Turning Living Algae into Mini Oil Wells
The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.
On July 21, Exxon announced an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.
New Scientist recently published the following interview with Mr. Venter about turning living algae into mini oil wells:
Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be [...]
Exxon to Invest $600 Million to Make Fuel From Algae
Good News on Recycling CO2 into Fuel
By Reducing Reaction Time From Hours to Minutes, Carbon Sciences Makes CO2-to-Fuel Process Highly Scalable and Commercially Viable
Carbon Sciences (CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other fuels, recently announced a significant technical development in reducing the reaction time of its CO2-to-Fuel process from hours to minutes. This achievement dramatically increases the scalability and decreases the costs of building and operating an industrial scale CO2-to-Fuel plant.
Reaction time is the time required to convert a unit amount of raw material to products in a fixed biochemical reactor and is a very important parameter for scalability and process economics. In the case of [...]