Sea Asparagus Oil  

I came across a new Biofuel periodical today called "Biomass Magazine", which has an article on a semi-promising form of biodiesel production, using sea asparagus - Sea asparagus can be oilseed feedstock for biodiesel. The reason I think it seems promising is because it seems to grow in soil that wouldn't be useful for farming, and after the oil is extracted the remaining biomass can be used for livestock feed.

On two plantations on the Gulf of California in the state of Sonora, Mexico, Global Seawater Inc. is using coastal land and seawater to grow what it sees as an important biodiesel feedstock that will help solve the world’s energy needs. At farms in Bahia Kino and Tastiota, Mexico, Global Seawater is growing salicornia, a salt-loving halophyte plant that thrives in the heat and poor soil.

Also known as sea asparagus, salicornia has traditionally been seen as a food source. However, “with increases in global energy prices, it became much more economically attractive to begin looking at salicornia as a feedstock for biodiesel and other energy products,” said Jason McCoy, associate to the chief executive officer and chairman’s office for Global Seawater.

Approximately 30 percent of salicornia seed per weight is oil and the remaining 70 percent of the oilseed biomass can be used as a protein feed for livestock, McCoy said, adding that the oil is very similar in quality to safflower oil. The company has used the oil as a feedstock to produce biodiesel which meets the BQ-9000 biodiesel accreditation standard, McCoy said, adding that between 225 and 250 gallons of biodiesel can be produce per hectare (approximately 2.5 acres) of salicornia.

If you were going to create the perfect biofuel, what would you make? When the founders of San Carlos, Calif.-based LS9 asked the question, their answer was quite simple, says Gregory Pal, senior director for corporate development. “You would make petroleum.”

Like ethanol, the bio-petroleum would be produced from renewable feedstocks using a fermentation process. But LS9’s renewable petroleum would overcome many of ethanol’s shortcomings. The fuel would contain more energy than ethanol, be supported by the existing infrastructure of pipelines, refineries and fueling stations and run in a wide range of engines. “You would make a fuel that was dropiin compatible with existing fuel systems,” Pal says.

The question wasn’t spurred by fanciful musing but by new techniques enabling scientists to customize an organism’s biological processes to produce novel substances. LS9’s founders saw an opportunity to leverage this emerging technology, called synthetic biology, to create “designer” microbes producing biofuels that are chemically equivalent to petroleum and diesel.

LS9 is not the only company developing renewable fuel using synthetic biology. Gevo, in Pasadena, Calif., is manipulating organisms to make butanol, Emeryville, Calif.-based Amyris Biotechnology is turning microbes into miniature factories generating diesel and jet fuel substitutes and Synthetic Genomics, in La Jolla, Calif., is developing genomes from scratch, tailored to biofuel production.