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Algae: Food, Fuel, What? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and I just want to
0:03
Speaker 1: remind you that we are releasing a brand new podcast
0:07
Speaker 1: called Short Stuff. It's got its own feed and everything,
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Speaker 1: but it's still the same great kind of stuff you
0:13
Speaker 1: should know that you love. It's got Me and Chuck
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Speaker 1: and Jerry, but the topics are briefer and the episodes
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0:35
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
0:39
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:48
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. And Jerry said, go,
0:52
Speaker 1: so this is stuff you should know which America loves
0:56
Speaker 1: because it rhymes. Mmmm what rhymes? Jerry said, go, so
1:01
Speaker 1: it's stuff you should not and Americans love rhymes. Isn't
1:06
Speaker 1: that the new uh reality show America Loves Rhyming? That'd
1:11
Speaker 1: be cool, would be like a hip hop kind of
1:15
Speaker 1: talent show. Yeah, I think that'd be neat. America's got rhymes. Yes,
1:23
Speaker 1: that's going pretty good. How about you, man, I'm good.
1:26
Speaker 1: I'm I'm finally uh all cleared up for my weird
1:30
Speaker 1: Australian gold. Oh that's good. You sound much better. You
1:33
Speaker 1: look good. Yeah. Just loving life again. Uh well, not that,
1:38
Speaker 1: but I feel physically able. It's life and stuff right now.
1:42
Speaker 1: But it is, You're like in the grips of it.
1:45
Speaker 1: Jerry's all strung out. I'm a little tired kind of
1:47
Speaker 1: what going on. If I keep saying, if you see
1:51
Speaker 1: me live in November, then that means all as well.
1:53
Speaker 1: Yeah almost there, chuck, Just another monthsh yeah, yeah, I
1:59
Speaker 1: would stays is. October is my favorite month generally, but
2:02
Speaker 1: this October's is the suck. Oh yeah, you're Halloween is
2:06
Speaker 1: your favorite holiday kind of person? Huh? I love it.
2:09
Speaker 1: Just Halloween football's cranking up, that first fall breeze blows
2:13
Speaker 1: in the whole thing of October. But of course it's Atlanta,
2:17
Speaker 1: so it's still you know, in the nineties. It's a
2:20
Speaker 1: weirdly hot, ridiculous Atlanta has got some odd weather. I'll
2:24
Speaker 1: give you that. My friend I was telling Jerry the
2:26
Speaker 1: other day that I saw a thing. I believe it
2:28
Speaker 1: was the New York Times had this interactive feature where
2:31
Speaker 1: you could see how many days above ninety degrees where
2:35
Speaker 1: you lived was when you were born compared to now.
2:38
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy one, Atlanta had fifty five days
2:42
Speaker 1: above ninety Now it has seventy seven, and in another
2:46
Speaker 1: like ten years, I think it'll be ninety days above
2:48
Speaker 1: ninety degrees because the climate change. Or is that just
2:52
Speaker 1: the New York Times editorial opinion. No, I mean this
2:55
Speaker 1: is These are the facts. They didn't say. Why if
2:59
Speaker 1: we could devay that if you want, because it sounds
3:01
Speaker 1: fake to me. No, I mean, that's just the reality
3:05
Speaker 1: of the temperature. They weren't saying. I think let's just
3:08
Speaker 1: draw around conclusions. Sure, sure, I know. The point is
3:11
Speaker 1: it's hot. It is hot, and you know what happens
3:14
Speaker 1: when it's hot, Chuck, I love this segue. Algae blooms. Yep,
3:21
Speaker 1: you know what happens when algae blooms. Fuel is born.
3:26
Speaker 1: All kinds of things. Potentially you're born, cosmetics, mayonnaise, um, food, livestock, sushi, succi,
3:36
Speaker 1: all that stuff. All of it is born when algae blooms.
3:40
Speaker 1: Sushi sandwiches, sushi, shushi sandwich. Oh, Steve brule our heart. Yeah,
3:50
Speaker 1: I had a very flirted with greatness when a publicist
3:55
Speaker 1: for John c Riley said that he might be on
3:57
Speaker 1: movie crush and it did not happen. So oh, I'm
3:59
Speaker 1: sorry about that. That's right. That would have been That
4:02
Speaker 1: would have been pretty exciting. You were broken up for
4:04
Speaker 1: a little while there, weren't you, right though? Yeah? You
4:07
Speaker 1: recovered just like it was an Australian cold. Nothing. All right,
4:11
Speaker 1: So let's talk algae. This is pretty remarkable. Yes, So, um,
4:15
Speaker 1: we should kind of set the states here because just
4:18
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years, the bottom has kind
4:21
Speaker 1: of dropped out on the algae. Is bio fuel um
4:26
Speaker 1: push among venture capitalists and oil companies dropped out? Is
4:30
Speaker 1: in not happening. It's not happening, at least not right now.
4:34
Speaker 1: There was this There was this moment in time about
4:36
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven to say, I think two thousand fifteen,
4:40
Speaker 1: where it looked like at least as as far as
4:44
Speaker 1: like money and attention and media exposure that was being
4:48
Speaker 1: thrown at algae was that it was it was the
4:51
Speaker 1: next great bio fuel, and that it was going to
4:54
Speaker 1: happen really soon. But the thing that I was learning
4:57
Speaker 1: about venture capitalists is like they know like soon, they
5:01
Speaker 1: like right now. And so as it became very clear
5:04
Speaker 1: that a lot of the early preliminary results from the
5:07
Speaker 1: lab we're not necessarily translating into the real world, a
5:11
Speaker 1: lot of people walked away. But in doing that that
5:14
Speaker 1: it's not to say that algae as a biofuel isn't
5:17
Speaker 1: going to be a viable fuel of the future. It's
5:21
Speaker 1: just going to take a lot more money and a
5:22
Speaker 1: lot more time than everybody at first was kind of
5:25
Speaker 1: hyped up for over the last couple of years. So
5:28
Speaker 1: it's still there, the promise is still there. It's just
5:30
Speaker 1: not happening tomorrow. Some people predict it might not even
5:33
Speaker 1: happen this century, but I take issue with that. I
5:35
Speaker 1: think it will happen in the twenty one century. Well,
5:38
Speaker 1: it's funny because I did UM occasionally for stuff like this,
5:41
Speaker 1: I will search just news uh on the old Google,
5:45
Speaker 1: and today they're popped up an article about a company
5:49
Speaker 1: in Hawaii that is in fact pushing forward UM. After
5:53
Speaker 1: all they're testing and everything, they're pushing forward with with
5:56
Speaker 1: a with the plant with a bio diesel production plant
6:00
Speaker 1: from algae. So that's awesome. At least one place is
6:03
Speaker 1: doing it in Hawaii. Yeah, I think I think there
6:05
Speaker 1: are a few companies that are like, we're staying the course,
6:08
Speaker 1: we're going to figure this out. But for what I
6:10
Speaker 1: saw in the parlance of venture capitalists, the industry is
6:13
Speaker 1: pivoted to UM food production more than um food, and
6:19
Speaker 1: food and additive production more than um fuel. But from
6:23
Speaker 1: the research, they're learning how to grow more algae faster
6:27
Speaker 1: and better and harvesting it more cheaply and processing it
6:31
Speaker 1: more cheaply. All of those lessons can be extrapolated over
6:34
Speaker 1: to the fuel industry as well. So as long as
6:36
Speaker 1: people are messing around with algae, there's a lot of
6:39
Speaker 1: good stuff that's going to come from it. And I
6:41
Speaker 1: can understand after researching this article where all that hype
6:44
Speaker 1: came from, because it's just like beautiful stuff. Yeah, it
6:49
Speaker 1: really is, and we should we should specify here, and
6:52
Speaker 1: we're talking algae. There's something like a hundred thousand or
6:56
Speaker 1: more different genetically diverse strains of algae um but typically
7:03
Speaker 1: you can kind of divide it into two categories. There's microalgae,
7:07
