Skip a few million years of fossilized algae...
 

...and turn modern algae into bio-crude oil in a hour! Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has a licensed tech and plans to build a pilot plant for test production. Stay tuned on this one.

PNNL: News - Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs0QZJ0rea0#t=24

Mother nature shows how, we just speed it up

Does it pollute as bad as conventional oil ?


BTW : I'm getting a broken link to the video ( using Safari )

Annnnd they will all die mysterious deaths very soon.

Who 'they'? -- the researchers or the algae?

Interesting, but there's still the problem that algae can collect only the energy that's in sunlight, times the not-very-high efficiency of photosynthesis, so you're not likely to get much oil out of your algae farm.

You haven't seen many stagnant home swimming pools during the summer months, have you? We got LOTs of foreclosed homes growing algae scum like mad here in Tucson!

This is my worry: You have a large jar of green algae goop, that makes a smaller jar of crude oil, that make an even smaller jar or refined gasoline.

Now is there waste generated from crude oil to refined oil for gasoline or diesel? If there is, thats more pollution added upon burning the refined oil.

I have heard some bitter complaints about neighbors with pools like that during mosquito season.

"Hey, buddy, let me turn the colony growing in your pool into a tank of gas, okay?"

Actually, those "un-attended" foreclosed homes belong to the banks, who are thus responsible for conditions and public safety.