Renewables and

The makers and actual tinkerers of Algae tech are starting to understand the significance of Algae as a food source. In the Solazyme article below in Bizjournals I really like the part where they were faced with the actual product of their efforts: a liter of algae oil and they were impressed at how much it resembled olive oil. “We were running lipid profiles (on the algae) and observing that, ‘Wow this looks like olive oil”. When you consider that there is great nutritional potential in this foodstuff, as well as energy potential and possible fiber as well algae tech quickly comes into focus as a major emerging player in the available renewable resources that are so important for us to thrive in the next ten years.

A primary hurdle of Algae tech has been overcome at the Department of Energy labs: the difficult task of extracting oil from the cell walls of algae or "lysis". Structural components of the plant called "lignins" provide rigid compartmentalization which make oils and cellulastic products difficult to extract from algae cells without expensive and costly to maintain centrifuge equipment. Recent lignin methylation research by Charles Liu and his postdoc Mohammad Bhuiya at the DOE Brookhaven National Laboratory have used computational models to better understand and potentially regulate the methylation patterns that occur as these lignins are formed. Eventually this may lead to very low tech separation techniques which can take advantage of the natural tendency for oil to separate from water.

Part of the barrier to Algae tech has simply been conceptual hurdles regarding its purity as a foodstuff alongside its utility as carbon scrubbing agent and as a potential source of industrial fuel. One of the largest local California companies investing heavily in Algae tech research and biodigester methods is Solazyne a company originally formed to search for viable bio diesel sources. On Christmas day in 2009 Solazyne announced in that they had shifted their thinking to become a "nutritionals" company as well as a "renewables oil company". Solazyme pushes into food products In April 2009 Scientific American Solazyne company co-founder and president Harrison Dillon explained the hurdles needed to create a renewable oil source from Algae: Beyond Fossil Fuels: Harrison Dillon on Biofuels.