A team from Arizona State University, backed by a $6.7-million award from the U.S. government, is looking into the feasibility of producing JP-8 military jet fuel from biological sources—specifically, algae. Lead by researchers Qiang Hu and Milton Sommerfield, who together direct ASU’s Laboratory for Algae Research and Biotechnology, the team is evaluating the more than 40,000 known strains of the single-cell organism for their oil-production potential. Hu and Sommerfield note that, on a per-acre basis, the annual oil yield of algae can be some 100 times that of soybeans. Moreover, unlike corn and soybeans, algae is neither food nor feed, so there’s no conflict of interest in its use as biofuel, and algae is readily grown in salt or brackish water, eliminating the need for traditional fresh-water irrigation.
The team, which has been working to develop a cost-efficient means of producing algal-based bio-diesel for automotive uses, expects to have a plan to produce a bio-derived emulation of JP-8—the military version of civilian-grade Jet A-1 turbine-engine fuel—by the end of 2008.
Source: Arizona State University
