Utah State University researchers have developed an approach that takes oil from pond scum and converts it to an algae-biodiesel fuel that could be commercially available by 2009.
Algae, a common variety of which is known as pond scum, can produce up to 38,000 litres of oil per acre and can be grown virtually anywhere.
Most current biodiesel comes from soybean and corn oil. As supply and demand grows, so does the price of soybeans and corn. According to the researchers, people and animals rely on soybean and corn as a food commodity, eventually causing competition between commodities and growing enough product.
Meeting the demand for biodiesel would require the world to use virtually all of its arable land, said Lance Seefeldt, USU professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
Seefeldt, along with several fellow USU professors, formed the Biofuels Program to develop new and emerging technologies that will produce methane, biodiesel, hydrogen and alcohols from renewable, carbon-dioxide-neutral energy sources, such as consumer and agricultural waste and sunlight.
The state of Utah has awarded the USU Biofuels Program $6m for five years through the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative. The research has already set in motion several spin-off and industry relationships, and one patent has already been issued, with four others pending.
Thanks for the article…it is heartening to see algae getting a lot of publicity, something I feel they deserve.
I co-ordinate Oilgae.com ( http://www.oilgae.com ), a site that explores use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel, and I can say with some amount of confidence based on my researches that algae appear to be one of the most qualified candidates for biodiesel production.
While the math certainly appears to favor algae, there are a number of issues to be overcome. These have to do with (1) choosing optimal algal strains, (2) issues faced in cultivation and harvesting (believe me there are some serious bottlenecks here), and (3) cost-effective methods to extract oil and transform it into biodiesel.
So yes, there is still a long way to go before it can be proven with certainty that algal biodiesel can be cost-effective on a large scale, but it is gratifying to see brilliant minds (not to forget VC money) getting into this field. And with institutes like MIT (Boston) getting into the act, I’m optimistic most of the above-mentioned issues will be overcome.
Time will tell if algae are our future source of energy, but for now, they certainly appear to have many of the qualifications required for the same.
Time will tell if algae are our future source of energy, but for now, they certainly appear to have many of the qualifications required for the same.
Narsi from Oilgae – Oil from Algae @ http://www.oilgae.com