One of the big issues at this year’s conference is the search for additional feedstocks for biodiesel. Solazyme, one of the conference sponsors, is looking at the viability of making biodiesel out of algae as an alternative to more expensive conventional sources. In fact, the folks from Solazyme brought a sweet ride to the conference… a Mercedes Benz C320 that runs on the green fuel made from the green algae.
I caught up with Jonathan Wolfson from Solazyme and asked him some questions about how his company was able to produce the fuel from what some people might see as an unlikely source.
He pointed out that algae are the original oil producers on the planet. “Frankly, the last time you filled up your car with any petroleum fuel, chances are the oil that fuel was made from came from algae, maybe a hundred million years ago. The strategy has been to take the original oil producers, which, by the way, are the most efficient oil producers and collapse that 100-million-year process into a few days,” Wolfson says.
Listen to my entire interview with Wolfson by clicking here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/nbb/nbb-08-wolfson.mp3]