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Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature 461, 460-461 (2009) | doi:10.1038/461460a
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Gold rush for algae
The second of four weekly articles on biofuels describes how oil giants and others are placing their bets on algae.
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. With the likes of Bill Gates, the US military and ExxonMobil trumpeting their potential, "it's hard to find someone on the sidewalk in New York who hasn't heard about the idea of using algae for energy," says Harrison Dillon, president and chief technology officer of Solazyme, a biotechnology company in South San Francisco, California.
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This is all fascinating! However I am sure there must be other algal biofuel companies in other parts of the world, such as The United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and Asia?
Stunning improvements in algal bioproductivity ARE possible, as explained in a recent article in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Volume 76, pp. 969-975. Granted, considerable research is engendered, but the laws of nature do not preclude increases by one to two orders of magnitude. Gordon and Polle portray a compelling scientific case.
Given that future vehicles will increasingly use electric power rather than the less efficient internal combustion engine, and that electricity is a versatile power source outside of the automotive sector, one wonders whether there might be some virtue in harvesting, drying, and burning the algae for electricity generation rather than attempting to extract the oil while leaving behind other algal cellular materials that could also contribute to energy generation.