Speaker 1: which is what makes water green and it's a microscopic,
7:11
Speaker 1: single cell plant and then there's macro algae, which is
7:14
Speaker 1: like you think of with seaweed or kelp or sea
7:17
Speaker 1: lettuce or something like that. Yeah. And you know, for
7:20
Speaker 1: this show, we're talking about alga culture. Um. And this
7:25
Speaker 1: is not any I mean it's new in the sense
7:27
Speaker 1: that we are rampant gump efforts into studying like bi
7:31
Speaker 1: fuels and stuff like that. But the Japanese have been
7:34
Speaker 1: cultivating algae for a long long time, like years or more. Yeah, exactly. So, Uh,
7:44
Speaker 1: it's always been a big thing there. Uh. In the
7:47
Speaker 1: British Isles, like in in sixteen century Mexico with the Aztecs,
7:51
Speaker 1: people have been eating algae, using algae. We're gonna talk
7:55
Speaker 1: a lot about spilina, which has been consumed in harvest
8:00
Speaker 1: it for thousands of years. Uh, and so you know
8:04
Speaker 1: we've been eating it, using it for fertilizers, um, thickening
8:08
Speaker 1: agents for food like you said with mayonnaise, and like
8:10
Speaker 1: in things like toothpaste. It's a big, big business. I believe,
8:15
Speaker 1: about a six billion dollar worldwide business, a couple of
8:19
Speaker 1: billion of which is for seaweed paper alone for nori. Yeah,
8:25
Speaker 1: just for the stuff they wrap sushi. And it's two
8:27
Speaker 1: billion dollars two billion dollars for those delicious green sheets
8:33
Speaker 1: that look like paper that you eat. Yeah, So as
8:36
Speaker 1: it stands, even without the idea of it being like
8:39
Speaker 1: the next alternative energy, it's still a six billion dollar business, right,
8:43
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of reason for people to keep
8:45
Speaker 1: paying attention. Is there's money to be made in algae
8:47
Speaker 1: in other words, right, Yeah, but you can you know,
8:50
Speaker 1: like we said, with a bio fuel and we'll get
8:52
Speaker 1: into this more. One of the cool things about algae
8:54
Speaker 1: is how versatile it is. Beyond the fact that you
8:56
Speaker 1: can eat it and you can well we'll talk about
8:58
Speaker 1: all the myriad things you can do with it, but
9:00
Speaker 1: you can squeeze oil out of that stuff that can
9:04
Speaker 1: be turned into gasoline or jet fuel, which is amazing. Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: you can replace kerosene with biofuel form algy and you
9:12
Speaker 1: can use the waste product that you get as a result.
9:15
Speaker 1: It's it's really sort of a wonderful thing. And here
9:20
Speaker 1: goes it sounds like a big, long setup, So it was.
9:25
Speaker 1: It was a beautiful one man way to go um
9:29
Speaker 1: so with with algae with either type. What we're talking
9:32
Speaker 1: about our plants, right, and just like any other plants,
9:36
Speaker 1: they produce uh, they produce their own food through photosynthesis.
9:40
Speaker 1: Green plants they use chlorophyll and sunlight, and they convert um.
9:45
Speaker 1: They also use carbon dioxide and they convert all that
9:48
Speaker 1: into energy stores and they give off as a byproduct oxygen.
9:54
Speaker 1: So you can start to see why algae is a
9:57
Speaker 1: bit of a darling of the environmentalists set, because is
10:00
Speaker 1: first of all, it's drawing C O two from the
10:03
Speaker 1: air and it's putting out oxygen as a byproduct, and
10:07
Speaker 1: then it's a darling of the energy set. These are
10:10
Speaker 1: two different sets that sometimes overlap um because you can
10:15
Speaker 1: actually take the energy store and which is stored largely
10:19
Speaker 1: in the form of oil, but we'll see other kinds
10:22
Speaker 1: and unlock it, like you said, in different types of fuel.
10:24
Speaker 1: That's easier said than done. But you can also do
10:27
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff with lamb based plants to right,
10:32
Speaker 1: and there actually was a big push there were Algae
10:34
Speaker 1: represents the third generation of bio fuels. The first generation
10:38
Speaker 1: was UM basically like cellulosic ethanol, using like corn to
10:42
Speaker 1: turn into um fuel, which a lot of people were like,
10:46
Speaker 1: this is really great. And then if you'll remember those
10:49
Speaker 1: food riots in like Egypt and Haiti, and I think
10:51
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, you like, diverting corn from the
10:55
Speaker 1: food supply over to the energy sector is really really bad.
10:59
Speaker 1: So people said, Okay, we don't want to we don't
11:01
Speaker 1: want to mess with our food supply. We can't use
11:02
Speaker 1: food for energy, but we can use waste from that stuff.
11:07
Speaker 1: So like you can take the um corn stalks that
11:10
Speaker 1: nobody's eating and turn them into a biofuel, which is great,
11:14
Speaker 1: but it requires several extra expensive steps, so it's just
11:17
Speaker 1: not cost efficient. Now algae came along and it has
11:21
Speaker 1: a lot of things going for it compared to land
11:23
Speaker 1: based plants that made it really really attractive for a
11:26
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Well, yeah, for sure. Uh it's and
11:31
Speaker 1: when we when we say something is fast growing algae,
11:34
Speaker 1: we need a new word for how fast algae can grow.
11:37
Speaker 1: Ultra fast growing. Yeah, like that turbo turbo growth. Uh.
11:42
Speaker 1: Land plants like you were talking about, sometimes it takes
11:45
Speaker 1: years or months maybe to reach maturity. Um algae can
11:49
Speaker 1: do this. That can complete a life cycle sometimes in
11:52
Speaker 1: a day. Algae can well. Some algae because I think
11:56
Speaker 1: there are more than seventy thousand species. I saw a
11:58
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Really they probably found thirty this morning. Um.
12:04
Speaker 1: Some algae, though, can double their biomass in an hour. Uh.
12:08
Speaker 1: Super efficient as far as converting solar energy to biomass, um,
12:14
Speaker 1: I believe land plants use like of their energy just
12:18
Speaker 1: building like the structure like roots, structures and stems and
12:23
Speaker 1: things needed to like support the plant itself. You don't
12:27
Speaker 1: need this with algae. It's just floating out there, right, So,
12:30
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're using of that sunlight and carbon
12:34
Speaker 1: dioxide nutrients just to build the structure, you need to
12:37
Speaker 1: keep doing that just to be a dumb plant. That's
12:40
Speaker 1: extraordinarily inefficient, at least compared to algae, which it just
12:44
Speaker 1: floats in the water, doesn't need roots, it doesn't need
12:47
Speaker 1: much structure. It's a single celled plant. So basically all
12:50
Speaker 1: it is is a little solar powered energy producing factory,
12:55
Speaker 1: and that's what it does and it doesn't so it's
12:57
Speaker 1: extraordinarily efficient compared to land plants, for sure. Uh. Compared
13:01
Speaker 1: to land plants, you can grow algae and very very
13:04
Speaker 1: tight concentrated spaces. Uh. I have here that they produce
13:07
Speaker 1: up to a hundred times more oil breaker a hundred
13:10
Speaker 1: times than land plants. Yeah, that's remarkable. Yeah, that's pretty
13:14
Speaker 1: substantial too. Plus, um, there's different types of algae that
13:20
Speaker 1: produce oils are edible for food. Um. I don't think
13:24
Speaker 1: they very frequently overlap. But from all these different types
13:29
Speaker 1: of algae, you can say, well, all I have is
13:31
Speaker 1: the salt marsh pond to grow algae in what kind
13:35
Speaker 1: of algae can I have? God? And God goes here,
13:38
Speaker 1: take this algae. It's pretty great. I'll give you a
13:41
Speaker 1: pretty good buzz too if you dry it out. And uh,
13:44
Speaker 1: the guy takes it from God, puts it in a
13:47
Speaker 1: salt marsh pond, harvests it, saves a little bit for
13:50
Speaker 1: his head stash, and then sells the rest to Rex Tillerson.
