Scientists to investigate how to make green fuel from seaweed

Seaweed could be used to make clean, green fuel.

By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor Last Updated: 10:55PM GMT 17 Dec 2008

A team of Scottish, Irish and Northern Irish marine experts have been handed £5million to investigate the feasibility of farming the plants for use as a transport fuel and for heating homes.
They could either be burned or allowed to decompose, a process that produces gases and oils that potentially could be used as a fuel.
Announcing an EU grant for the research, Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, said: "The £5million investment is a welcome boost to what is proving to be one of our most resilient and promising sectors in these challenging economic times.
"The development of mari-fuels could have a lasting impact on remote and rural communities by providing locally produced, relatively cheap, low impact fuel as well as serving the local public transport infrastructure."
He claimed the BioMara tri-partite research project could bring in long-term economic benefits, including hundreds of jobs in island and other remote areas.
Eamon Ryan, the Irish energy minister, added: "The premise of this BioMara project is both exciting and potentially very significant - that marine algae can be harvested, processed and then utilised as a green energy source. There is huge potential for this, provided it can be proven as viable."
The Scottish Association for Marine Sciences (SAMS) in Oban will lead the research, in partnership with Queens University Belfast and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and the Institutes of Technology in Dundalk and Sligo in Ireland.
They aim to demonstrate if locally produced biofuels can be made from seaweed and algae, as an alternative to land-based plants. Work will get underway in early 2009.
Previous research by SAMS indicated that extracting energy from seaweed is a particularly efficient and reliable method of producing green energy.
Growing the plant does not create pressure on supplies of arable land and water in the way that agricultural crop biofuels does.
Methane from the algae could also be used to generate electricity, for example, while the residue could be used as a nutrient supplement for agricultural crops.