The world's first renewable gasoline
 

Sapphire Energy looks to be on to something with its algae based gasoline product. They aim to be able to make it for the cost of around $50-80 per barrel of crude.

The article:
Sapphire raises over $100 mln for algae crude | Environment | Reuters

Company site:
Sapphire Energy - The Product

Where is there lots of sun, non-arable land and cheap labour? Looks like Africa is the new middle east!

Cool concept if it pans out in profitability... but is burning a different kind of gas any better for our environment? I suppose it would require as much CO2 to make it as the CO2 is generates on combustion... maybe?

Free lunch?

Just kidding ^_^. It could well be close! Sunlight last I checked was pretty free.

It's odd this pops up as I reference it in another forum just minutes ago lol. The only thing is I am pretty sure these would have to be fitted directly to constant emission sources.

They are alot like the plant life that survives on sulfur on the ocean floor, they can only survive where the flow is pretty constant.

It would be great to see something developed for a vehicle, but I fear it might not be possible. You can miniatuarize technology as much as you like, but organisms are the size they are and there is not a whole lot you can do to change it. The other side making them devour it faster might lead to their death when the engine shuts off. . .

HOPEFUL!

Yes, this would be "short cycling" carbon -- the algae pulls it out of the air, and then when the fuel is burned, it returns to the air. So, no carbon is added to the air -- which is a good thing, indeed.

theunchosen - Just to clear things up... the algae won't live in your engine... large production facilities will be using the algae to produce fuel to ship to your local gas station...

lol I am aware of the current design intentions.

I was being hopeful of what might come.

The most likely place this would be installed would be near population centers. Alot of people like to say they would want to put it in the middle of nowhere, but the best place is the shortest distance to said gas stations with available sunlight and CO2.

Cities produce plenty of CO2 and fuel is needed there. Unfortunately sunshine is not a high quantity, but it wouldn't necessarily have to be as most organic systems can exchange a lack of one fuel to over consuming the other. your body and sugars and oxygen are an example. Most systems can consume the fuel(sugars for muscles and CO2 for algae) without its partner(oxygen for your body and sunshine for algae) and then recover the wastes later(lactic acid for your body and various thigns depending on the algae) when oxygen or sunshine is available.

Companies would also want to install this on the roof of their buildings to reduce heating cooling(in New York, Atlanta other large cities) as well as suppliment their electrical systems.

So what we will see if this comes to fruition is some sort of algae on rooftops instead of solar panels, algae fields near power plants and refineries, and algae gardens along the edges of the road. Places where fuel is needed, CO2 is common andsunshine in reasonable supplies.

I saw a Discovery channel special on this not to long ago. They say the fuel produced is supperior to Ethanol by far.

The only draw back is refining it. It is something that eventually can be grown on roof tops and gardens for just about anyone to utilize, which cuts out monopolies and loosens control on large corporations. Therefore opening the possibilities of making it very competitive and therefore a cheap fuel.

Which will not go over well in Washington.

well atleast they're thinking. Its taken them a while, but now we're actually getting somewhere. A local place here is trying to take garbage from landfills and squeeze some form of fuel out of it. Don't know all the details.

Methane, probably?

I'd guess so. but it seems they were gonna use the trash itself. I'd have to look into it more.

I said to the person who told me this that it'd be awesome if they could do something similar to a juicer where you put in your trash, it grinds it up and out the spigot comes gasoline, but I don't think that'd happen. I'd be grinding up things left and right just to make gas.

*walks to guy*
Uh... sir.. are you going to use that candy wrapper?
*perplexed man*
Uh... no...
Alright, thanks man.

Oh, and what bout your crutches?

Uh.. ya i kinda need.. *cut off*
Yoink!