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Algae—Cleaning the Bay and Producing Bio-fuels
Drs. Pat Kangas and Walter Adey are the PI’s. Dr. Kangas, University of Maryland and Dr. Adey, Smithsonian Institute are researching a way to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and, at the same time, provide a renewable alternative fuel to oil. This project is being designed at the Exelon Power site on the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania. The goals may be huge but the technology for this "ecological engineering" is fairly basic-Algae. The project directs river water flows in surges downhill on two narrow, 300-foot-long raceways. The running water and sunlight cause algae to form on a screen. The algae absorbs phosphorus and nitrogen, two nutrients that are excessive in the Susquehanna and choke the Chesapeake Bay just downriver. After the quick tumble, the water is released back into the river, clean enough to meet any discharge regulations and full of life-enriching oxygen. The constantly growing algae is vacuumed up. The gooey material, when dried, could be a prime catalyst for fermenting a bio-fuel.
The Algal Turf Scrubber process, as it has been patented by Dr. Adey, is being used on an increasingly large scale in Florida to clean water running into the Everglades and its great feeder water, Lake Okeechobee. It has been used to clean wastewater at sewage plants, farm canals, aquaculture systems, streams — even to scrub the inside of smokestacks. But as time runs out on deadlines to clean up the Chesapeake and a nation desperately searches for alternatives to oil, both Kangas and Adey think they have the answer that leads to mainstream use of algae-growth systems to clean water and produce bio-fuel for vehicles.
For more information, contact Dr. Pat Kangas
Last updated: 04/9/2009
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