Algae: Food, Fuel, What?

you get your podcasts and searching for short Stuff. Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. And Jerry said, go, so this is stuff you should know which America loves because it rhymes. Mmmm what rhymes? Jerry said, go, so it's stuff you should not and Americans love rhymes. Isn't

that the new uh reality show America Loves Rhyming? That'd be cool, would be like a hip hop kind of talent show. Yeah, I think that'd be neat. America's got rhymes. Yes, that's going pretty good. How about you, man, I'm good. I'm I'm finally uh all cleared up for my weird Australian gold. Oh that's good. You sound much better. You look good. Yeah. Just loving life again. Uh well, not that, but I feel physically able. It's life and stuff right now. But it is, You're like in the grips of it.

Jerry's all strung out. I'm a little tired kind of what going on. If I keep saying, if you see me live in November, then that means all as well. Yeah almost there, chuck, Just another monthsh yeah, yeah, I would stays is. October is my favorite month generally, but this October's is the suck. Oh yeah, you're Halloween is your favorite holiday kind of person? Huh? I love it. Just Halloween football's cranking up, that first fall breeze blows

in the whole thing of October. But of course it's Atlanta, so it's still you know, in the nineties. It's a weirdly hot, ridiculous Atlanta has got some odd weather. I'll give you that. My friend I was telling Jerry the other day that I saw a thing. I believe it was the New York Times had this interactive feature where you could see how many days above ninety degrees where you lived was when you were born compared to now.

And in nineteen seventy one, Atlanta had fifty five days above ninety Now it has seventy seven, and in another like ten years, I think it'll be ninety days above ninety degrees because the climate change. Or is that just the New York Times editorial opinion. No, I mean this is These are the facts. They didn't say. Why if we could devay that if you want, because it sounds fake to me. No, I mean, that's just the reality of the temperature. They weren't saying. I think let's just

draw around conclusions. Sure, sure, I know. The point is it's hot. It is hot, and you know what happens when it's hot, Chuck, I love this segue. Algae blooms. Yep, you know what happens when algae blooms. Fuel is born. All kinds of things. Potentially you're born, cosmetics, mayonnaise, um, food, livestock, sushi, succi, all that stuff. All of it is born when algae blooms.

Sushi sandwiches, sushi, shushi sandwich. Oh, Steve brule our heart. Yeah, I had a very flirted with greatness when a publicist for John c Riley said that he might be on movie crush and it did not happen. So oh, I'm sorry about that. That's right. That would have been That would have been pretty exciting. You were broken up for a little while there, weren't you, right though? Yeah? You recovered just like it was an Australian cold. Nothing. All right,

So let's talk algae. This is pretty remarkable. Yes, So, um, we should kind of set the states here because just in the last couple of years, the bottom has kind of dropped out on the algae. Is bio fuel um push among venture capitalists and oil companies dropped out? Is in not happening. It's not happening, at least not right now.

There was this There was this moment in time about two thousand and eleven to say, I think two thousand fifteen, where it looked like at least as as far as like money and attention and media exposure that was being thrown at algae was that it was it was the next great bio fuel, and that it was going to happen really soon. But the thing that I was learning about venture capitalists is like they know like soon, they

like right now. And so as it became very clear that a lot of the early preliminary results from the lab we're not necessarily translating into the real world, a lot of people walked away. But in doing that that it's not to say that algae as a biofuel isn't going to be a viable fuel of the future. It's just going to take a lot more money and a lot more time than everybody at first was kind of hyped up for over the last couple of years. So it's still there, the promise is still there. It's just

not happening tomorrow. Some people predict it might not even happen this century, but I take issue with that. I think it will happen in the twenty one century. Well, it's funny because I did UM occasionally for stuff like this, I will search just news uh on the old Google, and today they're popped up an article about a company

in Hawaii that is in fact pushing forward UM. After all they're testing and everything, they're pushing forward with with a with the plant with a bio diesel production plant from algae. So that's awesome. At least one place is doing it in Hawaii. Yeah, I think I think there are a few companies that are like, we're staying the course, we're going to figure this out. But for what I saw in the parlance of venture capitalists, the industry is pivoted to UM food production more than um food, and

food and additive production more than um fuel. But from the research, they're learning how to grow more algae faster and better and harvesting it more cheaply and processing it more cheaply. All of those lessons can be extrapolated over to the fuel industry as well. So as long as people are messing around with algae, there's a lot of good stuff that's going to come from it. And I can understand after researching this article where all that hype

came from, because it's just like beautiful stuff. Yeah, it really is, and we should we should specify here, and we're talking algae. There's something like a hundred thousand or more different genetically diverse strains of algae um but typically you can kind of divide it into two categories. There's microalgae, which is what makes water green and it's a microscopic, single cell plant and then there's macro algae, which is like you think of with seaweed or kelp or sea