13:54
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's the end of the Bible. And uh,
14:00
Speaker 1: the other cool thing is algae doesn't compete. It's not
14:02
Speaker 1: like an either or with land plants. It grows in
14:06
Speaker 1: the water, So it's not like, oh, I need all
14:08
Speaker 1: this land that you need for corn to grow my algae.
14:12
Speaker 1: It's a big one. Don't even need fresh water there.
14:15
Speaker 1: It can grow in in gross water, dirty water, polluted water,
14:19
Speaker 1: salt water. And not all algae, but certain kinds of algae.
14:23
Speaker 1: Uh So it's not like there there they can coexist,
14:28
Speaker 1: you know, they can all just be friendly. You can
14:30
Speaker 1: still have your corn fields in your algae ponds. Yeah.
14:33
Speaker 1: And again it's like it's unlike the first generation of
14:36
Speaker 1: bio fuels. It's not competing directly with the food supply.
14:40
Speaker 1: It's not saying, well, we need this land to grow algae,
14:43
Speaker 1: so we can't grow corn on it. It's we've got
14:46
Speaker 1: all this land to grow corn, and we've got this
14:48
Speaker 1: stupid pond that's not doing anything for anybody. Let's grow
14:51
Speaker 1: algae in there too, baby, And then you've got a
14:53
Speaker 1: farmer that's growing both. One of the other things about
14:56
Speaker 1: algae too, Chuck, is that a lot of those things overlap, right.
14:59
Speaker 1: You can you can you can actually set up a
15:03
Speaker 1: kind of algae that is not only like producing oil.
15:09
Speaker 1: You can use the leftover stuff after you've extracted the
15:11
Speaker 1: oil to feed your cows on your on your land,
15:15
Speaker 1: or to feed the corn that's going to feed the cows.
15:19
Speaker 1: And then all the while you're also drawing carbon dioxide
15:22
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere. So it's pretty it's pretty great. It's
15:25
Speaker 1: pretty versatile, and there's a lot of reasons people like
15:28
Speaker 1: it so on all that, I think we set it
15:30
Speaker 1: up pretty well. You want to take a break, Yeah,
15:33
Speaker 1: I get you know how excited I get when we
15:34
Speaker 1: talk about efficient systems. I know you do. You get jazz?
15:38
Speaker 1: I need to like, I need to go calm down.
15:40
Speaker 1: All right? Oh all right? So we set up that
16:07
Speaker 1: algae is basically the miracle of miracles here on planet Earth. Uh,
16:11
Speaker 1: if you've got water, you've got a sun in the sky,
16:16
Speaker 1: and some nutrients, then you can harvest I mean, you
16:20
Speaker 1: can harvest algae. But algae, you don't, like, it'll grow
16:23
Speaker 1: on its own, right, Oh yeah, I mean that's I mean,
16:26
Speaker 1: it grows naturally. It's not like we created this stuff.
16:29
Speaker 1: But you can grow it on your own. You can't. Well,
16:32
Speaker 1: there's there's I think what you're saying, what it's like,
16:34
Speaker 1: there's there's techniques you can do to improve the growth
16:36
Speaker 1: of algae, right yeah, or like you can you know,
16:39
Speaker 1: you can harvest is stuff from the ocean. But there
16:42
Speaker 1: are many many ways to actually like have your own
16:44
Speaker 1: little algae farm, right, especially if you're making um, if
16:48
Speaker 1: you're if you're doing um micro algae, like the tiny
16:52
Speaker 1: single celled stuff that you actually can't see. It's just
16:55
Speaker 1: you know, when water turns green, Yeah, that's that's algae
16:59
Speaker 1: in it. It's not like you can you can see
17:00
Speaker 1: it or anything. The stuff you can see that's considered
17:03
Speaker 1: macro algae. Microalgae is again single celled, microscopic individual plants
17:09
Speaker 1: that there's so many of them they just tint the
17:11
Speaker 1: water green. So if you want to grow those, there's
17:14
Speaker 1: a few different techniques available to actually farming um algae. Again,
17:19
Speaker 1: it's called alga culture, which is not a beautiful word,
17:22
Speaker 1: but it's like it works. Do you I like, I
17:25
Speaker 1: like how it looks more than I like how it sounds.
17:27
Speaker 1: Alga culture. I like it. Yeah, it's like you like,
17:30
Speaker 1: you like choked on something in the middle of the
17:32
Speaker 1: word alga culture. All right, So we have the three methods.
17:37
Speaker 1: Like you're saying, um, you have your standard open pond,
17:40
Speaker 1: your standard clothes pond, and your standard bio photo reactor. UM.
17:45
Speaker 1: An open pond is exactly what you think. That's the
17:48
Speaker 1: cheapest way to do it. Obviously, the simplest way, the
17:50
Speaker 1: sort of old fashioned way, is in a big shallow pond. Um.
17:56
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's not just willy nilly that
17:58
Speaker 1: will usually divide this thing up in to um almost
18:02
Speaker 1: like I mean, they say race ways, which is really
18:04
Speaker 1: kind of dumb. In this article, I would say it's
18:07
Speaker 1: more like lines of like planted rows of corn. Let's say, yeah,
18:12
Speaker 1: kind except it's algae. And the thing is is sunlight,
18:15
Speaker 1: uh is great for algae, but it only you know,
18:17
Speaker 1: once you get a lot of algae going, it only
18:19
Speaker 1: penetrates so far into the water. So what you need
18:22
Speaker 1: to do is you need to agitate it and stir
18:24
Speaker 1: that algae up to make sure everything gets a little
18:27
Speaker 1: taste of that sweet sweet sunlight. Uh. And in case
18:31
Speaker 1: of an open pond, you have a system like a
18:32
Speaker 1: paddle wheel system, agitating and stuff, exposing everything to the
18:37
Speaker 1: light all the while. It's almost like composting in a way.
18:40
Speaker 1: You're you're mixing and nutrients and c O two into
18:43
Speaker 1: the liquid um. It's a great system, but it's it's
18:47
Speaker 1: the one that produces the least biomass um. It loses
18:51
Speaker 1: water to evaporation, so you continually need to add water.
18:54
Speaker 1: And this is the one where contamination or predators can
18:58
Speaker 1: come in and you know, p or eat or yeah, yeah,
19:03
Speaker 1: I guess either one would be a problem. Huh. Yeah,
19:06
Speaker 1: you've got a wolf pean in your algae pond or
19:09
Speaker 1: eating the algae. You don't want either one of those. Ye,
19:11
Speaker 1: So that's the open pond. UM close pond is about
19:15
Speaker 1: the same, but you've you've covered it up sort of
19:17
Speaker 1: like a greenhouse, which means a little more costs, but
19:20
Speaker 1: you have a lot more control you do, and the
19:23
Speaker 1: cost would be mostly up front if you if you
19:25
Speaker 1: build the greenhouse correctly, it's not too expensive to build
19:29
Speaker 1: a greenhouse, although if you're doing it on a very
19:32
Speaker 1: very large scale, you either need a lot of ponds
19:34
Speaker 1: with a lot of greenhouses or one big pond with
19:37
Speaker 1: a massive greenhouse over it. Either way, the point is
19:39
Speaker 1: is you're exerting your human right to control nature over
19:44
Speaker 1: the pond that you're growing algae, and it has your
19:48
Speaker 1: wolf friend can't get in um, it's not going to
19:51
Speaker 1: get contaminated by other algae. It's just a it's just
19:54
Speaker 1: a lot easier to control, and it's not, i would guess,
19:57
Speaker 1: not too terribly much more expensive than the and pond method. Yeah,
20:02
Speaker 1: if you've got if money is no object, if you're
20:06
Speaker 1: a person of means and you want to allow your friends, Yeah,
20:09
Speaker 1: and you want to really want to show off and
20:11
Speaker 1: annoy your neighbor. Although I think these things look really cool,
20:14
Speaker 1: Actually I do too. It looks like something that the
20:16
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters would have trapped some you know, it looks like ectoplasm.
