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Introduction
In the United States, fossil fuels make up 62.7% of our energy consumption. These fuels come from ancient biomass deposits deep in the earth’s crust. The process of harvesting fossil fuels involves drilling deep down for crude oil, natural gas, or coal and burning it to produce energy. While having been the source of much technological advancement for humankind, a major downside of the fossil fuels process has been the disruption of the carbon cycle through the reintroduction of ancient carbon to the atmosphere. This has disrupted the balance of the global ecosystem and has caused the greenhouse effect. Not only are fossil fuels bad for the environment, they are also not renewable. Eventually, the deposits deep beneath the surface are going to run out, and we are going to have to find another solution. Because of this, people around the world are trying to figure out a way to have different energy energy sources.
There are many different solutions that we have come up with: nuclear energy, renewable energy (such as wind, solar, and hydro), natural gas, and many more. There are three main problems with these energy sources. They are either not renewable, bad for the environment, or they are not easily transportable. Although renewable energies may be clean and renewable, they cannot be used to power big machinery such as cars or tools. For more background on fossil fuels and the carbon cycle click here.
As a response to the problems caused by an overuse of fossil fuels, scientists around the world have worked on researching effective, easily transportable, and renewable carbon neutral alternatives. One category of fuels they have found are biological based fuel sources known as biofuels. Enter Algae biofuels. During cultivation, algae takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and converts it into energy for growth. The algae can then be harvested and converted to a crude oil “green crude” that can then be refined and used as a fuel source. Whatever CO2 green crude releases into the environment, it has previously taken in through photosynthesis. Therefore, a near-carbon-neutral fuel is produced. This means that algal biofuels maintain the atmosphere's equilibrium.
For a quick visual of how this takes place watch this video from Exxon Mobile.
We have already discussed some major benefits to algal biofuels: The fact that they are carbon neutral, renewable, and are easily transportable. However, there is one more major benefit to algal biofuels that sets it above energy from crops like corn. This benefit is space. Algal biofuels can be used to produce the same amount of energy as other biofuels such as corn and soy in the same amount of time, and using up much less space. Because of this, more algal biofuel reactors can be placed in the same amount of space, which allows for more energy to be produced.
However, Algal biofuels do have some drawbacks as you will see later in this project.
Through this activity, students will:
- Be introduced to the process of data cleaning, management, and analysis as well as have the opportunity to explore a complex data set in a coding environment.
- Use data visualization to find correlations between factors of algae cultivation and identify possible causes for these relationships.
- Understand the different pros and cons of clean laboratory data and real-world data, as well as how these differences affects the data processing and results of a scientific analysis.
- Participate in the process of deriving useful information from scientific data to be included in the creation of a scientific model.
- Understand the limits of an algae cultivation model, why the limits may arise, and the usefulness of the model in spite of these limits.
You are now ready to move onto the first dataset analysis.