Fuel Made From Dead Zones - 8/31/09

Every spring in the U.S. the Mississippi River carries fertilizer runoff into the Gulf of Mexico causing massive algae blooms. This causes oxygen deprived “dead zones” killing fish.

This has now gotten the attention of marine scientists looking for a new source of fuel. 

This fertilizer runoff causes floating algae or phytoplankton to eat the fertilizer and reproduce quickly.  These algae blooms sink and feed bacteria which uses up a great deal of oxygen causing fish to move away or die. 

There are about 200 of these dead zones created each spring in North America.  The second largest dead zone in the world is in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest is in the Baltic Sea. 

For many years scientist have been concerned on how dead zones effected ocean life. 

LiveFuels Inc. wants to use the algae in these dead zones, but instead of harvesting it and using the algae to make fuel they want to go up the food chain and use the algae to feed the fish and then extract oil from the fish.

This is much more cost effective than processing algae into oil which is currently very expensive.

Fish grown from the algae could be harvested and cooked to extract the oil.  LiveFuels is testing a number of different fish including carp, sardine, and tilapia.  They are trying to find which fish grows the fastest.  When they find out which fish does the best they want to release them in Louisiana bays to eat on the algae blooms.

LiveFuels has a goal to build caged fish farms and place them in these algae blooms providing a free source of food.  

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