Biobutanol from Algae...you could get some biodiesel from it too...and probably some protein for animal feed.

The question is, how efficiently can you get those things. All the biobutanol processes I've read about wasted a fair amount of the energy on byproducts that we don't need nearly as much of as we need fuel.

Thoughts?

BP was very bullish on butanol and even claiming that they could be come earlier than cellulosic ethanol, but so far it hasn't materialized. The problem is that they use bacteria and not yeast, bacteria are not as robust as yeast so building a bio reactor than can produce 1 Millons gallons a year is a hard nut to crack.

We could feed the corpses of executed prisoners to the algae and solve our energy independance and prison overcrowding problems in one

norman,

Not very constructive nor funny.

There are lots of ideas waiting in the wings for years that may come to pass now that it looks like expensive oil is here to stay. It has been shown that people buy gasoline in the U.S. at $3 per gallon and buy just about as much at $4 per gallon. This shows the oil companies and refiners that they can get a higher price for the product and still sell volume.

There is not enough BIO in the US for a large fraction of automotive fuel needs. National Geographic estimated that 98 percent of the US old growth forests were gone. Speculation, not shortages, are the cause of high oil prices. Whilst oilshale processing is hard to do at 2 dollars a gallon of gasoline, and it takes time to build processing plants, there would be an immediate lowering of prices with the US government forbidding the sale of oil in the US purchased on a futures contract whilst funding extraction plants. ..HG..