In the last decade, a powerful scientific and practical direction "the Blue Economy" has been developing dynamically – the effective use of plants and animals of the seas, rivers and lakes in various important areas of human activity: from studying the mechanism of functioning of plants and animal reservoirs of various types to creating new technologies and products on this basis (bionics) and "domestication" of growing aquatic plants – algae for the production of biofuels, fibers, carbohydrates, polysaccharides, food, food additives, medicines, and other valuable products. At the same time,"blue technologies" are economical (solar energy is directly transformed into biofuels and other valuable products) and environmentally friendly (they do not occupy land, do not increase the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).

One of the most important areas of the "blue economy" is the deep industrial processing of algae from sea, river, lake and artificial reservoirs in order to obtain a wide range of valuable products. One of the most common products of algae processing is alginate-based fibers (alginate is the main substance of algae, a polysaccharide similar in chemical structure to cellulose).

However, as it turned out in recent years, different types of biofuels and simple organic substances can be produced from algae as raw materials for more complex products: oils, biologically active substances, and medicines. At the same time, you do not need to drill wells and get into remote corners of the planet, destroy the Arctic shelf – there is enough water for algae and sunlight for their nutrition and reproduction.
The most promising type of algae from the point of view of growing and producing various useful and valuable products is considered to be Spirulina. These algae are easy to grow, yield a large crop, and contain a significant amount of potential useful raw materials. Taking into account the situation on the world market of fuel consumption, the most profitable and feasible direction is considered to be the cultivation of algae for the production of biofuels and the production of various types of biofuels from algae. At the same time, up to two hundred liters of oil can be obtained from one ton of wet algae biomass.using simple technologies, it will be possible to obtain biodiesel and a number of valuable organic substances: triglycerides, fatty acids, lipids, long-chain hydrocarbons, carbohydrates (sugars, starch, alginate), ethanol and other alcohols, cellulose, and other valuable products.
Experts note the high efficiency of obtaining biofuels from algae in comparison with other methods of obtaining biofuels from plants (rapeseed, corn, palm fruits, etc.) and predict a sharp increase in the use of algae in the coming years. Experts evaluate the benefits of biofuels from algae for the following reasons:
- fuel is potentially produced directly in algae using solar energy;
- you do not need to occupy areas occupied for growing crops;
- the production process is easily scaled;
- the prices of finished products are comparable to the prices of conventional fuel;
- environmental cleanliness of production.

At the end of our small review of the achievements of green technologies, a little exotic. Green technology is the greenest thing you can think of.
In an attempt to find an environmental alternative for creating electric batteries, researchers at the University of California, riverside have developed a battery using tomato mushrooms. According to scientists, their brainchild can not only reduce the economic and environmental cost of producing batteries, but also lead to the creation of batteries whose power does not fall, but on the contrary, increases over time. Innovative batteries consist of three main elements: the negative pole (cathode), the positive pole (anode), and the solid or liquid separator (electrolyte). Synthetic graphite is used as the anode in lithium-ion batteries, but this material requires the use of aggressive chemicals for cleaning and preparation.

These processes are not just expensive in themselves. Their by-product is hazardous waste that harms the environment. Scientists decided to use mushrooms as a substitute for graphite for two reasons. First, earlier studies have shown that these mushrooms are very porous, and this property is important when creating a battery (more holes allow you to store and transfer more energy, which increases productivity). Secondly, they contain a lot of potassium salts, which means that they can lead to the creation of batteries that are active for a long time, in fact, even increasing their own power over time. "With such materials, mobile phone batteries of the future will not discharge faster over time, but will instead hold a charge longer because of the activation of pores inside carbon structures," says Brennan Campbell, a graduate student at the University of California, riverside and one of the co-authors of the work.

Luke Bowser, who works at the University of the British city of Leeds, along with colleagues wondered whether it is possible to use proteins created to strengthen the skeletons of animals, when growing new electronics parts. His team chose silicateins, proteins that build the skeletons of sea sponges, as the basis for their work. Using DNA replication techniques, scientists have grown millions of DNA mutations that encode silicateins. Mutations occurred naturally during the growth process, so the result was a variety of protein variants. This has led to the fact that some silicateins have acquired the ability to build a variety of mineral crystal structures.
Scientists from Cardiff University (UK) have come up with an innovative way to extract hydrogen from ordinary oatmeal, which can greatly affect the energy sector as a whole. Hydrogen has long been recognized as an extremely promising alternative fuel: having a high energy content, it does not emit greenhouse gases when burned. However, the process of obtaining this fuel is not environmentally friendly in itself, and it is also expensive, since it consumes huge reserves of natural gas and coal. These facts force scientists to come up with alternative and safer ways to produce hydrogen. One of the most promising studies is being conducted by scientists from Cardiff University in the UK, who are collaborating with researchers from Queen's University in Belfast. In the course of their research, scientists are developing an effective way to produce hydrogen from cellulose using sunlight and a catalyst. According to the researchers, using a cheap catalyst in the form of Nickel and ordinary grass to produce hydrogen makes their research truly innovative.

Source: http://www.relga.ru/Environ/Webobjects/tgu-www.woa/wa/Main?textid=5324&level1=main&level2=articles
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