20:21
Speaker 1: It's very bright green. Um. The bio photoreactor method, this
20:24
Speaker 1: is completely closed. Um. Basically you're growing algae in these tubes.
20:30
Speaker 1: It's all I mean, I say artificial. It's not artificial
20:34
Speaker 1: because it's still water, but you're you're completely manipulating what's
20:38
Speaker 1: going on with pumps and nutrients and water and light
20:42
Speaker 1: in these clear tubes. Um. Sometimes it's like an automatic
20:46
Speaker 1: system that's all completely set up. You know, it's a
20:49
Speaker 1: lot of money, but it's a really like it's the
20:53
Speaker 1: most efficient way to do it, even though it's the
20:56
Speaker 1: most expensive it is. But I mean, like if you
20:59
Speaker 1: if you're you know, growing algae for commercial purposes and
21:02
Speaker 1: you've got a little sweet VC money, you might as
21:06
Speaker 1: well set up a bio photo reactor. You're right, you've
21:10
Speaker 1: got I mean, you've got light coming from all directions right, um,
21:14
Speaker 1: and you have uh a controlled closed system. Because one
21:20
Speaker 1: of the things ABOi alogay is it grows and it
21:22
Speaker 1: grows really fast. But if you can, if you make
21:25
Speaker 1: sure it has nutrients it needs, the pH is just
21:28
Speaker 1: right like it like slightly alkaline water of a pH
21:31
Speaker 1: between seven and nine I believe, with a temperature of
21:35
Speaker 1: sixty eight degrees fahrenheight. You like, you can control all
21:39
Speaker 1: this stuff very easily with the biophoto reactor. Again, the
21:43
Speaker 1: problem is the upfront cost, yeah, for sure. But the
21:47
Speaker 1: thing is is with these three methods you can grow algae.
21:51
Speaker 1: That's some methods are better than others, but you know
21:55
Speaker 1: that you can grow algae in here. The problem really
21:58
Speaker 1: comes in in getting the algae out of the water
22:02
Speaker 1: and then getting the oil or whatever you're trying to
22:06
Speaker 1: get from the algae out of the algae. There's a
22:08
Speaker 1: lot of um, there's a lot of steps you need
22:11
Speaker 1: to take in and some of like the more steps
22:14
Speaker 1: you add, the more involved each step becomes, the more
22:18
Speaker 1: expensive the processes. And when the process gets expensive, those
22:23
Speaker 1: VC guys start to walk away. So you have to
22:25
Speaker 1: figure out these this process and that's kind of where
22:28
Speaker 1: it's at right now. In part. That's kind of where um,
22:31
Speaker 1: the at least algae biofuel industry is stalled out right now. Yeah.
22:36
Speaker 1: So those three methods that's for cultivating the micro algae
22:40
Speaker 1: um the macro algae that we talked about, which is
22:43
Speaker 1: kelp and sea lettuce and the stuff that like when
22:46
Speaker 1: you're in the ocean, like, oh, get that stuff away
22:48
Speaker 1: from me, Like I don't want the miracle plant on
22:51
Speaker 1: my leg um. That stuff has been cultivated for centuries,
22:57
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of years in the open sea um,
23:01
Speaker 1: the ocean, the sunlight, everything that it needs is in there,
23:06
Speaker 1: and it grows like crazy. It's great. Harvesting this stuff
23:10
Speaker 1: is a little tough. Uh. They've been doing it, like
23:12
Speaker 1: I said, for thousands of years and in coastal areas
23:15
Speaker 1: all over the place, all over the world. But they,
23:19
Speaker 1: you know, begin to think like hey, we we maybe
23:21
Speaker 1: want to cultivate this stuff. Uh so what do we do?
23:25
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, it'll attach to a rope, like the
23:28
Speaker 1: spore attaches to a rope and it grows on that.
23:31
Speaker 1: So let's just throw these rope lines down on anchors
23:34
Speaker 1: and it's basically a vertical growth rope. Uh, the same
23:40
Speaker 1: like with a large net. It grows on that rope
23:43
Speaker 1: and they basically can just like anchor the stuff down
23:48
Speaker 1: have it grow along these rope lines and then pull
23:51
Speaker 1: those in when you want to harvest it, right exactly,
23:54
Speaker 1: that's a pretty that's a a traditional way of cultivating it. Um.
23:59
Speaker 1: If you're up and knees, you think, well, I guess
24:02
Speaker 1: I'll just invent a really awesome machine that mows the
24:05
Speaker 1: law and of a kelp forest underwater and just harvest
24:09
Speaker 1: it like that. So there's that technique as well. Uh.
24:12
Speaker 1: And then you also like there's just walking out into
24:16
Speaker 1: the water and and grabbing whether it's kelp or um
24:20
Speaker 1: floating kind of mucky algae um, you can just harvest
24:25
Speaker 1: it as simply as that. The difference is you're talking
24:28
Speaker 1: about macro alergae is something you can put your hands
24:30
Speaker 1: on and just kind of put into like a bucket
24:33
Speaker 1: or a bag or a basket or something some receptacle
24:37
Speaker 1: of some type um. Whereas with my with microalgay, if
24:41
Speaker 1: you try to do that, it's just gonna you've got
24:43
Speaker 1: a bucket full of water. You still have this harvesting
24:46
Speaker 1: technique that makes microalergy so much more difficult that you
24:51
Speaker 1: you can't just use traditional techniques to harvest it. It's
24:54
Speaker 1: you have to basically set up some big time machines. Yeah,
24:58
Speaker 1: so let's talk about the harvesting and processing a little bit. Um.
25:04
Speaker 1: Like you said, with the micrology, you're just pulling this
25:05
Speaker 1: stuff off. But ultimately what you want to do is
25:09
Speaker 1: end up with a paste, with an algae paste. Yeah,
25:12
Speaker 1: that's the good stuff, that's the real good stuff. So
25:14
Speaker 1: in order to do that, you need to obviously you
25:17
Speaker 1: need to remove the moisture um and that will leave
25:20
Speaker 1: you with this dense biomastic paste um. Micro Algae presents
25:27
Speaker 1: a unique problem, like you said, because it's just like
25:30
Speaker 1: it looks like a bucket of water, green water. So
25:33
Speaker 1: it makes sense that one of the methods is filtration.
25:36
Speaker 1: You just feed it through a filter and it's got
25:39
Speaker 1: the tiniest little membrane that these pores won't fit through
25:44
Speaker 1: these algae cells, and so it just filters it out.
25:48
Speaker 1: And the problem with that is is probably what you
25:51
Speaker 1: would think is it's really easy for that stuff to
25:53
Speaker 1: become clogged up. Right. I don't even know why they
25:56
Speaker 1: would try this. It would just clog immediately, you know. Yeah,
26:00
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it's not I'm sure it takes out
26:02
Speaker 1: a consideration with its design. Sure, I guess you want
26:07
Speaker 1: to talk about flaculation. Flaculation that sounds dirty. It really does.
