Israeli firm: Seaweed could be used to solve energy crisis

coats. nothing new. many nobodies have tried this route. he very obviously knows this paper will still be here well after her death and her little nobody name will be there in print, somehow she hopes to raise her life from the pitiul muck within which she lives. have pity on her pooor sole and empty life.

Sory ....but in Chubut Argentine Patagonia there is working a factory of biodiesel from algae for more than 10 years....

The idea to create biofuels from seaweeds while absorbing C02 emissions from polluters is nothing new.....the US Dept. of Energy's National Renewable Energies Laboratory (NREL) spent almost 15 years studying and developing this technology. So let's give credit where due....Also...there are literally dozens of companies making the same claims Seambiotic is making......we need concrete proof. Please send me some. Thank you kindly.

Corn is not efficient for making alcohol, but vast desert areas could be used to grow seaweed for fuel for cars in shallow brine pools. As biotechnology improved the plants, production would increase. Texas, New Mexico and AZ here in the U.S.A. could become energy producing States.

Again, sour grapes. Too much seaweed in the oceans damages the ecological balance in the oceans and will kill all the marine life. Just face the facts, the Israelis are smarter.

Of course it's a big deal! Fuel for corn will get more expensive since there is only so much corn you can grow for fuel and food. There will be shortages. Not many people eat seaweed (besides sushi lovers, it takes less space or land (ie. pools) and as production goes up, the price will go down. These eco-friendly plants can be built everywhere and they don't damage the atmosphere since the CO2 is recycled.This is a great development. If the US is doing this with algae, why haven't they talked publically about it? Could this be sour grapes?

Seambiotic has a placeholder website with zilch tech info. Anyhow, they're cultivating unicellular Algae, not seaweed, and they seem pretty happy making a living on the highly profitable Food Supplements market, not in gas stations. The basic idea is good, especially for Israel where both land and freshwater are very expensive: use seawater as a medium, and limited area, shallow raceways, or mostly vertical plastic tubing flow-through systems to maximize the solar energy input. Supplying extra Carbon Dioxide obtained for virtually nothing from nasty big electrical plants in order to speed up growth is a nice strategy too. I wonder where they get the fertilizer though: is it from "naturally" polluted Israeli shore water? After all, since everybody here is excreting almost directly into the Med, all you gotta add to get that muck seriously blooming with Algae are some Iron Ions!

Anti Semites hiding behind the skirt of Anti ZIONISm who doesn't even have the guts to disclose which hole she lives in. Crawl back into your slimepit & then........ GFYS!!!

This is the only Talkback out of 62 with some relevance to the subject. All others are junk in various degrees: from slightly disparaging, to total ignorance, to horrors.

The value is not in the fuel. It's in the CO2 removal. AEP is one of the biggest US utilities. They're spending a billion dollars on a demonstration project that shows they can remove CO2 from coal fired power plant exhaust, liquify it and store it deep underground. Assuming this works as well and has fuel generation potential to offset the cost of CO2 scrubbing then it's got excellent commercial potential.

made the discovery. Lots of countries traded with SA through the back door care to list them or do you only have a repetoire of 1. Your country,ruled by the protector of the COE,does very nicely from weapons to Arab apartheid regimes.

What will it take Islamists to stop terrorising wherever they are in the world. Blame shifting is so passee the world just gets angry when you keep trying it on. Time to learn how to fit in with the rest of the planet rather then commit terror all over it.

Use this algae stuff to make veggie chopped liver and then corner the global bar-mitvah market. That's gotta be worth a ton!

The price for this fuel derived from Seaweed will go down when production increases as it will become almost self contained. The fuel is already a lot cheaper than heavily subsidized corn ethanol, because seaweed is abundant, requires less fuel in production, grows very fast and produces cleaner byproducts than algae or fungus.

find in almost everything we use today. If we would take out all the Jewish contributions to the world,in sience,art,medicine,humanity,economy, the world would fall back a few hundred years. REALY PROUD TO BE A JEW!!!

