How is algae turned into a usable fuel?
After researching alternative fuels, algae seems to have high potential. It seems the best way is to use an expeller press, but whats is the "oil" that comes from pressing algae… Vegetable oil? How can the extracted oil then be used to make a fuel that can run in a car?
Algae has high potential. They can convert the atmospheric Carbon dioxide into oil with the help of abundant sunlight available. Also they can grow fast compared to corn and soya. When the Algae is harvested and pressed about 60% of its weight comes out as vegetable oil. This oil can be esterified to bio diesel. the other 40% weight can be again fermented with the aid of bacteria to form ethanol or butanol. Both can be used as fuel. Bio Butanol is being touted to be better than ethanol because of its mixing properties.
Hope this answers your question. The vegetable oil cannot be directly used but requires a process to make it bio diesel.
Algae yields a biodiesel that it usable in some stock diesel engines, and in converted diesel engines. Wikipedia is awesome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
Yeah, I saw the chemicals in algae oil once, and I think I would rather use it on a salad than say "soy oil". I think a refinery or petroleum engineer might need to "crack" it to octane for use as a substitute to gasoline; or they might use the non-oil parts to make methane, and work up from that too. I expect the oil would be close to something that would sub. for diesel fuel.
Oil is hydrocarbon; algae combine water with CO2 to make hydrocarbons.
Researchers are working on the separation technique, & are close.
They may produce bio-diesel, ethanol & methane for fuel.
As vegetable oil and can be used as raw bio-diesel.