26:12
Speaker 1: It's not, though. It's just basically clumping algae. Like some
26:16
Speaker 1: algae naturally clumps, but not necessarily the algae you want.
26:20
Speaker 1: So if you throw in the algae that clumps with
26:23
Speaker 1: the algae you want, it can make the other algae clump.
26:26
Speaker 1: There's also chemicals that will make algae clump, and then
26:28
Speaker 1: you're basically taking micro algay and and converting it into
26:33
Speaker 1: something you can manipulate like a macro algae. So that helps.
26:37
Speaker 1: That's good, but then now you have microalgae that has
26:40
Speaker 1: some sort of clumping chemicals or algae that you don't
26:43
Speaker 1: really want mixed in with it. It's not that it's
26:46
Speaker 1: not fool proof method, right. And the other problem with
26:50
Speaker 1: flocculation is if if you do it too much, you
26:52
Speaker 1: will grow hair on your pumps. It's true, it makes
26:55
Speaker 1: the saints cry when you flaculate. Uh. Flotation is another
27:01
Speaker 1: h is another method. So this is when you use
27:04
Speaker 1: compressed air and you put it in the water and
27:07
Speaker 1: you bubble it up and that makes things that makes
27:10
Speaker 1: the micro algy kind of go to the surface where
27:13
Speaker 1: you can just sort of skim it off. Like uh
27:15
Speaker 1: like uh like uh foam grit chaff. Well, it's grit
27:21
Speaker 1: chaff like you know when you make slow cook Southern
27:25
Speaker 1: style grits. Do that. Yeah, yeah, you got you gotta
27:28
Speaker 1: rinse it, same with like sushi rice. You rinse it
27:31
Speaker 1: in cold water. And that the husk I guess it is.
27:36
Speaker 1: I guess it's the husk kind of floats on the top.
27:38
Speaker 1: That's starch and you get a little Yeah, you get
27:40
Speaker 1: a little strainer and skim that stuff off. If you
27:43
Speaker 1: can end up with good soft grits or good soft rice,
27:46
Speaker 1: what do you do with the stuff you skim off? Yeah?
27:50
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a use for that. Surely I'll
27:52
Speaker 1: bet people feed it to their pigs or something like that. Well,
27:55
Speaker 1: there'd be a lot of grits that you're that you're cooking.
27:59
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean it's not like you're making the
28:01
Speaker 1: grits two feed the pigs, but rather than just throwing
28:04
Speaker 1: it out to the pig, you know what I mean?
28:06
Speaker 1: All Right, there's also chuck I love this one. There's
28:09
Speaker 1: also the centrifuge method. Yeah, that makes sense. Just where
28:13
Speaker 1: you you get that bucket, but your bucket spins around
28:16
Speaker 1: and has tiny holes in it, and it's basically do
28:19
Speaker 1: you remember the salad spinner? Remember I've got one. Okay,
28:23
Speaker 1: So it's a salad spinner for your microalgy basically, yeah,
28:26
Speaker 1: just flings it all to the outside. The thing is,
28:29
Speaker 1: unlike your salad spinner, you can't get it at a
28:33
Speaker 1: discount Marshall's or t J Max. You probably have to
28:36
Speaker 1: build it yourself for buy one. That's very expensive. When
28:39
Speaker 1: you start adding the word centrifuge rather than salad spinner,
28:43
Speaker 1: the prices automatically goes up. Yeah, and here's the thing.
28:47
Speaker 1: The cool thing is you don't have to do just
28:48
Speaker 1: one of these. A lot of times. Uh, they might
28:51
Speaker 1: be like, well, let's flocculate for a little while, but
28:54
Speaker 1: I don't want my palms to grow, Harry, So I
28:57
Speaker 1: will then throw it in a centrifuge because I'm drowning
29:01
Speaker 1: in VC juice. And they bought me one, Um so
29:05
Speaker 1: they can. They can combine methods. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a
29:08
Speaker 1: lot of people will combine methods, and I'm sure they
29:10
Speaker 1: combine methods out of necessity because none of the methods
29:13
Speaker 1: worked by themselves. Yeah, for macro, you'd really just need
29:16
Speaker 1: to dry this stuff out and I get the sense
29:18
Speaker 1: that a lot of it is sort of the old
29:21
Speaker 1: fashioned way just by kind of put like laying it
29:24
Speaker 1: out or hanging it out in the sun. Is that
29:26
Speaker 1: about right? I would guess, yeah, surely that's the traditional method.
29:30
Speaker 1: You know what was the one that we did? Oh,
29:32
Speaker 1: coffee coffee beans? Right? Did they just lay those out
29:36
Speaker 1: in the sun? Yeah? I think we did a show
29:38
Speaker 1: on that, and like the traditional method is just like
29:42
Speaker 1: just beans just laid out baking. Am I wrong? Do
29:46
Speaker 1: you remember that? I don't remember at this point. I
29:49
Speaker 1: just remember that goats eat them, and some people pick
29:51
Speaker 1: them out of the goats poop and then sell them
29:53
Speaker 1: for a million dollars a pound. Uh. Should we take
29:58
Speaker 1: a break? I think so, Charles, all right, well let's
30:01
Speaker 1: do Let's do that and then we'll talk about, um,
30:05
Speaker 1: some of the many, many uses of algae right after this.
30:10
Speaker 1: Oh all right, dude, we're back, Chuck, And I have
30:35
Speaker 1: to say, I'm I'm a fan of algae. Now, so
30:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things you can use it for.
30:44
Speaker 1: We'll talk first about the ways you can use algae
30:47
Speaker 1: for fuel. And you might think at first, like, whoa
30:50
Speaker 1: are you going to use algae for fuel. Again, that
30:54
Speaker 1: energy store that some types of algae, not all algae,
30:57
Speaker 1: but some types, and then other types even more than others,
31:01
Speaker 1: take the energy that they're converting sunlight, c O two
31:06
Speaker 1: and other nutrients into these energy stores they converted as
31:09
Speaker 1: an oil within their tiny little single cell body. And
31:14
Speaker 1: if you get enough of these single cell bodies together
31:16
Speaker 1: in the form of these allergies that you've gotten the
31:19
Speaker 1: water out of, you can extract that oil out of it.
31:24
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of different ways to do it.
31:25
Speaker 1: You can break the cell walls basically what you're trying
31:28
Speaker 1: to do, either chemically or shaking or um or physically yea, yeah, physically. Um,
31:34
Speaker 1: you could also hit it with some sound waves. There's
31:36
Speaker 1: a lot of things you can do and you can't
31:39
Speaker 1: some um ted nugent I think really really causes them
31:44
Speaker 1: to split open um and then you get the oil.
31:48
Speaker 1: So when you take that oil, you then have to
31:49
Speaker 1: refine it, and there's depending on what you want to
31:52
Speaker 1: do with it, there's different techniques. Yeah, for sure. I
31:57
Speaker 1: mean we've been championing the biodiesel, well that's really not true.
32:01
Speaker 1: We've been saying it would be great if they could
32:03
Speaker 1: figure this out. Uh, and you know the key to
32:06
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Anytime we've done anything, We've done other
32:08
Speaker 1: episodes on other bio fuels, it's all like it would
32:13
Speaker 1: it would be the one of choice if you could
32:15
Speaker 1: figure out a way to do it and make the
32:17
Speaker 1: most money. That's the only stumbling black every is when
32:22
Speaker 1: are you going to get the big companies involved? It's
32:25
Speaker 1: when you can say, hey, we've really figured out such
32:28
Speaker 1: that it's a genuine threat to um whatever crude oil.