We would deal with normal people. The Arab envy ,hatred, the Arab brainwash, the Arab religion will never permit a cooperation. You are not dealing with clearthinking,normal people.

Israel is the brain engine to the world, and THE ENVY IS KILLING YOU. Get a shrink urgently,or you going to dance naked in the midle of an intersection, and this is dangerous.

Israel is the brain engine to the world, and THE ENVY IS KILLING YOU. Get a shrink urgently,or you going to dance naked in the midle of an intersection, and this is dangerous.

A number of posters have noted that others have worked on similar processes, some involving algae, some focusing on CO2 absorbtion. Some bring several ideas together and take it to the next level. Israel's innovation seems to follow this pattern. One can only hope this development pans out and becomes more cost efficient. (Apropos, one shouldn't overstate the cost, since it reduces the cost of carbon absorption.) Even if it doesn't pan out, a viable solution is only a matter of time given resources and imagination. Israeli is blessed to have many with the requisite imagination.

"You are wrong, the Koreans has invested this already more then 5 years ago. And Japanese are not called japs, unless you are a racist" Mark B - people like you promote racism by carelessly flinging the race card around. In London where I live 'Jap' is not akin to 'Yid', "Coon' or "Paki' or any other vile term you could use, it's an acceptable though mildly cheeky abbreviation somewhere in between 'Yank' and 'Paddy' (like me begorrah!). With the anonymity of the net I would be quite happy to admit to being racist if I were. People like you are Orwellian new-speaking grotesques that are going to lead to the fall of the west....

and there will be peace and prosperity for a change.

Mandella collected sea weed which was sent to Japan[553] not Israel why does Israel always get the blame

Not to mention little things, like cutting terrorists' funding. The evil Zionists are trying to destroy the world! I wonder how the PC Establishment will spin this one...

The article is wrong saying that ethanol is made mostly from corn. More ethanol is made from sugarcane in Brazil than from corn in the US.

The Japanese proposal to use seaweed to soak up CO2 is like planting a forest to soak up CO2 in the air. But it doesn't address the issue of using seaweed for fuel.

For one thing, the Japanese are a historic and existing nation. After all, who would get offended if one decided to disparage the barbarian Helvetii ?

The Arabs will declare it 'occupied territory'. The Brits will propose a solution to the problem by having BP buy up the farms and use part of the proceeds to finance the Palestinian Authority, on the condition that the money is not used to finance terror, naturally. Then when Israel decides not to allow this humanitarian venture to go ahead, Israel will be branded a colonialist Apartheid state.

All these exotic projects intend to extract money from private investors or government. The most realistic way to solve the energy crisis is improvement of efficiency of energy systems & heat recovery. Flue gases of one Diesel Engine of 2,500 kW can generate 10,000 pph steam @ 150 psig. It is enough to generate 275 kW electricity, or operate big storage refrigeration plant. Not only Diesel Engines but Gas Turbines and other energy generators has thermal efficiency less that 50%, while the rest is wasted to atmosphere. The best way to save fuel is investment in energy savings.

If this is really true then well done to the Jewish scientists. Einstein as you all know was Jewish his theory of relativity interests me and so many people around the world. Robert Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb quoted the Hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita as he exploded the Trinity nuclear weapon he said "Now, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Maybe now a Jewish scientist can invent something that can save the planet and again quote the Bhagavad Gita but this time instead of a terrifying quote, it will be a new beginning quote. That would be brilliant because at this moment in human history we are living in very dangerous times.

Leave it to Israel to find new fueel. You are great

This is simply an extension of the well-developed idea of manufacturing biodiesel from algae, but far less efficiently. The latest algae to biodiesel technology uses high oil content algae grown in vertical bioreactors and produces up to 150K gallons of fuel per acre per year at a calculated cost of $25 per barrel. The closed system also eliminates contamination from indigenous lower oil content algae species. Seaweed grown in the open would confront similar contamination issues. Overall this looks like a non-starter on a national scale but could be useful in some local applications. However, viewing this proposal as some sort of significant technological breakthrough is nonsense.

