A tip to Earth2Tech for pointing me in the direction of a blog by Martin Tobias, an angel investor and former CEO of Imperium Renewables who has a lot to say about the young crop of algae biofuel companies. The general take is overall skepticism acknowledging it will be difficult to take successes from a lab setting and scale out into full blown fuel producing ventures. Martin did say his favorite is Sapphire Energy which recently raised 50 million from ARCH Venture Partners, the Wellcome Trust and Venrock. Have a look at the full article from Earth2Tech
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A Look at the Algae Biofuel Companies From An Insider
Tate -
Algae Biofuel Vs. Cellulose Ethanol
TateThere’s a good comparison of algae biofuel vs cellulose ethanol at EcoWorld that was just posted today.. Algae isn’t nearly as developed as cellulose ethanol but in my mind holds much greater potential while using a much smaller foot print. Companies looking to meet the challenge of using algae for fuel are Algenol, GreenFuel and Sapphire Energy, all privately held companies.
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"Renewable" Gasoline ?
Srikant Rajan
Forget biodiseal,or ethanol,if Sapphire Energy is to be believe you can actually produce gasoline rather than drilling holes in ground, extracting crude oil and further processing it.Sapphire ,has developed a radical new method for developing commercial grade gasoline from bio- feedstock.This process essentially employs algae as a feedstock ,which is grown and later processed to produce high octane gasoline.The advantages associated with this process are numerous such as the freedom to use non - arable land as well as saline or brackish water for algae cultivation.Additionally Sapphire says that the infrastructure required for his entire process is "modular, transportable and fueled by sunlight-not constrained by land, crops or other natural resources".
This new development has given an ample demonstration regarding the viability of biofuels.However it remains to be seen if the cost associated with this entire process justifies the carbon free "renewable"gasoline so produced.
