B Krishna Mohan / Hyderabad October 20, 2009, 0:55 IST

Filling your vehicle's tank with fuel made from algae is still as much as a decade away, as the emerging industry faces a series of hurdles to find an economical way to make the biofuel commercially.

Estimates on a timeline for a commercial product, and profits, vary from two to 10 years or more.

U.S. biofuel company Solazyme Inc said on Thursday it will be providing its algae-derived jet fuel to the U.S. Navy for testing and certification.

Privately held Solazyme will sell 1,500 gallons of the green fuel to the U.S. Navy, which is buying fuel from the San Francisco-based company for the second time.

B.S. Satish Kumar

The Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI) has appealed to the State power regulator to extend the rebate on solar energy to those who use other alternative sources of energy such as biofuels and agricultural waste, to heat water.

Biofuels investor Clean Energy Brazil has sold its stake in a Brazilian sugar mill for much less than its initial investment after the plant's debt pile proved too much of a burden in a tough ethanol market.

150 research papers and over 40 posters presented
205 participants shared their expertise
CHENNAI: An International Conference on Algal Biomass, Resources and Utilisation (ICABRU- 2009) was organised in the city recently by the Krishnamurthy Institute of Algology and the Department of Plant Biology and Plant Biotechnology of Stella Maris College.
Foreign participation