lettuce or something like that. Yeah. And you know, for this show, we're talking about alga culture. Um. And this is not any I mean it's new in the sense that we are rampant gump efforts into studying like bi fuels and stuff like that. But the Japanese have been cultivating algae for a long long time, like years or more. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh, it's always been a big thing there. Uh. In the British Isles, like in in sixteen century Mexico with the Aztecs,

people have been eating algae, using algae. We're gonna talk a lot about spilina, which has been consumed in harvest it for thousands of years. Uh, and so you know we've been eating it, using it for fertilizers, um, thickening agents for food like you said with mayonnaise, and like in things like toothpaste. It's a big, big business. I believe, about a six billion dollar worldwide business, a couple of billion of which is for seaweed paper alone for nori. Yeah,

just for the stuff they wrap sushi. And it's two billion dollars two billion dollars for those delicious green sheets that look like paper that you eat. Yeah, So as it stands, even without the idea of it being like the next alternative energy, it's still a six billion dollar business, right, so there's a lot of reason for people to keep paying attention. Is there's money to be made in algae in other words, right, Yeah, but you can you know, like we said, with a bio fuel and we'll get

into this more. One of the cool things about algae is how versatile it is. Beyond the fact that you can eat it and you can well we'll talk about all the myriad things you can do with it, but you can squeeze oil out of that stuff that can be turned into gasoline or jet fuel, which is amazing. Yeah, you can replace kerosene with biofuel form algy and you can use the waste product that you get as a result.

It's it's really sort of a wonderful thing. And here goes it sounds like a big, long setup, So it was. It was a beautiful one man way to go um so with with algae with either type. What we're talking about our plants, right, and just like any other plants, they produce uh, they produce their own food through photosynthesis. Green plants they use chlorophyll and sunlight, and they convert um.

They also use carbon dioxide and they convert all that into energy stores and they give off as a byproduct oxygen. So you can start to see why algae is a bit of a darling of the environmentalists set, because is first of all, it's drawing C O two from the air and it's putting out oxygen as a byproduct, and

then it's a darling of the energy set. These are two different sets that sometimes overlap um because you can actually take the energy store and which is stored largely in the form of oil, but we'll see other kinds and unlock it, like you said, in different types of fuel. That's easier said than done. But you can also do a lot of this stuff with lamb based plants to right, and there actually was a big push there were Algae

represents the third generation of bio fuels. The first generation was UM basically like cellulosic ethanol, using like corn to turn into um fuel, which a lot of people were like, this is really great. And then if you'll remember those food riots in like Egypt and Haiti, and I think two thousand and eight, you like, diverting corn from the food supply over to the energy sector is really really bad. So people said, Okay, we don't want to we don't

want to mess with our food supply. We can't use food for energy, but we can use waste from that stuff. So like you can take the um corn stalks that nobody's eating and turn them into a biofuel, which is great, but it requires several extra expensive steps, so it's just not cost efficient. Now algae came along and it has a lot of things going for it compared to land based plants that made it really really attractive for a

number of reasons. Well, yeah, for sure. Uh it's and when we when we say something is fast growing algae, we need a new word for how fast algae can grow. Ultra fast growing. Yeah, like that turbo turbo growth. Uh. Land plants like you were talking about, sometimes it takes years or months maybe to reach maturity. Um algae can do this. That can complete a life cycle sometimes in a day. Algae can well. Some algae because I think there are more than seventy thousand species. I saw a

hundred thousand. Really they probably found thirty this morning. Um. Some algae, though, can double their biomass in an hour. Uh. Super efficient as far as converting solar energy to biomass, um, I believe land plants use like of their energy just building like the structure like roots, structures and stems and things needed to like support the plant itself. You don't

need this with algae. It's just floating out there, right, So, I mean, if you're using of that sunlight and carbon dioxide nutrients just to build the structure, you need to keep doing that just to be a dumb plant. That's extraordinarily inefficient, at least compared to algae, which it just floats in the water, doesn't need roots, it doesn't need

much structure. It's a single celled plant. So basically all it is is a little solar powered energy producing factory, and that's what it does and it doesn't so it's extraordinarily efficient compared to land plants, for sure. Uh. Compared to land plants, you can grow algae and very very tight concentrated spaces. Uh. I have here that they produce up to a hundred times more oil breaker a hundred times than land plants. Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah, that's pretty

substantial too. Plus, um, there's different types of algae that produce oils are edible for food. Um. I don't think they very frequently overlap. But from all these different types of algae, you can say, well, all I have is the salt marsh pond to grow algae in what kind of algae can I have? God? And God goes here, take this algae. It's pretty great. I'll give you a

pretty good buzz too if you dry it out. And uh, the guy takes it from God, puts it in a salt marsh pond, harvests it, saves a little bit for his head stash, and then sells the rest to Rex Tillerson. That's right, and that's the end of the Bible. And uh, the other cool thing is algae doesn't compete. It's not like an either or with land plants. It grows in the water, So it's not like, oh, I need all this land that you need for corn to grow my algae.

