A Massachusetts company recently announced that they have developed a new "biodiesel manufacturing technology." Allegedly, this new technology uses a special genetic engineering method to treat an algae, so that they use natural sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to directly "change" out biodiesel or ethanol.
The company, Joule Unlimited, emphasized that the cost of producing biodiesel using these technologies is very low. This is because these fuels are actually "byproducts" of the photosynthesis of algae. This year, the company will open up 10 acres of experimental fields to grow algae that can produce bio-oil, and plans to put these results into large-scale commercial production within two years.
Joule Company stated that the new technology they developed could produce 60,000 liters of biodiesel per year on one acre of land and keep its price at around $30 a barrel. This high output has reached more than four times that of cyanobacteria. Other researchers said that the above new technology is indeed exciting, but the actual effect remains to be fully confirmed.
Over the past few decades, humans have been studying the use of plant processing to extract biofuels. For example, the technology of extracting ethanol from corn or fuel oil from cyanobacteria has long been put into commercial operation. However, the biggest drawback of these technologies is the high cost. People must first grow large amounts of corn and cyanobacteria and then extract alcohol and fuel from it. This process consumes a lot of energy.
It is reported that each ton of microalgae can eat about 2 tons of carbon dioxide. The production of biodiesel obtained after the growth of microalgae is also considerable. Algae contains a large amount of bio-oil, which has high photosynthetic efficiency and rapid growth. Each hectare of land, the annual oil production of corn is only 120 liters, soybeans are slightly higher, 440 liters, and algae up to 15,000 to 80,000 liters, which is hundreds of times that of corn.
At present, there are tens of millions of species of microalgae known in the world, and tens of thousands of species can be used for certification. However, only a few dozen species of microalgae are currently used. In addition, although Joule's new technology can use photosynthesis to directly produce biodiesel, it is still a big challenge to integrate these products for processing at a relatively low cost.