Thanks, Philo-Semite, message understood. But I still can't see the difference between the term "Japs" and the term "Pals". For a Swiss "neutral" they both sound pretty much the same disparaging....

This firm happened to be ahead of me. I was thinking about using "activated chlorofill tree" to rich the same. No gelosy but congratulatios. I've grown in the South republic of then Soviet Union. When they made a Kara-Kum chanel, in summer time it was very hard to sweem due to the abondance of waterweed. So may be if we combine seaside Power Station that heats and feeds farm of seaweed, it will spead up the weed growth and as a side effect, prolong sweeming season. Respectfully Arkady

The term "Japs" is considered a pejorative slur. Perhaps in Switzerland you do not hear the term often, but remember that my nation fought a bitter war with the Japanese, during which they were called all sorts of nasty things. Been known to happen when you fight in wars. Swiss.

My proof comes from Nelson Mandela's autobiography. Page 553 Nelson Mandela picked seaweed which was then sent to Israel as fertiliser.

I really hope this idea can be applied. If it were viable, it could seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions - not to mention reliance on Arab oil for the many, many countries (i.e. a large percentage of the world's problems). You make us proud Israel!

The oysters on the northern shores are definately insurgents from Norway. Though I must say the North Sea Oil has done London well,maybe we need to dredge the seaweed next from Newcastle.There has got to be a joke there somewhere about coal though.

Mark, please don't be super (political) correct, if we would take your standard, the Haaretz Talkback would be full of anti-"Pals" racists... And the excuse that the word "Japanese" is shorter than the word "Palestinian" is probably a pretty lame excuse... Or what say you...??

Your lie has very short legs. It doesn't travel far. Why do you hate Jews and Africans? Your lie slams both. If this is you attempt at a windup then you need to you fail miserably. Piss poor attempt, my English mates do a much better windup.

At low tide you can die of dehydration walking to the water. Perhaps even walk to the Emerald Isle!

The mud in Southend-on-sea is something.There is nothing like it in Canada.The mud in Southend reaches out for thousands of miles.Nobody has seen water in years.The stuff sticks to you like mud.But there is another commodity there that is even more plentiful.It is seaweed.I can imagine now Southend-on-sea becoming the paradise of the north,the Bahrain of Europe.Seaweed will flow like water (water?) They will turn those taps on and all those old age pensioners and whelks and cockels on those shores will become instant millionaires thanks to Israel and when the Americans attack the UK for its seaweed watch out,everyone is sure to blame the jews!!!

or perhaps we could develope a way of substituting the seaweed with the sussexweed? Now the brave hero, & Hamas adviser/strategist prickFOOL will be suggesting that instead of targeting our oil refineries all in Gaza should turn East, face the Med & "WEE" on our seaweed. Mind it's basically the same direction as Sussex GRATE brittin.....perhaps I'll join them!!!

the thought of all these pathetic, jealous, Anti Zionist HATERS heating their homes & driving their vehicles on good ole Jewish ISRAELI technology really warms the cockles of my heart. Perhaps it will even reach the uncivilised outback of Australia!!

For the first time I read something positive about Israel from your columnists on this site. Maybe you should host more such articles instead of the traditional leftist "we're guilty of having a state" things. For example,you should also mention the issue where Israeli scientists succeeded in "constructing" a mini-heart from embryonic cells. This,and other similar articles would better show to the Arabs what interest they will have in accepting Israel and living peacefully alongside it.

commercially viable and let's see then who the west will support!!!!

