these methods are very small when compared to the overall cost of the powerplant and it is foolish that they aren't implimented at least in part on new construction, even with the EXISTING strains of bacteria and algae since the polution reduction would still be there, any additional uses for the bacteria and the algae would be just an added benefit to compliment the polution reduction.