With increasing fuel prices over the past two decades, there has been growing interest in using biofuels as suources of energy. Biofuels are fuels that derive their energy by conversion of carbon dioxide to organic compounds, (a process known as “carbon fixation) through the involvement of organisms.
A simple example is that of bioethanol -- an alcohol produced by fermentation largely from carbohydrates found in sugarcane or corn. Ethanol can also be produced from grass, leaves and other cellulose containing materials. However, if wheat, corn or sugarcane are used to serve as the biomass for fuel production, then valuable land area that can be used for producing food crops has to be diverted for production of biofuels. With a growing world population that has now crossed the seven billion mark, and with large areas of our planet suffering from water stress and desertification, we can hardly afford to set aside large land areas for growing biofuel producing crops instead of food crops. This has been a major criticism against the production of biofuels.
Now scientists working at Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) at Berkleyh have carried out some biochemical wizardry to circumvent this problem--they have succeded in transforming common seaweed into biofues! The dicovery has triggered the formation of a start-up company in Chile
In tomorro's world, the seashores may well become the energy producing reservoirs of our planet.