32:32
Speaker 1: Well what's crazy is up until very recently um x
32:36
Speaker 1: on Mobile and Chevron were both like invested in. So
32:40
Speaker 1: I mean the big companies were involved and they all
32:42
Speaker 1: just kind of walked away because it wasn't happening like
32:44
Speaker 1: in the next ten or twenty years. Yeah. I mean
32:48
Speaker 1: you get that in a certain way because they're there
32:50
Speaker 1: to make money. But I don't know, sometimes it be
32:53
Speaker 1: nice if someone sort of went out on a limb
32:55
Speaker 1: and maybe that's how it ends up happening. Well, they are,
32:58
Speaker 1: it's the little guys in Hawaii who are doing it,
33:00
Speaker 1: you know. So who deserved to be billionaires after this
33:04
Speaker 1: for trying to save the earth? Um So we talked
33:08
Speaker 1: a little bit about bio diesel. It can also be
33:10
Speaker 1: refined uh as an as an additive right for gasoline
33:14
Speaker 1: and jet fuel. Yeah. UM. The cool thing about that
33:18
Speaker 1: is if you're going to convert it into jet fuel,
33:21
Speaker 1: you can actually use existing refineries and that does something
33:24
Speaker 1: very important. It cuts down on costs. Right. UM. When
33:28
Speaker 1: cellulistic ethanol was huge in like two thousand seven eight two, UM,
33:34
Speaker 1: there was a one huge problem with it where if
33:37
Speaker 1: you were just pumping pure ethanol through existing pipelines, they
33:41
Speaker 1: were gonna wear down in like just a few years.
33:44
Speaker 1: That is not true apparently with um refined biodiesel from
33:48
Speaker 1: algae or jet fuel from algae, because it does not
33:53
Speaker 1: corrode the pipes and it doesn't corrode the systems that
33:56
Speaker 1: you used to refine it, so you don't have to
33:58
Speaker 1: build entire new pipe lines or entire new refiners. You
34:02
Speaker 1: can just switch over to algae at some points. That Yeah,
34:07
Speaker 1: that's that's a huge mark in its favor. And I
34:09
Speaker 1: think well like seven years ago they actually there was
34:12
Speaker 1: a flight from Houston to Chicago an entire commercial jet
34:19
Speaker 1: powered by Algil oil, Algil algyl Man. I hate this.
34:25
Speaker 1: I guess Algil Algil oil yeah, okay, I would say
34:30
Speaker 1: that they delivered the Rangers to get beat by the Cubs.
34:33
Speaker 1: But it's not Alga. It's not Alga culture, though, um
34:39
Speaker 1: it could be if we if we make it. We
34:41
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners all right. By the way,
34:44
Speaker 1: the Houston is the Astros, not the Rangers. Oh where
34:47
Speaker 1: do the where do the Rangers player? They out of Dallas.
34:50
Speaker 1: It's the Texas Rangers. But they yeah, they're like Dallas
34:54
Speaker 1: Metropolitan team. Yeah. Well, sorry Astros fans. And I should
35:00
Speaker 1: know that too, because I think they have the greatest
35:02
Speaker 1: uniform of all time, the seventies one. Oh the orange stripes.
35:07
Speaker 1: Man's just beautiful. It was pretty good. So uh okay,
35:13
Speaker 1: So you can turn into jet fuel. And I don't
35:15
Speaker 1: think we've talked about ethanol really, have we No, And
35:18
Speaker 1: so ethanol again, it's basically just breaking down the cellulose
35:22
Speaker 1: that remember how you said plants like spend of their
35:25
Speaker 1: energy building the structures that support them and let them live.
35:29
Speaker 1: If you take those structures and that support them and
35:32
Speaker 1: let them live and break them down, you can turn that.
35:34
Speaker 1: That's what cellulosic ethanol is. So it's basically plant material
35:39
Speaker 1: that those carbohydrates are what they use to build those walls,
35:42
Speaker 1: and you can break them down and use them for energy.
35:45
Speaker 1: And you can do the same thing with with algae. Two. Yeah,
35:49
Speaker 1: and the great size. The great thing is aside from
35:52
Speaker 1: the oil because algae, algae is made up from carbohydrates, uh,
35:58
Speaker 1: and cellulose. You can actually ferment this stuff into grain alcohol. Yeah,
36:04
Speaker 1: and that tastes like, I don't know, like seaweed that
36:08
Speaker 1: gets you wasted. I don't know. I would try it, sure,
36:13
Speaker 1: um you mean? And I were coming back from hilton
36:15
Speaker 1: Had this past weekend and there was a billboard for
36:19
Speaker 1: a liquor store outside of Savannah, and um, it said
36:25
Speaker 1: it's a corn whiskey but in the um Coca cola
36:29
Speaker 1: font for some inexplicable wreaths. Oh really Yeah. It was
36:34
Speaker 1: really weird to see, was how it's hilton Head. It
36:37
Speaker 1: was it storm ravaged or not. It must have hit
36:40
Speaker 1: above it because it was totally fine, beautiful, not a
36:43
Speaker 1: not a leaf out of place. And you know, because
36:47
Speaker 1: of your hilton Head leaf turtle. I counted them before,
36:53
Speaker 1: you mean, they're all here, They're all like they're all
36:55
Speaker 1: president account of for all right, be back in six
36:58
Speaker 1: months right, no, and move. Uh. And the methane I
37:03
Speaker 1: think is the final uh, one of the final uses. Um,
37:07
Speaker 1: everyone knows. We talked about methane plenty, that's one of
37:10
Speaker 1: the main ingredients and natural gas, and it's you know,
37:13
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's what cows make when they when
37:17
Speaker 1: they have a twoty booty. It is. And it says
37:21
Speaker 1: here that it's um that it's a clean fuel that
37:25
Speaker 1: I don't understand that at all. Methane is like one
37:27
Speaker 1: of the worst greenhouse gases there are. There's it's worse
37:31
Speaker 1: than carbon dioxide as far as trapping heat. It's it's
37:36
Speaker 1: just there's less of it than carbon dioxide. I just
37:38
Speaker 1: thought that was really weird. But the thing I love
37:41
Speaker 1: about producing methane through algae is that you're not actually
37:45
Speaker 1: using the algae. You're actual you are using the algae.
37:49
Speaker 1: You're using the algae as a feedstock for bacteria. Because
37:53
Speaker 1: when bacteria consume algae, they produce methane. So you're taking
37:57
Speaker 1: the algae and feeding it to bacteria. It's seems pretty
38:01
Speaker 1: cold and calculating, perfect for an oil company. Uh. Yeah,
38:06
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Um. We also talked earlier. I
38:09
Speaker 1: think I teased out that you can that algae even
38:12
Speaker 1: loves really gross polluted water. Um. It thrives in polluted water,
38:16
Speaker 1: So they could use it potentially, and I think they
38:20
Speaker 1: maybe or are they They are they're using it for
38:23
Speaker 1: wastewater treatment in in certain places. Yes, you can use
38:26
Speaker 1: it for wastewater treatment. They're using it. I think there's
38:29
Speaker 1: an experiment in an old tin mine in Cornwall in
38:33
Speaker 1: the UK where um they have they've added some algae
38:39
Speaker 1: to see if they can bio remediate the cadmium and
38:42
Speaker 1: the arsenic in the water that's flooded the mine. And
38:46
Speaker 1: the great thing about algae is some of it just
38:49
Speaker 1: absorbs heavy metals and pollutants. It just absorbs it and
38:52
Speaker 1: hangs onto it and then you go, um, just put
38:55
Speaker 1: it away for a billion years or something like that.