It's a big one. Don't even need fresh water there. It can grow in in gross water, dirty water, polluted water, salt water. And not all algae, but certain kinds of algae. Uh So it's not like there there they can coexist, you know, they can all just be friendly. You can still have your corn fields in your algae ponds. Yeah. And again it's like it's unlike the first generation of bio fuels. It's not competing directly with the food supply. It's not saying, well, we need this land to grow algae,

so we can't grow corn on it. It's we've got all this land to grow corn, and we've got this stupid pond that's not doing anything for anybody. Let's grow algae in there too, baby, And then you've got a farmer that's growing both. One of the other things about algae too, Chuck, is that a lot of those things overlap, right. You can you can you can actually set up a kind of algae that is not only like producing oil.

You can use the leftover stuff after you've extracted the oil to feed your cows on your on your land, or to feed the corn that's going to feed the cows. And then all the while you're also drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So it's pretty it's pretty great. It's pretty versatile, and there's a lot of reasons people like it so on all that, I think we set it up pretty well. You want to take a break, Yeah, I get you know how excited I get when we

talk about efficient systems. I know you do. You get jazz? I need to like, I need to go calm down. All right? Oh all right? So we set up that algae is basically the miracle of miracles here on planet Earth. Uh, if you've got water, you've got a sun in the sky, and some nutrients, then you can harvest I mean, you can harvest algae. But algae, you don't, like, it'll grow on its own, right, Oh yeah, I mean that's I mean, it grows naturally. It's not like we created this stuff.

But you can grow it on your own. You can't. Well, there's there's I think what you're saying, what it's like, there's there's techniques you can do to improve the growth of algae, right yeah, or like you can you know, you can harvest is stuff from the ocean. But there are many many ways to actually like have your own little algae farm, right, especially if you're making um, if you're if you're doing um micro algae, like the tiny

single celled stuff that you actually can't see. It's just you know, when water turns green, Yeah, that's that's algae in it. It's not like you can you can see it or anything. The stuff you can see that's considered macro algae. Microalgae is again single celled, microscopic individual plants that there's so many of them they just tint the water green. So if you want to grow those, there's

a few different techniques available to actually farming um algae. Again, it's called alga culture, which is not a beautiful word, but it's like it works. Do you I like, I like how it looks more than I like how it sounds. Alga culture. I like it. Yeah, it's like you like, you like choked on something in the middle of the word alga culture. All right, So we have the three methods. Like you're saying, um, you have your standard open pond,

your standard clothes pond, and your standard bio photo reactor. UM. An open pond is exactly what you think. That's the cheapest way to do it. Obviously, the simplest way, the sort of old fashioned way, is in a big shallow pond. Um. And it's you know, it's not just willy nilly that will usually divide this thing up in to um almost like I mean, they say race ways, which is really kind of dumb. In this article, I would say it's more like lines of like planted rows of corn. Let's say, yeah,

kind except it's algae. And the thing is is sunlight, uh is great for algae, but it only you know, once you get a lot of algae going, it only penetrates so far into the water. So what you need to do is you need to agitate it and stir that algae up to make sure everything gets a little taste of that sweet sweet sunlight. Uh. And in case of an open pond, you have a system like a paddle wheel system, agitating and stuff, exposing everything to the

light all the while. It's almost like composting in a way. You're you're mixing and nutrients and c O two into the liquid um. It's a great system, but it's it's the one that produces the least biomass um. It loses water to evaporation, so you continually need to add water. And this is the one where contamination or predators can come in and you know, p or eat or yeah, yeah, I guess either one would be a problem. Huh. Yeah, you've got a wolf pean in your algae pond or

eating the algae. You don't want either one of those. Ye,

So that's the open pond. UM close pond is about the same, but you've you've covered it up sort of like a greenhouse, which means a little more costs, but you have a lot more control you do, and the cost would be mostly up front if you if you build the greenhouse correctly, it's not too expensive to build a greenhouse, although if you're doing it on a very very large scale, you either need a lot of ponds with a lot of greenhouses or one big pond with

