Solazyme's algae diesel ready to hit the road

Tiny algae is ready for some long-haul trucking.

Solazyme, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based company that creates synthetic biological products, said Wednesday that its microalgae-derived fuel is the first renewable diesel to meet the American Society for Testing and Materials' D-975 specifications.

Here is algae being grown in dishes at Solazyme's labs. The oil produced by the algae can be used for fuels, chemical, or food oils.

(Credit: Solazyme)

The fuel is chemically the same as petroleum-derived diesel, Solazyme said, so it can be distributed using the existing infrastructure. But it burns cleaner than petroleum-derived diesel, with fewer particulates and sulfur levels.

A 100 percent blend of Solazyme's diesel has been road-tested in a 2005 Jeep Liberty with a diesel engine, the company said in a statement.

Solazyme's certification is a milestone in algae-based fuels, one of the hottest areas of biofuels.

Algae as a feedstock is more desirable than soy because it is not a food crop, yields more oil, and can grow on marginal land.

But, in general, the technology is still experimental and algae-based diesel has not been produced at commercial scale.

Solayzme's process differs from most algae farming in that the microalgae is grown without sunlight in a setting more akin to a brewery than an open pond.

In its fermentation process, the company puts large amounts of algae into a vat, mixes in sugar, and then controls the pressure and other environmental factors inside the vat to induce the algae to metabolize the sugar into oil.

The process can be used to make oils and chemicals from other forms of biomass, including wood chips, corn stover, and switchgrass.

[amandachuck]

And how much water is used to do this? Water is scarcer than oil (oil prices are not due to scarcity). So are we trading burning out food for fuel for contaminating our water for fuel?

[jasonaorr]

How can you say this biodiesel is ready to "hit the road" when it is "still experimental and ... has not been produced at commercial scale"?

[duggerdm]

Algae oil is the new "snake oil." When you see an algae oil company posting its production costs and comparing those cost to petroleum production costs (not current artificially inflated petro oil prices) then algae oil will have some credibility. Of course having algae oil production available in commercial quantities would also create credibility - which currently isn't there either. Until then, algae oil will smell, look, feel and perform just as well as snake oil - and generally be just as expensive in the long run to those taken in by it. Algae oil may well have potential, but not being upfront with real algae oil production costs invites every fast buck technologist to get involved - and apparently they have. Where's the economics ?

[johnon2wheels]

Lots of skeptics this morning...you have to have something to work with before you iron out the details. Show me where to get it and I'll try it! Its a step in the right direction...be happy!

[oldmacdev]

Oil is expensive because it IS increasingly scarce. Water can be recycled and algae does not require potable water to grow. As interesting and promising as the technology is, it would be useful if the companies would provide an estimate of the number of barrels of oil per day per acre of production they hope to reach.

[umbrae]

No matter what you say this is MUCH BETTER than Ethanol production. It does not use food stock, has less pollutants, and does not use the land. Water, although it might be scarce is also a renewable resource. Water consumed is returned to the environment: its just a matter of how quickly. Not like Oil which is burned up and gone.

As far as commercial scale, this vat process is different than past methods and this company has stated before that it could be produced as a commercial scale within a few years.

[XS0706]

Wouldn't it be even nicer if the fermentation process can be modified to use sewage discharge water instead of clean water? Then this process would become REALLLY useful, even if the fuel produced is not completely cost competetive.

[Stumped_in_Canada]

[quote]Water can be recycled......[/quote]

Tell that to the 50 sq kms of tailing ponds (lakes) north of Fort McMurray left over from the bitumen extraction process.......

[umbrae]

"[quote]Water can be recycled......[/quote] Tell that to the 50 sq kms of tailing ponds (lakes) north of Fort McMurray left over from the bitumen extraction process......." That water is somewhere, but when the water returns to earth it doesn't always end up in the same place. Science 101.

[mrwater]

The energy has to come from somewhere, and in this case it's coming from sugar. So the algae may not be a "food crop" (although it certainly could be, as any spirulina fan can tell you), but it still competes with the food supply. It strikes me as an inefficient way of harvesting solar energy via plant-produced sugar. I would expect algae grown in sunlight to be more efficient, with non-biological means such as photovoltaic and solar thermal, to be more efficient still. The benefit of the algae approach is to provide what for now is a more energy-dense fuel that could be used in existing vehicles. If and when the energy-density advantage is overcome by better batteries or other storage devices, electric vehicles will be a much better choice due to their energy efficiency.

[tech_crazy]

My comments for some reason never appeared on the page.
Anyway, my point exactly. As long as the "sugar" used is a human inedible/unusable it is fine. Otherwise, it's just shifting one problem to another.

[hackingbear]

Sugars are used mostly as a flavor in the food and for health reason, one should take less sugar. So edible or not is not a big issue. But it would be indeed a problem if it uses a lot of sugar. That means a lot of farm land have to use to grow some plants again, competing with major food source and having the same over cultivation on land problem, negating much advantage of algae comparing to other methods. Also it means lower production yield for this method because bottleneck would be in growing the sugar.

[johnon2wheels]

I haven't looked into what type of sugar they are using but as you know all carbohydrates and starches are forms of sugars...therefore it could be compost waste to get the sugars. But if it did have to be something as simple as sugar cane (I doubt it though), its a very easy crop to grow, high yield, little effort, maintenance, high density per acre, it grows like a weed in many places like bamboo. Much better option than corn or soy, but with all the other sugars in excess....why grow one?

[fokkwp]

Geez, that's pretty sad - Solazyne is not using sunlight at all, just sugar (see the video at their link). That means it's purely a biomass conversion operation. You can be sure that whoever runs these plants will take the cheapest sugar they can get - so if folks in the Amazon can keep making money by cutting down rain-forests to replant with sugar cane, they will. Corn, whatever, any input that yields a profit. And of course all this will be bought up by the same Big Oil companies, who have the refinement and delivery infrastructure already.

This process is likely to just deepen the whole biofuels tragedy. If their process can be adapted to sunlight-fed, that's great, but as long as sugar is cheaper and faster, it may never get adapated. There is no sense, and no reason, to solve global warming at the cost of turning the planet into a wasteland and its people into starving refugees.

[propaganda_press]

still trying to drive our way to freedom aren't we?
those things are going to become living museum pieces in your driveways. your cars that is

[Seaspray0]

And people said, "Why did we spend all that money to send someone to the moon? What good did it do?" And I'll say, "For every $ spent, we benefited more from the technology advances that were developed from it." Maybe that's what the complainers and nay-sayers should consider before they spew their "worthless" pitch. Who knows? Some day, this could be very worthwhile.

[ferretboy88]

I am still waiting to hear the Democrats big plan to fix things. They have not had one ever. All they want to do it to tax the oil companies more. Instead of shelling out welfare and food stamps to 27.3 million people last month why not use that money for a new energy idea. I'm not very worried because Al Gore said we are all dead in 5 years.

[greenba]

Before you get to worried about water supply, let's find out if seawater will do. I know of one researcher who thinks it will.

Ben