I sincerely hope that this comes to fruition.The prospect that the west can throw off its reliance on arab oil supplies is mouthwatering and would change the whole world for the better.Without oil revenues the arabs would soon be reduced to nothing.It is only oil money that gives them their present arrogance.

Lets reserve judgment till all the information is available then you can p### with great gusto or eat some pie.

You are wrong, the Koreans has invested this already more then 5 years ago. And Japanese are not called japs, unless you are a racist.

Israel is undoubtedly a world leader in tech but I'm afraid the Japs got there with this idea 5 years ago. Their plan is to colonise the oceans with this sea weed where it absorbs CO2. When full the weed is harnested for fuel. For once Israel didn't get there first...

a lot of scientific knowlege goes into it. Sour grapes takes no talent at all.

contribution to humanity!!!

Pricces wull eventually drop. Howevr, if and when the oil runs out or prices itself out of the market, what other options will you have?

Wherefrom is this information? I'd like your proof. Seeing as Israel has been dealing with this issue for not much more than three years, I question your statement/accusation.

This is a great idea, but completely not economical at the moment. At the current cost level it will be about $5US per gallon. twice as much of current prices.

I forgot to mention that $36-40 per gallon is no bargain.

you're welcome

Seaweed is good, yeah, but how about just plain weed? Now that would be a fuel to really solve the mid-east and oil crises - ever see C&C up in smoke? Who's going for the patent?

It's good to see the madness of Israel haters like Linthwaite revealing itself in its true colours. Even alternative energy issues can be turned into antizionist rants by someone with a mind that is sufficiently prejudiced.

So what if gas is $2.50 a liter? Drive electric cars or drive less.

Israel must create its own "Manhattan Project." Invest money into best scientific firms to develope new sources of energy, or its survival as a state might not last into the next half century... If Israel will be the leader in this it will save the world from terror sponsoring states. We are aproaching new age where rogue states can develope their own Nukes and high tech weapons, the only way to stop these states is by cutting their economy, oil is their only way of revenue. Once we eliminate need for oil, states like Sudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, won't be able to sponsor terror, and U.N. members will have some guts and will no longer appease terror regimes.

U.S. Researchers are doing the same thing using algae. all the Israelis are doing is applying the same idea to seaweed, that's all their patent is about. scrubbing Co2 biologically and refining the biological material into fuel is nothing new. Unless governments provide economic incentives to both clean the Co2 AND promote fuel alternatives, none of this technology will ever make it into your fuel tanks. The only reason corn in the U.S. is already used in fuels is because farmers produce so much of it, that government subsidies buy it to sell or give away overseas. they can instead use it domestically for fuel production since the corn surplus is basically free. that won't be the same with algae or seaweed grown from power plant Co2 as those cultivation costs are enormous.

Then this seaweed energy can be given to the arab terrorists to build rockets with which to bomb the seaweed plants, and pay them $100 million for each plant they destroy! That's the Israely way!

What is wrong with people?

Number 1: There's the bad seaweed and then there's the good seaweed and then there's the weed you smoke.

Wonderful news.Naysayers aside,any new technology that increases fuel while decreasing pollution is useful.While this fuel may not replace fossil fuel entirely,it will help if the idea becomes accepted and necessary modifications to fuel users be made. Accesible fuel is perhaps the major problem facing modern society,because of increased usage and dwindling suppy.People need to look beyond their individual egos and cultural bias to solve this problem for the good of all mankind. Even minor changes in lifestyle which conserve fuel also help.Turn off the lights. Walk to the store or ride a bike.Stay home a little more.Move closer to your workplace.Be creative.

Amazing!

That's $2.50 per liter of fuel, and that's only the raw material cost. I like the ingenuity, but this is a long way from being economically viable.

The Arab world needs to embrace their neighbors, the Israeli's, as friends and benefit from these wonderful expressions of creative genius to clean up our environment and provide energy at the same time.

Israel brought seaweed produced by the force labour of Nelson mandela. They have had plenty of material to produce this theory.