{"id":2017,"date":"2010-08-10T07:02:20","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T07:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/52-million-for-algae-fuel-development-solazyme.html"},"modified":"2010-08-10T08:10:32","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T08:10:32","slug":"52-million-for-algae-fuel-development-solazyme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/52-million-for-algae-fuel-development-solazyme.html","title":{"rendered":"$52 million for algae fuel development- Solazyme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.solazyme.com\">Solazyme<\/a>, a company based  out of California have been working on a unique method of making algae  fuels by using cheap sugars to grow algae in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>As you  might be aware of the fact that Solazyme uses a very different approach  to make biofuels, they use heterotrophic algae in the dark while the  others grow photo-autotrophic algae in light.These algae however doesn?t  require sunlight, they need sugar for their growth. Intrestingly,  Growing these algae in dark is a simplified process. It grows faster in  dark than with light.<\/p>\n<p>Heterotrophic algae are fed with  sugars(corn, sorghum or other sources), they consume the food and show  significant growth. They can reproduce every 8 hours.<\/p>\n<p>The  company&#8217;s researchers feed algae sugar, which the organisms then convert  into various types of oil. The oil can be extracted and further  processed to make a range of fuels, including diesel and jet fuel, as  well as other products.<\/p>\n<p>There are some people who contradict  saying , this might actually not work the sugars may turn more  expensive. However, there are some researchers who argue saying that ,  even if they use corn as a sugar source for algae,they are still left  with the corn protein and corn oil which can be used. Similarly if  starch is used, they can be further used for ethanol production.<\/p>\n<p>Surprisingly  ,sugar-fed algae grow more rapidly. Researchers claim that algae grown  in the dark can reach densities that are 1,000 times higher than strains  of photo-autotrophic algae that are grown in the light . One  concentrated tank of heterotrophic algae is equivalent to growing 1000  tanks of photo-autotrophic algae.<\/p>\n<p>This company announced that it  has raised $52 million in a series D round, which brings investment  bank Morgan Stanley into its list of investors. In addition to  venture-capital companies, the venture arms of Chevron and Japanese food  ingredient manufacturer San-Ei Gen also participated.<\/p>\n<p>Last  month, it delivered 1,500 gallons of jet fuel made from algae to the  U.S. Navy for testing and certification. Solazyme is also making  chemicals for food ingredients and health products where its oil can be  used as a substitute. Even with the funding and contracts with the U.S.  military, Solazyme still faces the challenge of commercializing its  technology by bringing down the cost of its oils, particularly for  fuels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solazyme, a company based out of California have been working on a unique method of making algae fuels by using cheap sugars to grow algae in the dark. As you might be aware of the fact that Solazyme uses a very different approach to make biofuels, they use heterotrophic algae in the dark while the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}