West Bengal Power Development Corporation (WBPDCL) and Sun Plant Agro Leads Algae Project

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Bengal is taking the lead in algae fuel a third-generation biofuel that has generated tremendous excitement worldwide. A city-based organization is conducting a pilot project at the Kolaghat thermal power plant and is expected to start production next year.

"Algae yields a very high amount of bio-fuel compared with jatropha or soyabean because almost the entire algal organism uses sunlight to produce lipids or oil. Studies show that algae can produce 60-80% of their biomass in the form of oil," said professor Sarajit Basu, the mentor of the project and an expert on bio-fuel.

The possibilities are immense. Fifty per cent of the CO2 emitted can be used for algal farming, 25% for farming of spirulina (an edible algae, very high in protein content), and the rest can be compressed in its uncontaminated form to produce dry ice. The oil-cakes again are an excellent fuel which can be burnt to generate power to run this entire process. So, it will be a self-sustaining technology," said S M Ghosh, the head of Bio-Fuel Mission of Sun Plant Agro, which plans to start commercial production of algae bio-fuel by 2010. "We are taking land on lease near Canning for this," said A K Singh, managing director of Sun Plant Agro.

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