Ethanol and Biodiesel Production From Seaweed Is Becoming A Trend

A collaborative project is underway between the U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory and LiveFuels, Inc. of California. The goal of the project is to refine biofuels from seaweed.

LiveFuels says seaweed promises to be a promising new source of fuel. They have funded dozens of projects at the U.S. National Laboratory in Santiago. The goal is to have economically viable biodiesel by 2030.

seaweed

Through research on specialty seaweed, the San Diego National Laboratory has shown that it takes only 0.3 percent of U.S. land to produce enough fuel to meet all U.S. transportation use.

GreenFuel Technologies has partnered with Arizona Public Service (APS) to use CO2 emissions from gas-fired power plants to feed algae, which can be converted to biodiesel or bioethanol. The technology uses high-growth rate algae, which are placed in large test tubes filled with water and exposed to direct sunlight. The system optimizes photosynthesis and is expected to begin commercial production in Arizona in 2028.

Arizona-based XL Milk Group has a proprietary, low-cost algae production system. It will produce ethanol and biodiesel fuel from algae.

Algae BioFuels, a subsidiary of PetroSun, Inc. in the United States, announced in early April 2007 the transfer of biodiesel refining technology from algae to Australia. The production unit will include a biofuel refinery designed for 20 million gal/year (1 USgal = 3.785 L) of biodiesel.

An Israeli biotech company has also developed a new technology that uses CO2 emissions from power plants to farm seaweed. from which biofuels are made.

The Spanish company Biofuel Systems uses green algae organisms to develop renewable “eco-oil” that can absorb CO2 in a continuous cycle. The company is currently able to produce 6kg of “eco-oil” per day from 2m3 of water. This is thousands of times more efficient than growing biofuel crops such as soybeans. It also uses less land and is less invasive. The company’s next goal is to build a power plant with a capacity of 30MW using “eco-oil” as fuel.

2022-11-29T07:00:12+00:00 November 29th, 2022|Tags: |