Algae biofuel on sale soon

Just last week I was gushing about all of the press algae biofuel had been getting and without even a single company with a commercial scale plant online.

Apparently folks could smell the green sludge on the horizon because Green Fuel Technologies just announced it has begun construction of a commercial scale algae plant. Meanwhile, PetroSun announced it will be taking its pilot algae farm commercial on April 1st.

Now, this obviously isn't ethanol, with millions of gallons of production or even cellulosic ethanol, with a wood-waste to fuel plant ready to go online this year, but it is important.

It's a big deal because algae don't just create energy from the sun -- they create energy from the sun more effectively than anything else save photovoltaic panels.

And, as you may have guessed, they're a heck of a lot cheaper than photovoltaic panels. Green Fuel Technologies is adding another environmental advantage, planning to hook its algae bioreactors up to the smoke stacks from power plants.

So the algae will be using the sun to turned burned fuel back into fuel. Theoretically, this could become a closed loop. Burn fuel ... feed exhaust to algae ... harvest algae for fuel ... burn fuel, etc.

PetroSun's facility has 1,100 acres of open ponds growing algae in Texas. Open ponds are cheaper, but it's more difficult to control which species of algae are growing, so less productive strains often take over. Also, you can't feed your crop with CO2 straight from a power plant.

Via Gas 2.0 and GreenTech Media