Vetroleum

The company Sustainable Power Corp. claims to have created a form of bio-crude oil from agricultural refuse. They use agro-waste from cracked soy beans, rice and cotton seed hulls, grain sorghum, milo, and jatropha and turn it into bio-crude oil. This crude can then be further refined into everything from gasoline to jet fuel and just about every petrochemical in between. The CEO is quoted: 'Our biggest problem is that we are too good to be true. We can literally replace every gallon of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in the United States using just 12 percent of the waste byproducts in the country.' They also claim that their fuel, Vetroleum, burns with near 100 percent efficiency.

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Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

From ''The Times'', June 14, 2008:

They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-designing their DNA. Because crude oil is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

"Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we'll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011," says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

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Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation

The Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation of New Zealand has "set itself the objective to be the first company in the world to economically produce biofuel from wild algae harvested from open-air environments, to market it, and meet the challenge of increasing demand".

They inform us that their two-step process harvests algae directly from the settling ponds of standard Effluent Management Systems and other nutrient-rich water, and that the process can be used in many industries that produce a waste stream, including the transport, dairy, meat and paper industries.

Their FAQ adds that they showed a proof of concept in December 2006 with a normal diesel engine Landrover whose engine ran on a B5 blend (5% biodiesel mixed with petroleum diesel) created using biodiesel derived from algae harvested from effluent management system ponds.