Islands earmarked for seaweed fuel development 8/9/10
The Western Isles are poised to play a central role in a vision to create a future renewable biogas fuel unveiled by a joint Scottish and Irish marine science project.
Scientists propose creating methane gas to power vehicles from seaweed grown in large offshore farms in the seas around the Hebrides.
The pioneering plan has been unveiled by a new £5 million UK and Irish joint project called Biomara which aims to demonstrate the viability of producing the next generation of biofuels from marine biomass.
Six scientific institutes and universities from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland are involved.
Though full scale production may be years off, researchers are presently drawing up a bid for a pilot project to experiment with growing marine weed in a two and a half acre patch of sea off the Lewis coast.
If the proposed trial scheme is successful, it would be ramped up into a massive seaweed farm creating a raft of jobs on top of an important new fuel supply.
Miles of rope stretched between floating buoys would be seeded with spores of fast growing weed. Eight months later hundreds of tonnes of clean marine plants would be harvested and towed ashore.
Farmed weed would be bundled into a huge municipal anaerobic digester at Western
Isles Council’s organic recycling pant at the Creed Enterprise Park.
The base, some
three miles to the south of Stornoway, is where the authority has developed an innovative
system to turn waste into bio-
Farmed seaweed would
be mixed with decomposing food and organic waste, collected from island households,
in a giant digester to produce natural methane.
The bio-
Experts hope to gain enough knowledge to grow seaweed commercially and cheaper than the existing farmed biofuel plants which currently reduces the amount of arable land growing food.
Winter gales cast tonnes of seaweed onto island shores, particularly across Uist, but this is often contaminated by beach litter. Natural underwater kelp beds should not be cut as they help break up the power of stormy seas. protect the shoreline and act as a underwater sheltered nursery for young fish.
Dr Michele Stanley of the Scottish Association for Marine Science said: “We think this is a good possible alternative fuel for island communities
Ms Stanley said: “We are looking at cultivating seaweed and growing it on longlines
-
“We really just starting this. Potentially it could be very large scale but we don’t know until we start a small, one hectare size, scheme and then build up from that.”
“The islands already have a history of working with seaweed and they are very open to the potential seaweed could have as a biofuel.
Ms Stanley explained: “There would be little visual impact “other than the odd marker buoy as we would grow the seaweed under the surface of the sea.”
Dr Paul MacArtain of Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland said seaweed biogas could be vital in tackling the “perfect storm” of increasing oil prices, environmental impact of current fuel sources and the lack of sustainable fuels.
He said: “The Biomara project can develop the exploitation of a local seaweed resource. Stornoway is in a very good position to be the first to gain expertise in this area.
Annie Macdonald, Western Isles Council representative on the Biomara project, said: “The islands are ideally situated to exploit this resource. If the full scale project goes ahead it would bring a welcomed jobs boost.”