Unilever to invest in maker of oil from algae: WSJ

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Unilever, the London consumer-products giant, is expected to announce on Wednesday that it invested in Solazyme Inc., the South San Francisco developer of oil from algae, The Wall Street Journal reported.

I’m a big believer in algae based biodiesel, because it has a ton of advantages over everything else.

To start with, it can be grown anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon, maybe 10 months out of the year, unlike just 2 or 3 crops from plant based sources. It lives in gray water, and thrives if you pump expensive-to-dispose-of waste CO2 and nitrous oxides NOx into the water.

So you are making a profit as soon as the algae eats up those waste gases, which otherwise cost a fortune to dispose of.

Some algae are 50% vegetable oil, which is obtained by the high tech process known as “squeezing”. The remainder makes high quality animal fodder, so there is no waste. The gray water can be filtered and reused.

Then you mix the vegetable oil with common ethanol and common lye, which acts as a catalyst to blend the oil and the ethanol, then filter, add 1% petroleum diesel as a preservative, and you have biodiesel. Almost easy enough to do in your backyard.

Another big advantage is that there are a ton of diesel engines out there, from motorcycles, to cars, trucks, trains and ships, that with minor modification can run on biodiesel.

Meanwhile, a new innovation, called self-cleaning glass, which is ordinary glass with a transparent layer of nanoparticles on it, so dirt and water don’t stick to it, protects the algae from other algae species, and keeps in the waste gases.

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