a massive greenhouse over it. Either way, the point is is you're exerting your human right to control nature over the pond that you're growing algae, and it has your wolf friend can't get in um, it's not going to get contaminated by other algae. It's just a it's just a lot easier to control, and it's not, i would guess,

not too terribly much more expensive than the and pond method. Yeah, if you've got if money is no object, if you're a person of means and you want to allow your friends, Yeah, and you want to really want to show off and annoy your neighbor. Although I think these things look really cool, Actually I do too. It looks like something that the Ghostbusters would have trapped some you know, it looks like ectoplasm. It's very bright green. Um. The bio photoreactor method, this

is completely closed. Um. Basically you're growing algae in these tubes. It's all I mean, I say artificial. It's not artificial because it's still water, but you're you're completely manipulating what's going on with pumps and nutrients and water and light in these clear tubes. Um. Sometimes it's like an automatic system that's all completely set up. You know, it's a lot of money, but it's a really like it's the most efficient way to do it, even though it's the

most expensive it is. But I mean, like if you if you're you know, growing algae for commercial purposes and you've got a little sweet VC money, you might as well set up a bio photo reactor. You're right, you've got I mean, you've got light coming from all directions right, um, and you have uh a controlled closed system. Because one of the things ABOi alogay is it grows and it

grows really fast. But if you can, if you make sure it has nutrients it needs, the pH is just right like it like slightly alkaline water of a pH between seven and nine I believe, with a temperature of sixty eight degrees fahrenheight. You like, you can control all this stuff very easily with the biophoto reactor. Again, the problem is the upfront cost, yeah, for sure. But the thing is is with these three methods you can grow algae. That's some methods are better than others, but you know

that you can grow algae in here. The problem really comes in in getting the algae out of the water and then getting the oil or whatever you're trying to get from the algae out of the algae. There's a lot of um, there's a lot of steps you need to take in and some of like the more steps you add, the more involved each step becomes, the more expensive the processes. And when the process gets expensive, those

VC guys start to walk away. So you have to figure out these this process and that's kind of where it's at right now. In part. That's kind of where um, the at least algae biofuel industry is stalled out right now. Yeah. So those three methods that's for cultivating the micro algae um the macro algae that we talked about, which is kelp and sea lettuce and the stuff that like when you're in the ocean, like, oh, get that stuff away from me, Like I don't want the miracle plant on

my leg um. That stuff has been cultivated for centuries, thousands and thousands of years in the open sea um, the ocean, the sunlight, everything that it needs is in there, and it grows like crazy. It's great. Harvesting this stuff is a little tough. Uh. They've been doing it, like I said, for thousands of years and in coastal areas all over the place, all over the world. But they, you know, begin to think like hey, we we maybe want to cultivate this stuff. Uh so what do we do?

Maybe you know, it'll attach to a rope, like the spore attaches to a rope and it grows on that. So let's just throw these rope lines down on anchors and it's basically a vertical growth rope. Uh, the same like with a large net. It grows on that rope and they basically can just like anchor the stuff down have it grow along these rope lines and then pull those in when you want to harvest it, right exactly,

that's a pretty that's a a traditional way of cultivating it. Um. If you're up and knees, you think, well, I guess I'll just invent a really awesome machine that mows the law and of a kelp forest underwater and just harvest it like that. So there's that technique as well. Uh. And then you also like there's just walking out into the water and and grabbing whether it's kelp or um floating kind of mucky algae um, you can just harvest

it as simply as that. The difference is you're talking about macro alergae is something you can put your hands on and just kind of put into like a bucket or a bag or a basket or something some receptacle of some type um. Whereas with my with microalgay, if you try to do that, it's just gonna you've got a bucket full of water. You still have this harvesting technique that makes microalergy so much more difficult that you you can't just use traditional techniques to harvest it. It's

you have to basically set up some big time machines. Yeah, so let's talk about the harvesting and processing a little bit. Um. Like you said, with the micrology, you're just pulling this stuff off. But ultimately what you want to do is end up with a paste, with an algae paste. Yeah, that's the good stuff, that's the real good stuff. So in order to do that, you need to obviously you need to remove the moisture um and that will leave

you with this dense biomastic paste um. Micro Algae presents a unique problem, like you said, because it's just like it looks like a bucket of water, green water. So it makes sense that one of the methods is filtration. You just feed it through a filter and it's got the tiniest little membrane that these pores won't fit through these algae cells, and so it just filters it out. And the problem with that is is probably what you would think is it's really easy for that stuff to

become clogged up. Right. I don't even know why they would try this. It would just clog immediately, you know. Yeah, but I'm sure it's not I'm sure it takes out a consideration with its design. Sure, I guess you want to talk about flaculation. Flaculation that sounds dirty. It really does. It's not, though. It's just basically clumping algae. Like some algae naturally clumps, but not necessarily the algae you want.

