Saturday, October 7, 2006

Algae to Ethanol?

You are at: Oilgae Blog; see also: Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae Home Page

Some weeks ago there was an article on Veridium Inc. patent pending technology and an algae that contains up to 94% starch; the rest is possibly cellulose?

One member at the Oil from Algae Yahoogroup is wondering why all of us have focused on algae to (bio)diesel technology and not algae to ethanol technology...

To quote him further: "The two are not mutually exclusive. After all, the alcohol that goes into biodiesel has to come from somewhere"

He further says: "I can see many advantages to make ethanol from algae instead of diesel:
1.The lipid (oil) content in algae (best strains I have seen from different sources max. 70%) is less than starch+cellulose+ sugars(nearly 100%) content
2.Algae should be dried (a lot of energy) to extract oil but needs no treatment for ethanol fermentation
3.Extracting the oil from algae is complicated
4.CO2 from ethanol fermenting can be used as algae feedstock
5.The energy from fermenting and distilling can be used to heat algaeponds (photobioreactors) in cold climate."

Certainly food for thought!

Oilgae Academic Edition - provides extensive details on the research efforts done by hundreds of universities in this domain.

Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae
Oilgae Blog
algOS - Biodiesel from Algae Open Source


Oilgae - Oil & Biodiesel from Algae provides links, provides directory and web links resources for the algae-based biofuels & biodiesel. It is intended to be useful for research, information, inputs, news for buyers, sellers, manufacturers, traders, suppliers, producers, exporters and importers of algal oil and algal fuels. It will make an effort to provide info on biofuel feedstock, algal feedstocks, algae oil info and link, details on fuel from algae, bio-fuel, bio-diesel, bio-fuels, algal oils production and uses, and biofuels trade & market resources, data, statistics such as price, prices, demand-supply for buyer, seller, manufacturer, trader, supplier, exporter and producer

No comments:

Post a Comment