“We have shown that we can steal an electrical current from algae,” said Fritz Prinz, a scientist from Stanford University and co-author of the ACS Nano Letters article. In the scientists’ case, they stole electrons from a widespread and well studied algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. To be able to extract energy from the algae, the […]

The Merrimack Biodiesel Crew has also been experimenting with algae, growing different types in flasks on a science lab windowsill. Now, the crew hopes to expand its operation – and host other environmentally friendly initiatives – by building a greenhouse in the Merrimack High School courtyard. The crew has been named a finalist in a […]

Bioenergy International expo & conference, which rebranded this year to focus on bioenergy and biomass as well as just biodiesel and bioethanol, is a two day exhibition and conference which will look in depth at second generation biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, ways to source sustainable biomass, pyrolysis technology, the potential of biogas across Europe, developments in […]

Airbus parent company EADS is backing algae as the best source of sustainable jet fuel, arguing that other feedstocks will not allow the airline industry to meet its carbon-footprint reduction goals. EADS Chief Technical Officer Jean Botti does not believe second-generation, plant-derived biofuels now under development offer sufficient life-cycle, carbon-dioxide reductions to replace petroleum-based jet […]

Armed with a $325,000 National Science Foundation grant, two Colorado State University professors will study the emissions produced from algae as biofuel. Anthony Marchese and Azer Yalin, associate professors in mechanical engineering, will focus their research on the potential for unintended hazardous emissions that could develop if algae biofuel saw large-scale deployment. “One of the […]

There are no industrial-scale, algae-to-fuel operations up and running, but that may soon change as several companies jockey for position in this emerging biofuel category. Algenol Biofuels was born four years ago with $70 million in private funding. It won a $25 million grant from the government to help it use seawater to grow algae […]

Press Release: Learn from algae researchers, producers and equipment manufacturers about the algae production industy. The need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, become energy independent and create new jobs continue to challenge algaepreneurs who have tasked themselves with the development of commercial-scale algae production facilities. To succeed in commercialization, promising players and established companies […]

Advanced Plant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to acquire a majority interest in GNE-India, an algae technology company which has the rights for using and distributing a unique and innovative system to grow algae quickly and efficiently for energy and food protein. GNE-India owns and retains the territorial rights for […]

Algae will be cultivated by Sapphire Energy in man-made ponds about 8 miles west of Columbus on the Mexican border, to later be converted to a green goop called algae-based biofuel, oilgae, or algal fuel. “This will be the first Sapphire facility in the country,” says Tim Zenk, spokesperson for Sapphire Energy in San Diego. […]

Seattle-based Bio Architecture Lab, a University of Washington spinoff that’s developing microbes to turn seaweed into renewable fuel, has built a big part of its business on relationships in Chile. The company has an office in Santiago, and received part of its initial $8 million venture round from Santiago-based Austral Capital. A Chilean economic development […]

Ignite has developed a low-carbon emission technology (Cat-HTR) which converts low ranked energy sources such as lignite (brown coal) and cellulosic biomass such as wood wastes, agricultural residues or algae and aquatic plants, into non-conventional crude oil (“Ignite  Oil”). The Ignite Oil shares certain characteristics with conventional crude, including: light, medium and heavy fractions and […]

Aurora Biofuels, a startup that cultivates algae to produce biodiesel, has just landed $15 million in a third round of venture funding. But it has yet to overcome the big hurdle standing between algae and the mass market: scale. Aurora will use the new money to commercialize its fuels, but doesn’t plan to come to […]

In Ontario, cement maker St. Marys Cement has partnered with stealthy startup Pond Biofuels of Toronto on a project that, since last fall, has already started to capture CO2 from a cement plant in southwestern Ontario. It’s believed to be the first project of its kind in the world. Pond Biofuels, the three-year-old company that […]

Micro-algae as a source of cheap renewable energy are at the center of new research being conducted at Argentina’s National Technological University. Scientists at the National Technological University of Mar del Plata, on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, said they focused on developing techniques that would be both economically viable and environmentally sustainable. A production module already […]

The Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) successfully developed a new method to extract biofuel from algae. The new method eliminates the need for the dewatering process by using liquefied dimethyl ether (DME), which mixes easily with oil. This leads to a reduction in energy consumption for oil extraction by more than 50%. […]

A part of the mixture of hot gas rises out of a flue stack at the St. Marys Cement plant about 50 kilometres west of Waterloo is redirected through a 15-centimetre thick pipe connected to the side of the stack. The pipe carries the gas into a high-tech facility where a species of algae from […]

The Carbon Trust has today launched a new £8m research project designed to establish the UK as a world leader in the development of algae-based biofuels for use in the automotive and aviation industry. The project will bring together a “dream team” of more than 70 leading scientists from 11 institutions, including the Universities of […]

The Mid-South Chapter of the National Algae Association are holding another seminar. This time the talk will be “Algae: Mining Wastewater for Nutrients, Fuel, and Fertilizer” at the Holiday Inn Research Center in Huntsville, Alabama on March 26, 2010. The chapter’s president, Tamra Fakhoorian said to talk about this information-packed workshop that will explore using […]

Congress allowed a crucial $1.00/gal tax credit to expire, resulting in U.S. biodiesel production capacity dipping to around 15%. Fortunately for biodiesel producers, the gravitational pull between politicians and bailing out unprofitable industries is among the strongest forces in the universe. According to the Department of Energy, in early March, the wholesale price for diesel […]

In Attleboro in November, Comey started growing a tray full of cyclotella cryptica, a strain of algae native to Martha’s Vineyard. So far, the group’s shoestring budget has lacked the money for the microscope and centrifuge Comey needs to quantify the growing results. But a winter’s worth of experiments has yielded promising results with the […]

Lin is a scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and a professor of chemistry at Iowa State University. He has been teaching and conducting research in Ames since the fall of 1999. Lin was named ISU’s next John D. Corbett Professor in Chemistry, an endowed professorship awarded for a three-year period, which […]

The first annual BioCentric Energy Holdings annual shareholders Meeting conducted by the current Board of Directors was held on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at the Monte Carlo Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada. The following quote from the meeting was issued by Dennis Fisher, Chairman of the Board of BioCentric Energy. BioCentric Energy Closed-Loop Photobioreactor system utilizes […]

South Australian resource company Beach Energy and a US business General Atomics are doing a joint study on producing biofuels in the Cooper Basin. They are examining whether General Atomics’ technology can be used to farm algae, while reducing carbon dioxide output from Beach Energy’s gas and oil fields. Reg Nelson from Beach Energy says […]

Devarenne and his colleagues have done some of the groundwork in better understanding B. braunii and sequencing its genome. They are working the Berkeley strain of the B race of B. braunii, so named because it was first isolated at the University of California at Berkeley. The team has determined the genome size and an […]

San Francisco-based Solazyme, Inc.,  has signed a research and development agreement with Unilever to develop oil derived from algae for use in soaps and other personal care products. The agreement follows the culmination of a yearlong collaboration between Solazyme and Unilever, in which Solazyme’s renewable algal oils were tested in Unilever product formulations. Terms of […]