Gold rush for algae

No longer lowly pond scum, algae have rocketed in status to what some say is the most promising ‘green’ fuel source of the future.

Nature News - subscription needed.  Summary below

Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature 461, 460-461 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461460a

Amanda Leigh Mascarelli

The business of biofuels

No longer lowly pond scum, algae have rocketed in status to what some say is the most promising ‘green’ fuel source of the future.

Algae’s photosynthetic cells produce an oily goo, including various oils and ethanol, that can be converted into advanced biofuels. Since 2007, more than $1 billion has been injected into algae-to-energy research and development, says Will Thurmond, president of Emerging Markets Online, an energy consulting firm in Houston, Texas.

“Algae have several key traits that make them a desirable energy source. They can be grown on non-agricultural land in a fraction of the area required by conventional oil crops such as maize (corn), soybean and palm. In addition, algae capture carbon dioxide and can thrive in domestic waste water or salt water. But experts warn that there are still high hurdles to overcome before algal biofuels can compete economically with conventional fossil fuels. Challenges include finding strains of algae that reliably produce high yields, keeping contamination at bay, developing cost-effective growth chambers and efficiently harvesting oil from the cells. “In the end, it’s all going to come down to economics and what it’s going to cost to produce this algal oil on a large, commercial scale on a dollar-per-gallon basis,” says Al Darzins, who leads the algal biofuels programme at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.