OCEAN BIOMASS CONVERSION OVERSIGHT 



WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1979 



House of Representatives, 

 Subcommittee on Oceanography, 

 Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 



Washington, D.C. 



The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:45 a.m., in room 

 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Gerry E. Studds, 

 chairman, presiding. 



Present: Representatives Studds, AuCoin, Hughes, Forsythe, 

 Pritchard, and Emery. 



Staff present: Rich Norling, Don Lippincott, Diane Hull, Ann 

 Land, and Curt Marshall. 



Mr. Studds. I understand the "Joint Chiefs" have made a grace- 

 ful retreat. The room is now ours. 



The subcommittee will come to order. 



Today marks our third hearing on renewable sources of energy 

 from the ocean. In past hearings, we have dealt with ocean thermal 

 energy conversion, a process which utilizes the temperature differ- 

 ence between warm surface waters and cold subsurface waters to 

 produce electricity. Today we will focus on ocean biomass conver- 

 sion, a process which is designed to convert seaweed into methane 

 gas. 



Most Americans regard seaweed as simply a nuisance — who said 

 that? Speaking as someone who spent a large part of his youth 

 gathering seaweed, I think I will disregard those remarks. 



Few of us realize that it has been commercially harvested off the 

 U.S. coast since the 1930's for use as a food additive and animal 

 feed supplement. Fewer still realize that seaweed could be used to 

 produce energy and that there could be a giant seaweed gasifica- 

 tion industry off our coasts before the year 2000. 



Ocean biomass conversion is a process by which the solar energy 

 stored in a plant — like seaweed — is converted into a gaseous prod- 

 uct. The most likely method would be a process called anaerobic 

 digestion, which utilizes bacteria in an oxygen-free atmosphere to 

 convert waste materials into methane, a colorless, odorless gas, 

 already widely used as a substitute for natural gas. This process 

 would be somewhat like land-based biomass conversion which pro- 

 duces methane gas from useless garbage. Land biomass energy 

 conversion already fulfills a small, but growing portion of U.S. 

 energy demands and researchers believe ocean biomass energy 

 could one day provide double or triple the amount that land can 

 produce. The major difference is that commercial ocean biomass 

 conversion has not yet become a reality. 



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