Aviation Industry Harnesses Algae for Biofuel

[mgc1961]

Sometimes Otto Pulz has to improvise to make things work. Pulz, a biotechnologist in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, was recently planning a test flight for a small aircraft and needed fuel. After making a number of phone calls halfway around the world, he even ordered a few hundred liters of the miraculous fluid from as far away as Argentina.

"We scraped together everything we could get our hands on," says the scientist, as he holds up a tiny bottle of greenish-yellow oil. "The first car was also powered by fuel from a pharmacy."

The substance that scientists hope will make flying greener is derived from algae. This chemically refined fuel is expected to gradually replace kerosene in civil aviation.

Once they had collected enough of the fuel, Pulz and his team achieved an important breakthrough last month. For the first time in history, a small aircraft, a Diamond DA42, its engines driven solely by pure algae fuel, lifted off at the International Aviation Exhibition (ILA) in Berlin.


Read more at http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,706473,00.html