Pond Scum To Fuel Cars?

Gone are the days of taking your kids to a local pond and looking for frogs;  now it’s time to take them there in the hunt for black gold!  Well maybe that’s a little over exaggerated, but the concept is not far off.  Recently I came across some information on NPR about the prospects of turning common pond scum into oil.  It turns out that the Department of Energy has been working on a sustainable way to create fuel from algae.

Apparently the green scum that grows in local ponds and waste water across the country produces a large amount of oil.  Not only is this oil relatively abundant but it’s combustible.  The opportunity that this presents could be huge.  Algae can basically grow anywhere and it’s a living plant, so the renewable potential is remarkable.  Imagine if you could grow your own little gas station in the ditch or fish pond in your backyard.  The venture capital for the design of efficient refining of oil from algae has not seen a slowdown during the current credit crunch as major corporations and start-ups alike are racing to bring the fuel to market.  It might not be long before you’re buying gallons of pond juice versus gasoline.

As with all good things there must be a catch right?  The only major concern I have is with respect to what happens to the current ecological systems that these wetlands and ponds sustain if you “harvest” all of the algea.  Perhaps you don’t need to actually remove the algea but simply extract the oil byproducts it produces.  I guess we’ll have wait for the answers on both the upside and potential downside once the product hits the market.  If you have any further insight about turning green sludge into oil, we’d love to hear it.