algae

So, now there's even an app for planning your algae oil production.

The Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M has a free "Algae Production Conversion Calculator" to help with producing algae crops. The app is free via the iTunes app store. There is also a Web-based version that can be used on Android and other devices.

The app converts between grams per liter and grams per square meter. It also calculates the annual algae oil production possible for a given farm or site based on data that includes pond volume per acre feet, … Read more

Solazyme raised $227 million in its public stock offering today, netting more than anticipated from the biofuels and renewable chemicals company's public launch.

Trading of the San Francisco-based company's stock (SZYM) started today on the NASDAQ higher than the planned $18 opening price and closed the day at over $20, or 15 percent higher, to bring in $227 million.

The IPO is a bright spot for the biofuel and renewable chemical area, where many companies have been founded over the past 10 years but only a handful have successfully gone public.

Solazyme uses algae to make liquid fuels, … Read more

Australia-based MBD Energy is installing an algae system from OriginOil at its coal power station in Tarong, Australia, both companies announced today.

The system will capture flue-gas emitted from the coal-fired power station using a bio-based carbon capture storage device containing micro-algae. The micro-algae uses the captured CO2 to reproduce more algae biomass, which can then be used for fuel or plastics.

The Tarong power station in Queensland will be able to process up to 300 gallons of algae culture per minute, but is only a one-hectare site. The small station will serve as the test site for a larger … Read more

The U.S. has enough land in the right climate to produce homegrown algae oil that would replace a significant amount of foreign oil imported for transportation use--without endangering its water supply.

The Gulf Coast region, the Southeastern seaboard, and the Great Lakes areas are ideally suited to grow algae in outdoor freshwater ponds with minimal water usage.

That's according to a study released today by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in the journal Water Resources Research.

Biofuel made from refined algae oils, while showing promise, is still in the early stages of development. … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--To reinvent the fuel business, engineers at biofuel start-up Joule Unlimited tinker with tiny life forms all day.

The four-year-old start-up is on the front lines of a branch of biotechnology that taps into the wealth of knowledge from genome sequencing and powerful computer tools to start from scratch and ask: if you wanted the ideal fuel, how would you make it?

The answer they've come up with is a diesel secreted by a genetically engineered microbe in flat plastic bioreactors. The only inputs for its "biofactory" organism are sunlight, pumped-in carbon dioxide, and some … Read more

OriginOil has developed a new method for targeting invading microbes that can kill or damage algae ponds, the algae research company said today.

The method, which the Australia-based company plans to offer as a product called Algae Screen, uses low-power electromagnetic pulses to target rotifers, ciliates, and bacteria harmful to algae growth. And the pulses do not harm the algae themselves, according to OriginOil.

The electromagnetic pulses can be tailored to take into account issues such as the type of algae being grown, as well as the salinity and water hardness of an algae pond.

Algae Screen can be used … Read more

A correction was made on March 14 with a corrected figure for Solazyme's revenue last year.

Algae-oil maker Solazyme picked a time of rising oil prices of more than $100 a barrel to signal it plans to go public on the stock market.

The San Francisco-based company on Friday filed its S-1 document to the Securities and Exchange Commission, outlining its plan to raise up to $100 million through an initial public offering. Solazyme grows algae with sugars in closed fermentation tanks to create oils, which can be used for liquid fuel and for chemicals, foods, or personal care … Read more

March is known as the green month, so it's fitting that only one week into it there's already some interesting news for algae fuel supporters.

Agricultural giant Monsanto today announced it's signed a deal with algae-crude producer Sapphire to collaborate on genetic engineering research that could be applied to both algae and agricultural crops.

The research involves identifying traits in algae genes for growth and durability. But the science can also be applied to plants like cotton, soybeans, and corn, according to Sapphire.

As part of the deal, Monsanto is making "an equity investment" in … Read more

A commercial pilot project for carbon sequestration and large-scale algae biofuel manufacturing in Australia has been successfully completed, OriginOil announced today.

The company partnered with Australian energy company MBD Energy through a licensing agreement that has allowed both companies to share intellectual property on proprietary algae-to-fuel conversion processes.

The algae-to-fuel process in this case begins with an existing coal power plant.

CO2, given off as a byproduct of MBD Energy's coal-fired power plants, is captured by micro-algae. The micro-algae convert that captured CO2 and use it to reproduce, creating higher amounts of algae, which can then be used as … Read more