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Commercial Fuel From Algae Still Years Away

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.

chrnb sends along this quote from a report at Reuters: "Filling your vehicle's tank with fuel made from algae is still as much as a decade away, as the emerging industry faces a series of hurdles to find an economical way to make the biofuel commercially. Estimates on a timeline for a commercial product, and profits, vary from two to 10 years or more. Executives and industry players who gathered at the Algae Biomass Summit this week in San Diego said they need to push for breakthroughs along the entire chain — from identifying the best organisms to developing efficient harvesting methods. ... So far on the list: finding the right strain of algae among thousands of species that will produce high yields; designing systems where the desired algae can multiply and other species don't invade and disrupt the process; and extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well."

4 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. DAPRA still trying. by auric_dude · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pentagon way-out research arm Darpa and Predator drone maker General Atomics are teaming up to try to turn algae into jet fuel. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/12/darpa-general-a/ well they were still at it towards the end of 2008.

  2. Re:Plants make their bodies from cellulose. by mrmeval · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't see how much would be cellulose. The fatty acids can be up to 40 percent which is very good. http://www.oilgae.com/algae/comp/comp.html

    Also algae is not a plant and they've removed cyanobacteria from consideration as algae.

    --
    I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
  3. Re:Time to get some good advice ... by Yergle143 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm an interested attendee of some of these bio-fuel meetings in San Diego. You are correct in that the tools used by the biofuel researchers to date have been primitive when compared to Pharma and that Pharma is now involved (check out Synthetic Genomics created by J. Craig Venter). However the problem is far more daunting than that -- this is in a sense a new kind of agriculture where the only economical means to grow algae must be in the open air. This means that every biofuel producing pond is going to be contaminated by competitors and predators all the time. Big Pharma has zero experience in how to contend with this -- cell culture vats are made sterile before every growth. That's one reason why the products of cell culture are so expensive.

  4. Re:so this is like fusion but only 10 years away i by evilbessie · · Score: 3, Informative

    JET did, right at the end, which is why they are building ITER to actually get positive _useful_ energy out.