Sunday, November 17, 2013

No. 805: Successful development of stable algae culture for biofuel (November 17, 2013)

Technology:
IHI successfully developed a technology for stable culture of algae expected highly to be the next-generation biofuel for aircraft. The company confirmed that improved algae proliferated while maintaining the high concentration and reduced the estimates production cost per liter from 1,000 yen to 500 yen. IHI wishes to reduce the production cost further to 100 yen per liter to compete successfully with the existing aircraft fuel by 2020. 

 Successful stable mass cluture of 
Botryococcus outdoors

The most critical problem with alga fuel is mass production because it is necessary to realize mass culture even in the condition susceptible to contamination. IHI NeoG Algae, one of IHI’s subsidiaries, succeeded in stable culture of Botryococcus outdoors for more than half a year, opening up the road to mass production. The company plans to increase the culture scale by 20 times and conduct the substantiative experiment in a test plant of several thousand square meters. In Japan, IHI, Denso, and JX Nippon Oil and Energy are competing in the development of algae to be used for jet fuel for aircraft toward 2020.  

Research is in progress to develop algaes for fuel

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