Algae-based biodiesel expands to Australia

In Australia, Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal said they would joint venture on an algae-based biodiesel plant using CO2 emissions from coal-fired electricity generation.

This is the first reported expansion of algae-based biodiesel production to Australia.

Business Week published a roundup last week on developments in algae-based biodiesel, highlighting startups by Chevron, Honeywell and Boeing, as well as the technical challenges of producing algae in a controlled production environment and developing a commercially viable process to extract the oil.

The report quoted a prediction by Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, that he expects the cost of algae oil to fall from as high as $20 per gallon today to $1.70 by 2011, with production capacity reaching 100 Mgy by that point.

The report focused on the growing pains at algae farms, citing the GreenFuels demonstration of algae oil production that was shut down after two weeks over the summer because of problems in controlling the growth rate of the algae.

Numerous US-based algae ventures have been in the news.

In California, the LiveFuels Alliance, funded by Menlo Park-based LiveFuels and Sandia National Laboratories, launched in September. The alliance will sponsor nationwide research into commercial biodiesel production from algae over the the next three years.  Ventures such as PetroSun, Solazyme, Vertigro, and Old Dominion University are working on ventures located in Arizona, Georgia and Virginia. The Dutch firm Bioking debuted its algae-based biodiesel at the UK’s Biodiesel Expo last month, and Shell announced last week it is researching algae.

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