Solazyme to sell algae-based biofuel to US Navy; EKU announces new R&D project, as “summer of algae” continues
Two algae related developments provided more evidence of “the summer of algae”, with Solazyme, the Department of Defense, and Eastern Kentucky University making announcements related to advancements towards commercialization.
In California, Solazyme announced that it has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to research, develop, and demonstrate commercial scale production of algae-derived F-76 Naval Distillate fuel for testing and fuel certification to demonstrate it meets all military specifications and functional requirements. The contract includes both R&D and fuel delivery components and calls for delivery of over 20,000 gallons of Soladiesel F-76 fuel to the Navy for compatibility testing over the next year. F-76 Naval Distillate is similar to diesel fuel and is the primary shipboard fuel used by the Navy. This program will lead to the eventual certification of Soladiesel F-76 Naval distillate for commercial sale to the U.S. Military.
In Kentucky, the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board approved Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond for $220,000 in research grants for algae-based biofuel production will evaluate feedstock forages for livestock consumption and biofuel production, including research on nutritional content of switchgrass and byproducts from biofuel production.
Free Subscription to the Daily Biofuels Digest e-newsletter
Subscribe FREE to the world's most-widely read biofuels daily. Enter your email in the box below,
Related Stories
Hot Topics
The Hottest 50 Companies in Bioenergy
Latest algae-to-energy news
Latest jatropha news
Latest Waste-to-energy news
Entry Information
Filed Under: Featured • Producer News • Research • Top Story
Comments: 3 | Post a Comment | Trackback URL
Post a Comment | Trackback URL
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Jason_Burroughs | Sep 9, 2009 | Reply
Solazyme is not selling “biodiesel” to the Navy. It’s synthetic diesel, or can be called just about anything BUT biodiesel.
Biodiesel meets the ASTM specification D6751, while the fuel they are making meets a different specification.
Please change your headline to say ‘biofuel’ or ’synthetic diesel’.
Jason Burroughs
DieselGreen Fuels, Austin TX
http://www.dieselgreenfuels.com
Jim Lane | Sep 9, 2009 | Reply
The Soladiesel brand – or the early hour of the morning – presumably was the cause of the confusion. According to Solazyme, Soladiesel exceeds both the requirements of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) biodiesel standard D6751 and EN 14214 , but presumably the Naval Distillate is a different fuel spec produced from the Solayzyme process. Good catch, Jason.
Jim
Jason_Burroughs | Sep 9, 2009 | Reply
Agreed, Jim – everyone is having trouble with this distinction. Many people in the biodiesel industry are slowly coming to the conclusion that algae oil is more likely to be used for these synthetic diesel products than for biodiesel. In fact, if you look at what positions companies like Solazyme, LS9, and other algae companies are hiring for, they are going after cosmetics, neutraceuticals (sp?), and other high value per gallon industries. Fuel is actually really low on the list – except for the excitement of press releases and proof of concept demos.
From what I have seen, it will be a long time before there is, for example, a 100MMGY bio-anything plant made from algae oil. The higher value products will come first, will be at a small scale, and then we’ll see how that industry matures to the point of scaling to where we need it to be. Keep up the good work in publicizing these events!