Day 8

Day 8 and everyone is sick. I don’t fully understand how, but don’t worry – we’ll persevere. The blog stops for nothing. Today is a wonderful day because today’s visit is the one that my group previewed for the class a few weeks ago back in Pittsburgh. Summer, Elijah, and I were unsure of just how valid our sources were for the presentation, so confirming certain aspects and weeding out the others was a good feeling.

Our destination is UFPR, the Federal University of Parana. They’re of so much interest to us because of some very cool projects within hydroelectricity and biofuels – Brasil’s two most advanced forms of renewable energy. First, let’s talk hydrology. The hydrology research group at UFPR is unbelievable. They were contracted many years ago to perform a scaled flow of and analysis of the Itaipu Dam, so it should be no surprise that they are currently studying Belo Monte. Belo Monte will become the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world upon completion and it is easy to understand how after seeing the model at the smallest fraction of the size.

Some interesting notes from our tour include: 1) Environmental concerns are taken seriously. The reservoir size of Belo Monte was capped by the Brazilian environmental agency. As a result the plant will depend heavily on flow and will be a great engineering challenge. 2) There is often poor communication between the group and the builders. Many projects are built simultaneously with the model being tested back at UFPR and as a result there are often mistakes made.

The second half of our visit was a tour with the microalgae research team. We learned of the tremendous potential that microalgae has in comparison to many energy crops currently being grown. It is a very slow growth, but team has designed massive racks for microalgae growth that can ultimately produce dry algae with great energy density. Merely 5% of the US crop land would be needed to supply over half of the oil demand in the States using microalgae farms.

At $100,000 a piece, the racks at UFPR are unbelievably expensive. We can safely assume that as an energy crop microalgae would be very expensive, but the potential for cost reduction strategies and energy efficiency improvements make this a very promising industry.