So if you throw in the algae that clumps with the algae you want, it can make the other algae clump. There's also chemicals that will make algae clump, and then you're basically taking micro algay and and converting it into something you can manipulate like a macro algae. So that helps. That's good, but then now you have microalgae that has some sort of clumping chemicals or algae that you don't really want mixed in with it. It's not that it's

not fool proof method, right. And the other problem with flocculation is if if you do it too much, you will grow hair on your pumps. It's true, it makes the saints cry when you flaculate. Uh. Flotation is another h is another method. So this is when you use compressed air and you put it in the water and you bubble it up and that makes things that makes the micro algy kind of go to the surface where you can just sort of skim it off. Like uh

like uh like uh foam grit chaff. Well, it's grit chaff like you know when you make slow cook Southern style grits. Do that. Yeah, yeah, you got you gotta rinse it, same with like sushi rice. You rinse it in cold water. And that the husk I guess it is. I guess it's the husk kind of floats on the top. That's starch and you get a little Yeah, you get a little strainer and skim that stuff off. If you can end up with good soft grits or good soft rice, what do you do with the stuff you skim off? Yeah?

I wonder if there's a use for that. Surely I'll bet people feed it to their pigs or something like that. Well, there'd be a lot of grits that you're that you're cooking. Well no, I mean it's not like you're making the grits two feed the pigs, but rather than just throwing it out to the pig, you know what I mean? All Right, there's also chuck I love this one. There's

also the centrifuge method. Yeah, that makes sense. Just where you you get that bucket, but your bucket spins around and has tiny holes in it, and it's basically do you remember the salad spinner? Remember I've got one. Okay, So it's a salad spinner for your microalgy basically, yeah, just flings it all to the outside. The thing is, unlike your salad spinner, you can't get it at a discount Marshall's or t J Max. You probably have to

build it yourself for buy one. That's very expensive. When you start adding the word centrifuge rather than salad spinner, the prices automatically goes up. Yeah, and here's the thing. The cool thing is you don't have to do just one of these. A lot of times. Uh, they might be like, well, let's flocculate for a little while, but I don't want my palms to grow, Harry, So I will then throw it in a centrifuge because I'm drowning in VC juice. And they bought me one, Um so

they can. They can combine methods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of people will combine methods, and I'm sure they combine methods out of necessity because none of the methods worked by themselves. Yeah, for macro, you'd really just need to dry this stuff out and I get the sense that a lot of it is sort of the old fashioned way just by kind of put like laying it out or hanging it out in the sun. Is that about right? I would guess, yeah, surely that's the traditional method.

You know what was the one that we did? Oh, coffee coffee beans? Right? Did they just lay those out in the sun? Yeah? I think we did a show on that, and like the traditional method is just like just beans just laid out baking. Am I wrong? Do you remember that? I don't remember at this point. I just remember that goats eat them, and some people pick them out of the goats poop and then sell them for a million dollars a pound. Uh. Should we take

a break? I think so, Charles, all right, well let's do Let's do that and then we'll talk about, um, some of the many, many uses of algae right after this. Oh all right, dude, we're back, Chuck, And I have to say, I'm I'm a fan of algae. Now, so there's a lot of different things you can use it for. We'll talk first about the ways you can use algae for fuel. And you might think at first, like, whoa

are you going to use algae for fuel. Again, that energy store that some types of algae, not all algae, but some types, and then other types even more than others, take the energy that they're converting sunlight, c O two and other nutrients into these energy stores they converted as an oil within their tiny little single cell body. And if you get enough of these single cell bodies together in the form of these allergies that you've gotten the water out of, you can extract that oil out of it.

And there's a lot of different ways to do it. You can break the cell walls basically what you're trying to do, either chemically or shaking or um or physically yea, yeah, physically. Um, you could also hit it with some sound waves. There's a lot of things you can do and you can't some um ted nugent I think really really causes them to split open um and then you get the oil. So when you take that oil, you then have to refine it, and there's depending on what you want to

do with it, there's different techniques. Yeah, for sure. I mean we've been championing the biodiesel, well that's really not true. We've been saying it would be great if they could figure this out. Uh, and you know the key to all this stuff. Anytime we've done anything, We've done other episodes on other bio fuels, it's all like it would it would be the one of choice if you could figure out a way to do it and make the most money. That's the only stumbling black every is when

are you going to get the big companies involved? It's when you can say, hey, we've really figured out such that it's a genuine threat to um whatever crude oil. Well what's crazy is up until very recently um x on Mobile and Chevron were both like invested in. So I mean the big companies were involved and they all just kind of walked away because it wasn't happening like in the next ten or twenty years. Yeah. I mean you get that in a certain way because they're there

