Nanotechnology is proving to be of great help to the biofuel industry. A joint project between the Ames Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Iowa State University has led to the development of nanofarming, a major algal oil extraction breakthrough. Nanofarming algal oil extraction involves the deployment of nano-scale particles to extract oil from algae. This development is important because presently employed algal extraction methods like expression and hexane extraction kill the algae. Under current technologies, therefore, algae can be used only once and a new batch of algae must be cultivated and harvested to produce a new batch of algal oil.
With nanofarming, algae survive the oil extraction process. Algae cultures may therefore be used more than once. This leads to a significant reduction in algal oil production costs, algae farm space requirements and the interval between algal oil extractions. Nanofarming therefore makes large-scale and cost-effective production of algal biofuel commercially viable. In line with this, Ames Laboratory and catalyst maker, Catilin, Inc, are planning to incorporate nanofarming in commercial algal biofuel manufacture.
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