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Continental Test Flight Uses Algae as Fuel
Sunday, February 15, 2009

I read the article Continental Test Flight Uses Algae as Fuel by Saabira Chaudhuri for FastCompany with quite a great deal of interest.

In a nut-shell, what happened was "In a 90-minute test flight, a Continental Boeing 737-800 used a 50-50 blend of biofuel (algae mixed with jatropha, a weed that bears oil-producing seeds) and normal fuel to power its number two engine."

As the article goes on to note, there are a few things of particular interest:

The biofuel blend is a "drop-in" fuel which means no modifications to the aircraft or engine are necessary for any existing planes to operate;
While algae works like other plants in that it converts carbon dioxide into energy, it also lives in environments other plants would reject – such as those filled with sewage. It uses the nutrients in these environments to breakdown carbon, turning it into an oily substance that resembles gasoline, diesel, kerosene and other petroleum based products. In other words, it produces fuel while cleaning the environment; and
Algae production doesn't compete with that of food crops because it can be grown in glass tubes anywhere warm and sunny. It yields up to 30 times more fuel than regular energy crops. Algae production is also much safer than petroleum refining because it doesn’t involve drilling or expensive chemicals, and any potential algae spills would not be harmful.

How cool is that !!!!

I guess what would be interesting to learn is: how much energy/cost is required to convert Algae into biofuel? HowStuffWorks has a good article on the process, but the costs are not quantified.

What is quiet interesting is how much investment has gone into this sector recently: US$179.9m this year (I assume US calendar year?) according to this article by GreenTechMedia. What is also interesting from this article is that the company doing significant investing, Cascades Investments, has Bill Gates as a major shareholder.

Do you still have any doubts that the next wave of innovation and growth is coming from biotech?

Hopefully we are going to read more on this throughout 2009 !