to make money. But I don't know, sometimes it be nice if someone sort of went out on a limb and maybe that's how it ends up happening. Well, they are, it's the little guys in Hawaii who are doing it, you know. So who deserved to be billionaires after this for trying to save the earth? Um So we talked a little bit about bio diesel. It can also be refined uh as an as an additive right for gasoline

and jet fuel. Yeah. UM. The cool thing about that is if you're going to convert it into jet fuel, you can actually use existing refineries and that does something very important. It cuts down on costs. Right. UM. When cellulistic ethanol was huge in like two thousand seven eight two, UM, there was a one huge problem with it where if you were just pumping pure ethanol through existing pipelines, they were gonna wear down in like just a few years.

That is not true apparently with um refined biodiesel from algae or jet fuel from algae, because it does not corrode the pipes and it doesn't corrode the systems that you used to refine it, so you don't have to build entire new pipe lines or entire new refiners. You can just switch over to algae at some points. That Yeah, that's that's a huge mark in its favor. And I think well like seven years ago they actually there was a flight from Houston to Chicago an entire commercial jet

powered by Algil oil, Algil algyl Man. I hate this. I guess Algil Algil oil yeah, okay, I would say that they delivered the Rangers to get beat by the Cubs. But it's not Alga. It's not Alga culture, though, um it could be if we if we make it. We have a lot of listeners all right. By the way, the Houston is the Astros, not the Rangers. Oh where do the where do the Rangers player? They out of Dallas. It's the Texas Rangers. But they yeah, they're like Dallas

Metropolitan team. Yeah. Well, sorry Astros fans. And I should know that too, because I think they have the greatest uniform of all time, the seventies one. Oh the orange stripes. Man's just beautiful. It was pretty good. So uh okay,

So you can turn into jet fuel. And I don't think we've talked about ethanol really, have we No, And so ethanol again, it's basically just breaking down the cellulose that remember how you said plants like spend of their energy building the structures that support them and let them live. If you take those structures and that support them and let them live and break them down, you can turn that.

That's what cellulosic ethanol is. So it's basically plant material that those carbohydrates are what they use to build those walls, and you can break them down and use them for energy. And you can do the same thing with with algae. Two. Yeah, and the great size. The great thing is aside from the oil because algae, algae is made up from carbohydrates, uh, and cellulose. You can actually ferment this stuff into grain alcohol. Yeah, and that tastes like, I don't know, like seaweed that

gets you wasted. I don't know. I would try it, sure, um you mean? And I were coming back from hilton Had this past weekend and there was a billboard for a liquor store outside of Savannah, and um, it said it's a corn whiskey but in the um Coca cola font for some inexplicable wreaths. Oh really Yeah. It was really weird to see, was how it's hilton Head. It was it storm ravaged or not. It must have hit above it because it was totally fine, beautiful, not a

not a leaf out of place. And you know, because of your hilton Head leaf turtle. I counted them before, you mean, they're all here, They're all like they're all president account of for all right, be back in six months right, no, and move. Uh. And the methane I think is the final uh, one of the final uses. Um, everyone knows. We talked about methane plenty, that's one of the main ingredients and natural gas, and it's you know, it's it's uh, it's what cows make when they when

they have a twoty booty. It is. And it says here that it's um that it's a clean fuel that I don't understand that at all. Methane is like one of the worst greenhouse gases there are. There's it's worse than carbon dioxide as far as trapping heat. It's it's just there's less of it than carbon dioxide. I just thought that was really weird. But the thing I love about producing methane through algae is that you're not actually using the algae. You're actual you are using the algae.

You're using the algae as a feedstock for bacteria. Because when bacteria consume algae, they produce methane. So you're taking the algae and feeding it to bacteria. It's seems pretty cold and calculating, perfect for an oil company. Uh. Yeah, that's a good point. Um. We also talked earlier. I think I teased out that you can that algae even

loves really gross polluted water. Um. It thrives in polluted water, So they could use it potentially, and I think they maybe or are they They are they're using it for wastewater treatment in in certain places. Yes, you can use it for wastewater treatment. They're using it. I think there's an experiment in an old tin mine in Cornwall in the UK where um they have they've added some algae to see if they can bio remediate the cadmium and

the arsenic in the water that's flooded the mine. And the great thing about algae is some of it just absorbs heavy metals and pollutants. It just absorbs it and hangs onto it and then you go, um, just put it away for a billion years or something like that. You know, it just kind of sucks it up. There's actually use the stuff too for metabolism, so it will break down a heavy metal like cadmium that's toxic to us into something that's totally inert to us, which is

