Algenol Enters The Algae Biofuel Race With Process Economics Advantage

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The USA-based firm Algenol has struck a deal with Mexico-based BioFields to grow and process algae in a manner that cost effectively produces ethanol - directly from the culture. This is quite different from the usual algal biofuel processes that use algae to produce biological oil which, after extraction from the algal cells, is used as feedstock for liquid fuel production: often biodiesel. If, as claimed by Algenol, ethanol can be extracted directly from the algal culture media, we suppose that the process may be drastically less capital and energy intensive than competitive algal biofuel processes. No need to pull out biomass, squeeze it dry on a belt press, and extract the oils in still a third processing step.

"Algenol plans to make 100 million gallons of ethanol, about the average annual capacity of one traditional US distillery, in Mexico's Sonoran Desert by the end of the 2009. By the end of 2012, it plans to increase that to 1 billion gallons -- more than 10 percent of current ethanol capacity in the United States, the world's top ethanol producer."

Full story here from this TreeHugger post

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