Algae Converted to Crude Oil in Under an Hour

It used to take a million years to convert algae to oil, but scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), say they have developed a process to do the job in minutes. In the PNNL process, a slurry of wet algae with the consistency of pea soup is pumped into the front end of a chemical reactor. Once the system is up and running, out comes crude oil in less than an hour, along with water and a byproduct stream of material containing phosphorus...

© La Voix de l'Amérique - mercredi 18 décembre 2013