I was reading the April edition of Ohio's Country Journal when I stumbled on this article. There is research being done at the University of Illinois, where algae is among the top new raw materials for biofuels. One of the qualities which makes it in the top is the fast reproduction that it has. There are millions of pounds of algae growing in the worlds water sources from the oceans to the creek out in the back 40 at your grandma's there is algae.
The way that algae is being processed now to create algae-diesel is similar to that used to make soy-bio diesel. However the cost to gain the algae oil is still too high for mass production. The process used now is call transesterification, however there is work being done to with thermo-chemical conversion. This process puts the product in a sort of pressure cooker which as it is heated and with the help of pressure creates a biocrude oil.
According to a researcher this is how the earth formed its petroleum reserves back in the day, man-kind has just speeded the process up!
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