just mind bogglingly wonderful. So they're starting to really really kind of look into the idea of using again there's like a hundred thousand different strains of algae to using some of them for bioremediation, which is a huge plus

because right now we use chemicals to stop up chemicals. Um. Another thing you can use algae for is for oil spills, and there's something called herders herder chemicals, which if you add to an oil spill, it actually moves them together and turns it from this little thin sheen on the ocean into a much more concentrated, thicker sheen that you can actually skim off or burn or something. Well, there's types of algae that do that too. But the plus of algae is that it's not some chemical that stays

in the environment like the stuff we currently use. The chemicals we currently use that we're not quite sure what the long term effects are, right, Like, okay, no more oil, but now we've got this unknown or not unknown, but a chemical with unknown uh damage down the line, just replacing the oil. Right with algae, that's not the case.

We know what algae will do. We're pretty much I mean, I'm sure there's invasive species situations that we could accidentally get ourselves into, but that's that's the last thing you're thinking of when you're cleaning up an oil spill, you know what I'm saying, And that baby penguin comes over,

it's like help me please. Uh. And then earlier in the show, you know, I talked about the the quote unquote waste product we're talking about if you're extracting that oil, what you have left over after you've squeezed all that oil out of it, you can use that as fertilizer or as a supplement for animal feed. Um. And that's that's the leftover, even if you're not using it for biofuels. Uh,

it's really good for you. Like humans eat it, cattle eats it, marine like shrimp and shellfish love the stuff. It is chocked like if you're talking about spiro lena, it is chock full of protein, omega three, fatty acids, vitamins, iron, beta, carotene. I think it's got more protein than meat. So for a hundred grams U, spir lena has fifty seven grams of protein, steak has twenty five grams of protein. Amazing, And spilena has a hundred and fifty eight percent of

your daily iron. Uh, Steak has thirteen percent of it and steaks like a high iron food. I believe spir lena has far more iron than spinach. Even it also has tons of calcium like you said omega three's and like I think, in the seventies the un called it a super food of the future, and it is extremely good for you. But again, the idea of calling it super food of the future is kind of ironic because in the sixteenth century the Aztecs were eating it as

little cakes of spar lena um. The Welsh have been eating something called lava bread, which is um just basically spiraling an algae on toast. Um so good. I want to try it. It looks it looks like overcooked, overcooked mass of spinach um. But they say, like you can tell like the different teroirs depending on where it was harvested. But I I would love to try that. Yeah, And you mentioned very early on the reason that um, I

guess people like Exxon have put it on hold. You sent this great article where I would figure the limitation would be like, well, it's in the processing, it's too expensive, or we haven't figured it out yet. Apparently what's sort of the big hold up is in the biology itself. It's just um, I think it just you need too much of it to go to scale. Is that about right? Yeah? Yeah, Because here's the problem the stuff. If you're growing it in a flask and a lab, it really does like

all this amazing stuff that people are saying. The problem is when you extrapolate that into the real world, real world, real world conditions kind of start to take over and it doesn't necessarily translate like it should. Um. And one of the big things they ran into is when you start getting algae on a massive scale, when you start growing it on an industrial scale, the algae starts to compete with other algae for things like sunlight and nutrients.

So you're left with well, then that means let's say that's having the um the amount of algae I'm trying to grow, or the amount of oil I'm trying to harvest. That means I have to double the surface area of the pond. I have to grow twice as much algae as I thought. And there was some some prediction I think a few years ago that bioalgabe or biodiesel form algae or biofuel would be running about ten percent of the euse um transportation sector, which is just an enormous amount.

That would be amazing if they could do that, But they found that Um, for that to happen, you would need a pond. Basically, they about three times the size of Belgium to grow that much algae as it stands right now. So again that's not to say that like it's just never gonna happen. It's just well, here's a really big wall that we've hit. Now, let's figure out how to get over it. Because Algie really could do this. Yeah for sure, Um, you just need upon three times

the size of Belgium. But here's the thing is, maybe don't like baby step it, you know, Yeah, I think what about upon the size of just one Belgium and not three belgiums Now, we said Belgium so many times it sounds funny. Well, we could just flood Belgium. Oh man, it would be so mean Belgium lovely. They've been asking for it for years though, Uh, what's this other one here? In two thousand and ten, Um, a scientist based at Again Again University, I bet they don't have a mascot

the Flying Tongue Twisters. They published findings that suggested an area about the size of the state of Maryland. H if it was sea lettuce, you could provide enough protein to feed the entire human population. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. But it's sea lettuce. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would try. I've never had sea lettuce as far as I know, No, I would try to. It's just the article does say that, like, you know, part of the problem then is like convincing

everyone to eat sea lettuce all the time. And it's absolutely true. I mean, it'd be foolish to think otherwise, you know. But if you're trying to solve world hunger, I mean, you know, well that's the thing you could also and a lot of people use spear lena powder is like a dietary supplement because it's so good for you and it's so energy dense. Um. But there are there's also there's a couple of other things I wanted to mentioned that before we leave. Um about the the

kind of greenness of algae. One, it's carbon neutral. I don't think we said that. But the the CEO two that um, the algae uses to produce it to do its thing, and it's actually sucking it right out of the air, so it releases c O two when it's burned as biofuel. But that CEO two was just in the air like a month ago, so it's not like it's coming from a sequestered sink of c O two.

