Solazyme demonstrates algae biodiesel powered vehicle at Sundance Film Festival

In Utah, the Sundance Film festival, which screened Josh Tickell’s documentary on renewable fuels, Fields of Fuel, was also host to a demonstration of algae-based biodiesel from Solazyme. The company had a demonstration car powered by its trademarked brand Soladiesel. The company is producing small batches of algae-based biodiesel and announced an feedstock testing and development agreement with Chevron Technology Ventures.

Solazyme announced in August that it had developed and tested a process for industrial-level production algae-based biodiesel.

Algae-based biodiesel has yield of up to 10,000 gallons per acre in laboratory testing, but industrial process to replicate these results economically and on the large-scale are now just underway nationwide.

Numerous US-based algae ventures have recently been in the news.

In California, the LiveFuels Alliance, funded by Menlo Park-based LiveFuels and Sandia National Laboratories, launched in September. The alliance will sponsor nationwide research into commercial biodiesel production from algae over the the next three years. Ventures such as PetroSun, US Sustainable Energy, Solazyme, Vertigro, and Old Dominion University are working on ventures located in Arizona, Texas, Georgia and Virginia. The Dutch firm Bioking debuted its algae-based biodiesel at the UK’s Biodiesel Expo last month, and Shell announced last week it is researching algae.

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