38:58
Speaker 1: You know, it just kind of sucks it up. There's
39:00
Speaker 1: actually use the stuff too for metabolism, so it will
39:04
Speaker 1: break down a heavy metal like cadmium that's toxic to
39:08
Speaker 1: us into something that's totally inert to us, which is
39:12
Speaker 1: just mind bogglingly wonderful. So they're starting to really really
39:16
Speaker 1: kind of look into the idea of using again there's
39:19
Speaker 1: like a hundred thousand different strains of algae to using
39:22
Speaker 1: some of them for bioremediation, which is a huge plus
39:25
Speaker 1: because right now we use chemicals to stop up chemicals. Um.
39:29
Speaker 1: Another thing you can use algae for is for oil spills,
39:32
Speaker 1: and there's something called herders herder chemicals, which if you
39:36
Speaker 1: add to an oil spill, it actually moves them together
39:41
Speaker 1: and turns it from this little thin sheen on the
39:43
Speaker 1: ocean into a much more concentrated, thicker sheen that you
39:47
Speaker 1: can actually skim off or burn or something. Well, there's
39:50
Speaker 1: types of algae that do that too. But the plus
39:53
Speaker 1: of algae is that it's not some chemical that stays
39:57
Speaker 1: in the environment like the stuff we currently use. The
40:00
Speaker 1: chemicals we currently use that we're not quite sure what
40:02
Speaker 1: the long term effects are, right, Like, okay, no more oil,
40:05
Speaker 1: but now we've got this unknown or not unknown, but
40:07
Speaker 1: a chemical with unknown uh damage down the line, just
40:12
Speaker 1: replacing the oil. Right with algae, that's not the case.
40:14
Speaker 1: We know what algae will do. We're pretty much I mean,
40:17
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's invasive species situations that we could accidentally
40:20
Speaker 1: get ourselves into, but that's that's the last thing you're
40:23
Speaker 1: thinking of when you're cleaning up an oil spill, you
40:25
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, And that baby penguin comes over,
40:28
Speaker 1: it's like help me please. Uh. And then earlier in
40:32
Speaker 1: the show, you know, I talked about the the quote
40:35
Speaker 1: unquote waste product we're talking about if you're extracting that oil,
40:42
Speaker 1: what you have left over after you've squeezed all that
40:44
Speaker 1: oil out of it, you can use that as fertilizer
40:48
Speaker 1: or as a supplement for animal feed. Um. And that's
40:52
Speaker 1: that's the leftover, even if you're not using it for biofuels. Uh,
40:56
Speaker 1: it's really good for you. Like humans eat it, cattle
41:00
Speaker 1: eats it, marine like shrimp and shellfish love the stuff.
41:04
Speaker 1: It is chocked like if you're talking about spiro lena,
41:08
Speaker 1: it is chock full of protein, omega three, fatty acids, vitamins, iron, beta, carotene.
41:16
Speaker 1: I think it's got more protein than meat. So for
41:20
Speaker 1: a hundred grams U, spir lena has fifty seven grams
41:24
Speaker 1: of protein, steak has twenty five grams of protein. Amazing,
41:28
Speaker 1: And spilena has a hundred and fifty eight percent of
41:31
Speaker 1: your daily iron. Uh, Steak has thirteen percent of it
41:34
Speaker 1: and steaks like a high iron food. I believe spir
41:37
Speaker 1: lena has far more iron than spinach. Even it also
41:40
Speaker 1: has tons of calcium like you said omega three's and
41:43
Speaker 1: like I think, in the seventies the un called it
41:45
Speaker 1: a super food of the future, and it is extremely
41:48
Speaker 1: good for you. But again, the idea of calling it
41:51
Speaker 1: super food of the future is kind of ironic because
41:54
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century the Aztecs were eating it as
41:57
Speaker 1: little cakes of spar lena um. The Welsh have been
42:01
Speaker 1: eating something called lava bread, which is um just basically
42:05
Speaker 1: spiraling an algae on toast. Um so good. I want
42:11
Speaker 1: to try it. It looks it looks like overcooked, overcooked
42:14
Speaker 1: mass of spinach um. But they say, like you can
42:17
Speaker 1: tell like the different teroirs depending on where it was harvested.
42:22
Speaker 1: But I I would love to try that. Yeah, And
42:25
Speaker 1: you mentioned very early on the reason that um, I
42:27
Speaker 1: guess people like Exxon have put it on hold. You
42:31
Speaker 1: sent this great article where I would figure the limitation
42:34
Speaker 1: would be like, well, it's in the processing, it's too expensive,
42:37
Speaker 1: or we haven't figured it out yet. Apparently what's sort
42:40
Speaker 1: of the big hold up is in the biology itself.
42:44
Speaker 1: It's just um, I think it just you need too
42:49
Speaker 1: much of it to go to scale. Is that about right? Yeah? Yeah,
42:54
Speaker 1: Because here's the problem the stuff. If you're growing it
42:57
Speaker 1: in a flask and a lab, it really does like
43:01
Speaker 1: all this amazing stuff that people are saying. The problem
43:04
Speaker 1: is when you extrapolate that into the real world, real world,
43:08
Speaker 1: real world conditions kind of start to take over and
43:11
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily translate like it should. Um. And one
43:15
Speaker 1: of the big things they ran into is when you
43:16
Speaker 1: start getting algae on a massive scale, when you start
43:20
Speaker 1: growing it on an industrial scale, the algae starts to
43:23
Speaker 1: compete with other algae for things like sunlight and nutrients.
43:27
Speaker 1: So you're left with well, then that means let's say
43:30
Speaker 1: that's having the um the amount of algae I'm trying
43:34
Speaker 1: to grow, or the amount of oil I'm trying to harvest.
43:38
Speaker 1: That means I have to double the surface area of
43:40
Speaker 1: the pond. I have to grow twice as much algae
43:43
Speaker 1: as I thought. And there was some some prediction I
43:46
Speaker 1: think a few years ago that bioalgabe or biodiesel form
43:50
Speaker 1: algae or biofuel would be running about ten percent of
43:54
Speaker 1: the euse um transportation sector, which is just an enormous amount.
43:59
Speaker 1: That would be amazing if they could do that, But
44:01
Speaker 1: they found that Um, for that to happen, you would
44:04
Speaker 1: need a pond. Basically, they about three times the size
44:08
Speaker 1: of Belgium to grow that much algae as it stands
44:11
Speaker 1: right now. So again that's not to say that like
44:13
Speaker 1: it's just never gonna happen. It's just well, here's a
44:16
Speaker 1: really big wall that we've hit. Now, let's figure out
44:18
Speaker 1: how to get over it. Because Algie really could do this.
44:22
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, Um, you just need upon three times
44:25
Speaker 1: the size of Belgium. But here's the thing is, maybe
44:28
Speaker 1: don't like baby step it, you know, Yeah, I think
44:32
Speaker 1: what about upon the size of just one Belgium and
44:36
Speaker 1: not three belgiums Now, we said Belgium so many times
44:39
Speaker 1: it sounds funny. Well, we could just flood Belgium. Oh man,
44:44
Speaker 1: it would be so mean Belgium lovely. They've been asking
44:48
Speaker 1: for it for years though, Uh, what's this other one here?
44:52
Speaker 1: In two thousand and ten, Um, a scientist based at
44:59
Speaker 1: Again Again University, I bet they don't have a mascot
45:08
Speaker 1: the Flying Tongue Twisters. They published findings that suggested an
45:14
Speaker 1: area about the size of the state of Maryland. H
45:19
Speaker 1: if it was sea lettuce, you could provide enough protein
45:22
Speaker 1: to feed the entire human population. Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
45:27
Speaker 1: But it's sea lettuce. Yeah, I mean yeah, I would try.