Like fossil fuels that we dig up that are not part of the carbon cycle right then, that we're actually adding to their So it would make it a carbon neutral thing. And then the other thing, if we replaced soy um with algae, livestock and fish feed, we would no longer have to do any wild caught fish because apparently they go out and catch wild fish, grind them up and feed them to farmed fish as as feed to get the omega three's. If just supplemented that with algae,

we wouldn't have to catch any wildfish whatsoever. And then if we replaced cattle feed um uh made of soy with algae, we wouldn't have to cut down forests to grow soy to feed the cattle on. Yeah, so it could be. I mean, if we if we really just keep looking at algae and don't walk away from it, don't walk away from algae. There's a bright future ahead of us with it. There's so much, so much promise. Analogaye baby. Yeah, there's a lake in Georgia that I

go to a lot and there um has been. I'm a member of the Facebook page where people complain about stuff. Basically sure, yeah, it's what most of those are for. Uh And a lot of people are complaining about these grasses in the lake now and algae blooms and they're spraying chemicals in the lake to get rid of the stuff. No, and and it's a Georgia power lake, so they have

uh like an approved list of vendors that will do this. Um. And my whole thought is like, if there's an algae bloom, it's like, isn't that nature trying to work something out? I think that's nature trying to work out fertilizer runoff. So the problem isn't Like, the problem isn't in the lake. It's up on land somewhere and some like farm that's just using too much fertilizer. But I mean that's what my whole point though, is that like the algae is

there for a reason. Yeah, right, it's not just there too to chick off a jet skier. Right. It's kind of like if you've um like hit your knee on something, just cutting your leg off, so you don't have any more knee pain. That's basically what the people at that lake are doing. Yeah, it's not the best analogy ever, but I'm alright with it. Like it you got anything else? No, up with algae? Up with algae? I like ones like this because we're basically just like, what about this? Oh? Yeah,

what about this? What about that? Yeah? And we always have the rosiest colored glasses, which you know, if that's our fault, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm with you, ma'nuh. If you want to know more about algae ghost swimming. And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this flying by the seat of my pants and just pulling up an email. Oh that's good stuff. This is on color blindness. Though. It's a good one

and it has a picture of a cat. So hey, guys, my dad has color blindness and it has led to a few embarrassing mishaps in his life. This past weekend, my brother got married. Congratulations Peter and Jackie, she says, and all the men were supposed to wear blue suits. However, my dad couldn't tell the difference between the colors, and he packed his black suit. Uh. I wonder why your dad didn't get help at this point with something that's

big because dad doesn't care that much. I think you're right, and nor should he. Uh. Not a huge deal, but he definitely stands out in the pictures. Uh. The story that cracks me up the most, though, is that I have an orange cat with matching amber eyes. My dad likes to say how he has most beautiful green eyes, and I really want to ask if he thinks my cat looks like the Grinch. So I attached a picture of Raja so you can see how his eyes matches. Uh. For and that is one cute cat. Look at that

sure little fake mouse in his mouth? Nothing green about it, no, uh? And she also finishes with like you mentioned, my mom has always done the grilling because my dad says he can't tell when it's done or burning. So there's a mom around some mom you should have. Or maybe she knew about the suit color and just didn't wanted to embarrass her husband. I think so. Or just didn't really like the group, the groom or the bride, I don't know. Somebody did not somebody else in this wedding, I think

is what happened here. Well, that cat doesn't like that fake mouse. I'll tell you that. It's funny. The cat is like holding a fake mouse, but it looks like it's looking at a real mouse. Of camera. It's a good picture. It's got a cat condo and everything. Uh and she finishes. Thanks for the relatable episode. Um, that is from Andy. That's from Andy. All right, Andy, thanks a lot for that. Um. Well, appreciate you writing in. Good luck with your family. Yes, and Peter and Jackie,

way to go and get married. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know hilarious family story, we love those. You can go to our website www. Dot stuff you should know dot com and find all the links to our social media accounts. You can find us there, or you can send us an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com