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在解决污染问题的同时还能够制造新能源，而且这个方法还特别绿色！听起来是不是很不可信？但美国航空航天局（NASA）还真的研究出了这样一种可能性，而这个方法的核心居然是一种植物——海藻。
Take some NASA-developed plastic membranes, add algae and municipal waste water and float it out to sea. What have you got? An environmentally friendly alternative to U.S. dependence on foreign oil, says one NASA scientist.
如果我们在一个美国宇航局特制的塑料薄膜里放一点海藻，再加上城市废水，然后把它们一起放到海上，那么结果会得到什么呢？美国宇航局的专家告诉我们，我们得到的是一种足以减轻美国对国外石油依赖的清洁新能源。
Jonathan Trent, a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., sees algae farmed at sea as a win-win-win scenari The plants are oil-rich and easy to grow; sea-based nurseries leave land free for food production; and the process should take out more carbon from the atmosphere than what it puts in.
美国宇航局位于加州Moffett Field的Ames研究中心的研究员Jonathan Trent认为，“种”海藻是一种多赢的举措。首先这种植物富含植物油而且很容易种植；其次在大海里种植节省了土地，节省下来的土地就可以用来种其他的作物；而且这个种植的过程中吸收的大气中的碳比其产生的要多，因而也就能改善大气的含碳量。
As an added bonus, the system purifies waste water now being pumped into the ocean.
还有一个额外的好处，那就是这个系统可以将城市废水净化，然后排放到大海里。
"What we're doing is closing the loop in our own spaceship Earth environment," Trent told Discovery News. "The only catch is no one's ever done this before."
Trent对探索新闻说：“我们所做的是在我们自己的宇宙飞船——地球上创造一个生态循环系统，唯一的问题是从来没有什么物种这样做过。”
Algae has become one of the hotter commodities in the quest for fossil fuel alternatives, said Michael Frohlich, a spokesman for the National Biodiesel Board, a Missouri-based trade organization.
位于密苏里州的行业协会——国家生物柴油委员会的发言人Michael Frohlich曾说到，在寻求化石能源替代物的道路上，海藻正成为越来越热门的候选品之一。
Traditionally, algae is grown outdoors in large tanks of moving water, or inside bioreactors. The plants produce far more oil per acre than other crops, such as soybeans. Algae farming does, however, have a few technical hurdles to overcome, such as how to efficiently drain the water in which the algae grows, added Biodiesel Board technical adviser Alan Weber.
通常海藻都是在户外的大罐流水里种植，或者是生长在生物反应器里。海藻这种植物没英亩产出的植物油比诸如黄豆这些植物要多很多，但是种植海藻却又有一些技术难题需要克服。国家生物柴油委员会的技术顾问Alan Weber提到，如何很有效地抽干海藻生长的水就会是一个挺大的技术壁垒。
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