45:31
Speaker 1: I've never had sea lettuce as far as I know, No,
45:33
Speaker 1: I would try to. It's just the article does say that, like,
45:36
Speaker 1: you know, part of the problem then is like convincing
45:38
Speaker 1: everyone to eat sea lettuce all the time. And it's
45:40
Speaker 1: absolutely true. I mean, it'd be foolish to think otherwise,
45:43
Speaker 1: you know. But if you're trying to solve world hunger,
45:45
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, well that's the thing you could
45:48
Speaker 1: also and a lot of people use spear lena powder
45:51
Speaker 1: is like a dietary supplement because it's so good for
45:54
Speaker 1: you and it's so energy dense. Um. But there are
45:57
Speaker 1: there's also there's a couple of other things I wanted
45:59
Speaker 1: to mentioned that before we leave. Um about the the
46:03
Speaker 1: kind of greenness of algae. One, it's carbon neutral. I
46:09
Speaker 1: don't think we said that. But the the CEO two
46:13
Speaker 1: that um, the algae uses to produce it to do
46:16
Speaker 1: its thing, and it's actually sucking it right out of
46:18
Speaker 1: the air, so it releases c O two when it's
46:22
Speaker 1: burned as biofuel. But that CEO two was just in
46:25
Speaker 1: the air like a month ago, so it's not like
46:28
Speaker 1: it's coming from a sequestered sink of c O two.
46:32
Speaker 1: Like fossil fuels that we dig up that are not
46:35
Speaker 1: part of the carbon cycle right then, that we're actually
46:38
Speaker 1: adding to their So it would make it a carbon
46:40
Speaker 1: neutral thing. And then the other thing, if we replaced
46:43
Speaker 1: soy um with algae, livestock and fish feed, we would
46:48
Speaker 1: no longer have to do any wild caught fish because
46:51
Speaker 1: apparently they go out and catch wild fish, grind them
46:55
Speaker 1: up and feed them to farmed fish as as feed
46:58
Speaker 1: to get the omega three's. If just supplemented that with algae,
47:01
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to catch any wildfish whatsoever. And then
47:04
Speaker 1: if we replaced cattle feed um uh made of soy
47:08
Speaker 1: with algae, we wouldn't have to cut down forests to
47:11
Speaker 1: grow soy to feed the cattle on. Yeah, so it
47:14
Speaker 1: could be. I mean, if we if we really just
47:17
Speaker 1: keep looking at algae and don't walk away from it,
47:19
Speaker 1: don't walk away from algae. There's a bright future ahead
47:23
Speaker 1: of us with it. There's so much, so much promise.
47:25
Speaker 1: Analogaye baby. Yeah, there's a lake in Georgia that I
47:30
Speaker 1: go to a lot and there um has been. I'm
47:32
Speaker 1: a member of the Facebook page where people complain about stuff.
47:35
Speaker 1: Basically sure, yeah, it's what most of those are for.
47:38
Speaker 1: Uh And a lot of people are complaining about these
47:41
Speaker 1: grasses in the lake now and algae blooms and they're
47:46
Speaker 1: spraying chemicals in the lake to get rid of the stuff. No,
47:50
Speaker 1: and and it's a Georgia power lake, so they have
47:52
Speaker 1: uh like an approved list of vendors that will do this. Um.
47:57
Speaker 1: And my whole thought is like, if there's an algae bloom,
47:59
Speaker 1: it's like, isn't that nature trying to work something out?
48:02
Speaker 1: I think that's nature trying to work out fertilizer runoff.
48:06
Speaker 1: So the problem isn't Like, the problem isn't in the lake.
48:10
Speaker 1: It's up on land somewhere and some like farm that's
48:14
Speaker 1: just using too much fertilizer. But I mean that's what
48:17
Speaker 1: my whole point though, is that like the algae is
48:18
Speaker 1: there for a reason. Yeah, right, it's not just there
48:21
Speaker 1: too to chick off a jet skier. Right. It's kind
48:26
Speaker 1: of like if you've um like hit your knee on something,
48:32
Speaker 1: just cutting your leg off, so you don't have any
48:34
Speaker 1: more knee pain. That's basically what the people at that
48:39
Speaker 1: lake are doing. Yeah, it's not the best analogy ever,
48:43
Speaker 1: but I'm alright with it. Like it you got anything else? No,
48:48
Speaker 1: up with algae? Up with algae? I like ones like
48:50
Speaker 1: this because we're basically just like, what about this? Oh? Yeah,
48:53
Speaker 1: what about this? What about that? Yeah? And we always
48:56
Speaker 1: have the rosiest colored glasses, which you know, if that's
49:00
Speaker 1: our fault, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm with you, ma'nuh.
49:03
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about algae ghost swimming.
49:06
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
49:11
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this flying by the seat of my
49:13
Speaker 1: pants and just pulling up an email. Oh that's good stuff.
49:17
Speaker 1: This is on color blindness. Though. It's a good one
49:19
Speaker 1: and it has a picture of a cat. So hey, guys,
49:23
Speaker 1: my dad has color blindness and it has led to
49:24
Speaker 1: a few embarrassing mishaps in his life. This past weekend,
49:27
Speaker 1: my brother got married. Congratulations Peter and Jackie, she says,
49:32
Speaker 1: and all the men were supposed to wear blue suits. However,
49:35
Speaker 1: my dad couldn't tell the difference between the colors, and
49:40
Speaker 1: he packed his black suit. Uh. I wonder why your
49:43
Speaker 1: dad didn't get help at this point with something that's
49:45
Speaker 1: big because dad doesn't care that much. I think you're right,
49:48
Speaker 1: and nor should he. Uh. Not a huge deal, but
49:51
Speaker 1: he definitely stands out in the pictures. Uh. The story
49:53
Speaker 1: that cracks me up the most, though, is that I
49:55
Speaker 1: have an orange cat with matching amber eyes. My dad
49:58
Speaker 1: likes to say how he has most beautiful green eyes,
50:02
Speaker 1: and I really want to ask if he thinks my
50:04
Speaker 1: cat looks like the Grinch. So I attached a picture
50:08
Speaker 1: of Raja so you can see how his eyes matches. Uh.
50:12
Speaker 1: For and that is one cute cat. Look at that
50:15
Speaker 1: sure little fake mouse in his mouth? Nothing green about it, no, uh?
50:21
Speaker 1: And she also finishes with like you mentioned, my mom
50:24
Speaker 1: has always done the grilling because my dad says he
50:27
Speaker 1: can't tell when it's done or burning. So there's a
50:30
Speaker 1: mom around some mom you should have. Or maybe she
50:33
Speaker 1: knew about the suit color and just didn't wanted to
50:35
Speaker 1: embarrass her husband. I think so. Or just didn't really
50:38
Speaker 1: like the group, the groom or the bride, I don't know.
50:42
Speaker 1: Somebody did not somebody else in this wedding, I think
50:46
Speaker 1: is what happened here. Well, that cat doesn't like that
50:48
Speaker 1: fake mouse. I'll tell you that. It's funny. The cat
50:51
Speaker 1: is like holding a fake mouse, but it looks like
50:53
Speaker 1: it's looking at a real mouse. Of camera. It's a
50:56
Speaker 1: good picture. It's got a cat condo and everything. Uh
51:00
Speaker 1: and she finishes. Thanks for the relatable episode. Um, that
51:03
Speaker 1: is from Andy. That's from Andy. All right, Andy, thanks
51:07
Speaker 1: a lot for that. Um. Well, appreciate you writing in.
51:11
Speaker 1: Good luck with your family. Yes, and Peter and Jackie,
51:16
Speaker 1: way to go and get married. Yeah. If you want
51:19
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us to let us know
51:21
Speaker 1: hilarious family story, we love those. You can go to
51:24
Speaker 1: our website www. Dot stuff you should know dot com
51:28
Speaker 1: and find all the links to our social media accounts.
51:31
Speaker 1: You can find us there, or you can send us
51:33
Speaker 1: an email to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com
51:42
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
51:45
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com