Burning Fat: The New Biofuel
Researchers at the North Carolina State University have created a new process to make jet fuel out of animal fat and vegetable oil. This technology, called CentiaTM — short for crudus potentia, or “green power” in Latin — is totally “green” and does not involve the use of any petroleum-derived products. The team is currently working on further developing this process to make car fuel as an environmentally-friendly alternative to the traditional gasoline.
New biofuels technology developed by North Carolina State University engineers has the potential to turn virtually any fat source – vegetable oils, oils from animal fat and even oils from algae – into fuel to power jet airplanes.
Source: North Carolina State University
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1 Comment so far
Thanks for the article…I see a mention of algae also being considered as a feedstock, and this I think is good.
I co-ordinate Oilgae.com ( http://www.oilgae.com ), a site that explores use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel, and I can say with some amount of confidence based on my researches that algae appear to be one of the most qualified candidates for biodiesel production.
While the math certainly appears to favor algae, there are a number of issues to be overcome. These have to do with (1) choosing optimal algal strains, (2) issues faced in cultivation and harvesting (believe me there are some serious bottlenecks here), and (3) cost-effective methods to extract oil and transform it into biodiesel.
So yes, there is still a long way to go before it can be proven with certainty that algal biodiesel can be cost-effective on a large scale, but it is gratifying to see brilliant minds (not to forget VC money) getting into this field. And with institutes like MIT (Boston) getting into the act, I’m optimistic most of the above-mentioned issues will be overcome.
Time will tell if algae are our future source of energy, but for now, they certainly appear to have many of the qualifications required for the same.
Time will tell if algae are our future source of energy, but for now, they certainly appear to have many of the qualifications required for the same.
Narsi from Oilgae - Oil from Algae @ http://www.oilgae.com