compare favorably with 8 to 12 dry tons /acre /year for fast-growing trees and 27 dry 

 tons/acre/year yields for sugar cane, among the most efficient terrestrial plants. 



Another way to represent these high yields is to note that it would take approxi- 

 mately 2.6 million acres of ocean to grow 1 Quad of marine biomass. This means 

 that an ocean area of 250,000 square miles or 7 percent of the area of the U.S. could 

 conceivably some day provide energy equivalent to the current energy needs of the 

 United States. 



With this background, I would like to turn briefly to a discussion of the current 

 DOE aquatic biomass program. The program has two major objectives: 



To identify aquatic plants with good energy potential and determine the nature of 

 these plants and their cultivation potential; 



To develop techniques for their economic cultivation and their conversion to fuels. 



The thrust of the aquatic biomass program is toward developing systems which 

 use algae. This class of plants ranges from macroalgae like the giant kelps (Macro- 

 ciptis pyrifera) which can reach over 100 feet in length in the ocean and grow at up 

 to 2 feet/day to microalgae which are microscopic plants common to fresh or 

 brackish water. We have focussed on algae because they have such high yields. For 

 example, a freshwater algae farm could produce about nine times as much energy 

 as an equal area devoted to corn per year. Further, algae can be converted relative- 

 ly easily to methane, alcohol and other useful products such as chemical stabilizers, 

 food additives and protein supplements for animal feeds. 



DOE is actively studying the potential for algae cultivation and yield improve- 

 ment. Natural growth of ocean algae provides about 5 tons of dry ash-free kelp per 

 acre. In contrast, recent DOE studies have concluded that there is a potential for 

 yields of 25-30 dry ash-free tons per acre per year. In New Mexico, experimental 

 results have shown yields of as much as 150 dry ash-free tons per acre per year 

 under natural solar insolation. Other results by General Electric and Dow Chemical 

 show similarly promising results. Indeed, a major need which our program is trying 

 to satisfy is to determine these yields more accurately and to better define the 

 conditions that foster higher yields and growth rates. 



One important DOE project in algae is the work on giant kelp by Dr. Wheeler 

 North of the California Institute of Technology. This kelp is a fast growing marine 

 plant with a wide geographic range (from Chile to Peru and from Mid-Mexico to 

 Alaska), the kelp is large and can be harvested on a practical basis, it is naturally 

 nourished but yields can be improved by increasing nutrient supplies; it has rela- 

 tively high conversion rate from raw material to methane gas and it is self renew- 

 ing. 



The Gas Research Institute-General Electric work in collaboration with Dr. North 

 of Cal Tech is addressing the problem of large-scale marine cultivation and yield. 

 Dr. Flowers has described to you how an engineered module can direct nutrients to 

 the plants and result in improved poroductivity. This work is important in establish- 

 ing an information base for the large-scale growth of marine biomass. 



At present, a quarter-acre biological test farm is deployed off the California coast. 

 The Department of Energy is funding this effort jointly with the Gas Research 

 Institute (GRI) and to date $6.8 million has been invested. We plan to spend an 

 additional $3.5 million in fiscal year 1980 to obtain the information necessary to 

 verify biomass yield and cost projections as well as the capacity of such farms to 

 poroduce a net gain in useful energy. 



Whether or not this initial attempt at open ocean farming proves successful, we 

 will have learned valuable lessons about the difficulties and costs of working in this 

 sometimes hostile environment. The opportunities and prospects of utilizing the 

 open seas are simply too numerous and important to ignore. There is certainly risk 

 involved before we can be sure that marine biomass will prove to be a viable 

 answer, but we regard the main objective of this work to be information gathering. 

 A complementary concept to open ocean farming is to use seawater for growing 

 marine or brackish-water biomass within land-based facilities. Such systems would 

 make productive use of otherwise non-arable lands, avoid many of the engineering 

 challenges offered by the open sea, and permit an opportunity to develop more 

 information about the fundamental requirements of marine biomass energy produc- 

 tion and conversion. 



An example of this approach is a new project to seek hydrocarbon products 

 directly from algae. This has just gotten underway, co-funded by the Department of 

 Energy and the State of Hawaii. The project is to prove the feasibility of culturing 

 and using a micro-algae Phaeodactylum tricormutum) which has the quality of 

 producing and storing oils. Tests so far have achieved concentrations of between 40 

 and 70% of oils to total organic yield from the harvested algae. 



Other aquatic biomass production studies are being done for the Department of 

 Energy at the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institute where both ocean and freshwater 



