Replacing Oil

There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about algae based biofuels but this has the potential to turn the industry on its head. San Diego start-up Sapphire Energy has unveiled what they are calling the world’s first renewable gasoline. They’re adamant about not being confused with “biofuel” they claim to have created a process starting with algae that results in “green crude” that can later be refined into gasoline. This gasoline is supposedly chemically identical to the gasoline distilled from old fashioned crude oil.

Other biofuels have only been getting a great deal of attention with the rising costs of old fashioned oil. I just checked the commodity futures at bloomberg and that old fashioned oil is currently trading at $127.65 a barrel and expected to go much, much higher. At over $4 a gallon converting your car to a flex fuel vehicle to burn Ethanol 85 (E85) seems like a great idea, but what if you could get %100 renewable biofuel that is essentially gasoline?

The immediately obvious benefit of Sapphire’s unique algea based gasoline is infrastructure costs. Pumping stations, and pipelines need to be refitted for biodiesel and ethanol. If what Sapphire Energy claims is true their algae based gasoline will be a very attractive product indeed.

The CEO of Saphire, Jason Pyle, is being extremely vague about how the technology works and how much it will cost, but he must be letting at least a few people in on the secret. The U.K.’s largest charity the Wellcome Trust has awarded $50 million to the startup and Robert Nelsen of ARCH Venture Partners has written them a blank check.

Unfortunately I can’t find any information about how they could get algae to produce crude oil, and it sounds just a little too good to be true. Rest assured I’ll keep an eye out for more news from Sapphire Energy.

Tags: algae, green crude, sapphire energy

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