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Solazyme Algal Biodiesel Demonstrates Superior Cold Weather Properties
26 April 2008
A recent test of Solazyme biodiesel, Soladiesel (earlier post), through the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), by request of the US Department of Defense (DoD), demonstrated that Soladiesel has superior cold weather properties to any commercially available biodiesel. This makes it more suitable for cold weather climates where military bases have been previously unable to use biodiesel.
Soladiesel, the first of Solazyme’s planned algal fuel projects, is a biodiesel produced from algae that are engineered to produce an oil with an optimized fatty acid profile to enhance cold flow performance, among other properties, and are also modified to grow in the dark in industrial fermentation tanks fed with plant sugars.
Soladiesel exceeds both the requirements of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) biodiesel standard D6751 and EN 14214, the European standard.
April 26, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
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Moving forward by inches. If they could find a good source for that sugar feedstocks, it might work out on an industrial scale. But I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by: Cervus | Apr 26, 2008 8:23:35 PM
They could work together with Coskata to transform syngas directly to high-quality biodiesel.
Then any biomass can be transformed to biodiesel ; the waste-CO2 can be fed to green algae farms to produce more biodiesel. This combination of light- and dark reaction algae strains could provide both a very efficient transformation of biomass to diesel and extra solar biodiesel.
Posted by: Alain | Apr 27, 2008 4:31:53 AM
@Cervus:
An article at GreenFuelForecast states that Solazyme can also use cellulose as a feedstock for their algae, instead of sugar:
"Solazyme grows algae without any light, in metal tanks similar to those found at breweries. Solazyme’s process is based on the fact that algae needs light and CO2 only to produce sugar. The algae make oil from the sugar as a way of storing its energy just as humans store fat. So Solazyme simply feeds the algae sugar, and has achieved a 1,000-fold increase in oil production. The disadvantage from an environmental standpoint is, of course, that no carbon dioxide is sequestered during the process. Harrison Dillon says the sugar currently comes from sugar cane because there is a worldwide surplus. It could come from cellulose in plant waste and wood, however, and algae, which thrives on rotting plantlife, can digest this without the help required by yeast when fermenting cellulosic ethanol."
Article link: http://www.greenfuelsforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=481
Posted by: Ryan K | Apr 27, 2008 5:59:04 AM
We hope that there is greater effort made to speed algal oil development. We need these processes to move from pilot stage to scaled stage quickly and safely. Oil, ethanol, even H2 can all be produced by algal farms - and we should move swiftly to plug this technology into the energy portfolio.
The idea of combining a photo-bioreactor and dark reactor process appears to be one direction needing more attention.
Posted by: gr | Apr 27, 2008 8:06:15 AM
This is solving the non-problem. Getting from sugars to fuel is easy (though oils are superior to ethanol for separation energy costs); making enough sugars to offset the decline in oil (and coal, and natural gas) production is the hard part. The advantage of algae is that they can produce multiples of the primary productivity of higher plants, and Solazyme isn't helping there.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Apr 27, 2008 8:21:19 AM
Liquid fuels are huge at over 200 billion gallons per year for cars, train, trucks and planes. We will have to attack it on all fronts at the same time with conservation, efficiency and technology. It is a bit like balancing a budget. The debate is usually increase revenue OR decrease spending, when you will get their faster by doing both.
Posted by: SJC | Apr 28, 2008 9:56:38 AM
