South Korea team converts sewage sludge to biodiesel

In South Korea, a team at the Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology has developed a process to convert sewage sludge into biodiesel, which they say reduces the extraction cost for lipids to as low as $0.03 per liter. The team utilized a heat-based, rather than catalysis-based process for extraction, to overcome the problems associated with impurities in the feedstock causing interference with catalysis, which had resulted in lower yields from the traditional process.