Researchers Go Underwater for Bio-Fuel

ATHENS, Ga. -- If there is any upside to $4 a gallon gasoline it is that momentum is building to change the status quo. More people are looking for options to single occupant, gas burning vehicles. Even research into new fuels is reaching farther.

"You could pretty much pull any plant that you find," says University of Georgia bio fuel researcher Ryan Adolphson, "and find a way to convert it into a bio-fuel."

The challenge is to find a way to make bio-fuel financially competitive with petroleum fuels.

Researchers at the University of Georgia think they may be on to something.

There's a famous movie scene where a man comes up to the graduate and says one word that supposedly holds the key to the future. At UGA's Bioconversion Center that word is: "Algae" pronounces Adolphson, "green algae. People call it pond scum. Stuff that you see growing on all these ponds around here could be an extremely valuable fuel for us uh in the near future."

Ryan Adolphson's team is working on getting bio-fuel from algae. And the research is promising.

"It's very small," Adolphson explains, "but there's a huge amount of biomass per acre, if you will, for a pond. Moreso than any other crop that we have."

Corn yields eighteen gallons of bio-fuel per acre. Algae yields 5,000 to 15,000 gallons per acre.

Biofuel from algae and other sources could replace up to ten percent of petroleum based fuel in Georgia. It would help local economies and it would be gentler on the environment.

Not every source is a winner. Yes, you can turn kudzu into bio-fuel. But here's the heartbreak: as crazy as it sounds, according to UGA researchers, you could never harvest enough of this stuff to make it practical. When it's green, kudzu is ninety percent water. When it's brown there's hardly anything there.

Ryan Adolphson is predicting that oil harvested from this work will be in our cars within five years.

Perhaps the word is algae, after all.