Thursday, August 20, 2009

Algae Based CO2 Sequestration advancing

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Here is yet another effort of Algae Co2 Sequestration. Aurora Biofuels, says it has cultivated algae that doubles production of biodiesel by absorbing more than twice as much carbon dioxide as conventional strains.According to Robert Walsh, the chief executive of the company, Aurora’s breakthrough was to develop algae mutations that can ingest carbon dioxide regardless of the intensity of sunlight.

He said Aurora has built a pilot facility “between a 7-Eleven and the beach” near Melbourne, Fla., and that for the past several months the new algae strains have been producing a gallon of biodiesel a day in an Olympic pool-sized pond.

Mr. Walsh said the challenge for Aurora is to commercialize its scientific advance. The company plans to have a demonstration plant capable of producing 1,000 gallons of fuel a day in operation by the second quarter of 2010. A full-scale production facility is to follow in 2011.

Aurora has raised $25 million from investors that include Oak Investment Partners, Noventi Ventures and Gabriel Venture Partners. Mr. Walsh said that financing will be sufficient to see Aurora through the construction of the demonstration algae biodiesel plant.

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1 comment:

  1. dugAugust 28, 2009 at 7:52 AM

    First of all the article has nothing to do with CO2 sequestering. Secondly, algae are considered carbon neutral because generally algae products of either fuel or food are either combusted or metabolized and there is little or no CO2 sequestered for the long term - which is really all the that counts. Third - that is a god awful lipid yield. Olympic swimming pools contain 660,000 gallons and you get 1 gallon of lipid from that volume - yeah that sounds economically feasible - not.

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