Feb
22
DARPA Cracks the Oil Out of Algae
February 22, 2010 | 6 Comments
Late last week saw Suzanne Goldenberg return from her visit with the new special assistant for energy at DARPA, Barbara McQuiston with news DARPA has solved the algae oil production problem. If you saw the original piece at The Guardian, my contact at Darpa is saying it’s accurate other than the timeline. DARPA expects to [...]
Nov
23
Algae That Produces Hydrogen Gas
November 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Barry Bruce, a professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology leads a team at UT Knoxville that has found the inner machinery of photosynthesis can be isolated from certain algae and, when coupled with a platinum catalyst, is able to produce a steady supply of hydrogen when exposed to light.
So far researchers have been [...]
Nov
17
On the Hunt for Cheaper Algae
November 17, 2009 | 3 Comments
A major potential from algae is they could change the energy source of fuels from the ancient fossil fuels to current account renewable fuels. That goal has two Kansas State University engineers assessing systematic production methods that could make the costs of algae oil production more reasonable.
Algae production presents major obstacles to scaling at economical [...]
Oct
13
Get Your Algae Production Going for a $10 Million Prize
October 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
Del Mar-based Prize Capital announced at last week’s Algae Biomass Summit, a meeting in San Diego of experts in using algae for fuel, food, purifying water and other purposes a $10 Million algae fuel prize. They deserve a major publicity push – so here it goes.
Lee Stein, Prize Capital’s founder said the goal is a [...]
Jul
23
A Peek Inside the ExxonMobil/Craig Venter Algae Project
July 23, 2009 | 2 Comments
I nudged the wonderful Jane Van Ryan at the API last week shortly after the press release came out about ExxonMobil and Craig Venter’s SGI setting out with $600 million to try to get algae sourced oils into the market. Even at ExxonMobil, $600 million is a sizeable amount of money, with a certain amount [...]
Jul
14
Exxon Commits $600 Million to Algae
July 14, 2009 | 5 Comments
Business Wire and the Wall Street Journal are reporting and commenting on Exxon committing $600 million to Craig Ventor’s Synthetic Genomics to brew fuel from algae. Its a watershed mark for alternative fuels and could mark a coming of age for alternative fuels. Exxon is known in the industry as the top engineering skilled company [...]
Apr
13
A Major Algae Breakthrough for Fuels and Food
April 13, 2009 | 1 Comment
Martin Spalding, professor and chair of the Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology at Iowa State University has identified one of the key proteins in the algae responsible for concentrating and moving that CO2 into cells. “This is a real breakthrough. No one had previously identified any of the proteins that are involved in [...]
Apr
2
A New Way For Algae Oil To Become Biodiesel
April 2, 2009 | 1 Comment
Ben Wen, Ph.D., vice president of United Environment and Energy LLC, Horseheads, N.Y., believes the firm’s new process “Is the first economical way to produce biodiesel from algae oil. It costs much less than conventional processes because you would need a much smaller factory, there are no water disposal costs, and the process is considerably [...]
Mar
30
An Algae Production Cost Breakthrough
March 30, 2009 | 6 Comments
AlgaeVenture Systems of Marysville Ohio announced they have released patented information about their new method to harvest, dewater and dry mature algae production at a fraction of one percent of other processes in common use.
Ross Youngs, CEO of Univenture, the parent corporation of AlgaeVenture Systems said, “For nearly 40 years, it has been widely accepted [...]
Mar
27
A Biological Path to Hydrogen Production from Algae
March 27, 2009 | 2 Comments
Photosynthesis from a hydrogen-producing, single-celled green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, has unmasked a previously unknown fermentation pathway that may open up possibilities for increasing hydrogen production.
Alexandra Dubini and Michael Seibert from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Florence Mus and Arthur Grossman of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology, and Matthew Posewitz from the Colorado [...]
