Biodiesel from algae in the offing

India may have caught the alternative fuels bus rather late, but a Gujarat-based agri-biotechnology company is ensuring that the country is in the race as far as automotive fuels is concerned.

In what is probably a first in the country, an agri-biotechnologist couple is working on producing bio-diesel from algae.

Dr Daksha and Dr Prashant Bhatt run Sun Agrigenetics (SAPL), a commercial and research company, in Vadodara. What makes the project special is that algae has the potential to produce over 10 times more oil per acre than soybean or canola.

"Scientists in the US and Korea are working on extraction of bio-diesel from algae and the potential is extremely encouraging," says Bhatt. A major advantage of using algae, according to him, is that it does not need any input since it is capable of synthesising its own food from inorganic substances, using light or chemical energy.

The company is in talks with agri-biotechnology companies based in Florida, San Francisco and Massachusetts for a joint-venture and commercialisation. It is also in talks with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for funding.

A new study titled 'Biodiesel 2020: A Global Market Survey' finds that by 2020, if Europe, the US, Brazil, China and India replace between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of automotive fuels with biofuels, the need for alternative bio-diesel and especially algae-based bio-diesel will shoot up.

It says that by the year 2020, use of bio-diesel and ethanol technologies combined can replace 20 per cent or more of transportation fuel needs in Europe, China, India.

The report further states that while Europe currently consumes 90 per cent of global bio-diesel, the US is already ramping up production at a faster rate than Europe and Brazil.

India and China are also expected to play a major role considering they have massive plans for bio-diesel development over the next two decades.