As technology advances it seems that we sometimes over think problems. Biofuels have traditionally been made from ethanol, which has mostly been made from corn. This of course had major issues. The United Nations has said that production of biofuel from corn has caused shortages in world food supply. This caused major issues and the price of E85 caused it to be basically irrelevant.
In a way it was back to the drawing board. However, people looked south at Brazil and the use of sugar cane. This was the start of 2nd generation biofuels. Not only did they look at the cane, they also looked at food stalks and other bi-products. For a country like Brazil this worked great but alas, not on a worldwide scale.
Finally all the scientific advances have led us to change around and old and fairly useless substance. In face as children we would buy the special fish that would eat it off of the sides of our fish tanks.
ALGAE!
This wonderful green substance can chemically altered to produce quite a bit of biofuel. Actually the American Recycler states that it may be 30 times more productive per unit of land than typical biofuel plants. Algae also "eat" CO2, which has led the big power plants to start attaching algae ponds to their plants. They also feed the CO2 from the power plant to biofuel plant.
Leave it to the third generation to make us proud. With all this amazing advancement, can you imagine what will happen to the next round of biofuels?
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