Recent article in Science Daily about the discovery of lignin in red algae, will affect the idea of Ethanol from algae via fermentation process without pretreatment (which is a costly process in cellulosic ethanol feedstocks).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 090723.htm
So researchers has to work either to device a pretreatment method for algae or to select an algae without Lignin ....this adds up one more bottleneck in this technology.......