Algae may have one more hat to wear now that the search for alternative fuels is rivaling that of Christopher Columbus searching for the new world. Algae is being touted as a new and viable source of biofuel. LiveFuels Inc. out of Menlo Park, CA is researching the oil producing potential of the aforementioned slim and have an initiate in place to hopefully replace millions of gallons of fossil fuels with this new algae based biofuel by 2010.
“The challenge facing LiveFuels’ scientists will be growing and transforming algae cheaply into biocrude within days rather than millennia. The entire United States’ supply of imported oil could potentially be grown on 20 to 40 million acres of marginal land, leaving the 450 million acres of fertile American soil that are presently farmland still available to feed the nation.”
“LiveFuels will enable American farmers to replace imported oil with home-grown biocrude and supply it to the United States,” said Morgenthaler-Jones. “Other countries are ahead of the U.S. in biocrude research, but other countries were once ahead of us in the space race too. America put a man on the moon in eight years, and America can make its own biocrude in four.”
LiveFuels Inc is part of a collobrative effort on the part of the Department of Energy. Sandia National Laboratories is leading the way along with the liveFuels alliance in sponsoring dozens of labs around the country over the next three years.
It’s great to see a federally funded program moving forward like this, hopefully there will be more programs lke this in the future.
One Comment
If biofuels are ever a viable option, it will be thanks to algae. The key factor is mentioned in the article. Energy for our cars and stuff should not compete with food production, it will just turn out bad. We are already seeing this a little with the rising cost of corn for ethanol. The fact that algae are not dependent on fertile soil means they can take up otherwise unattractive land. I think it has good potential.
One Trackback
[...] Via msnbc e Ecotality Life. [...]