Yummy: Algae In Your Tank, Cooking Oil In Your Tires

The conversion of vegetables into car fuel continues. In Japan, the Agriculture Ministry teams up with Toyota, Denso, the Chuo university in Tokyo, the Kyoto university and others with the goal of producing fuel from produce. From algae, to be exact. Are algae food? In certain parts of the world, they are. As I’m in Tokyo, dried algae are in the snack tray next to the computer, and they begin to infest the keyboard. The green stuff that wraps sushi is dried and pressed algae.

So far, edible algae are safe from ending up in your tank. The Japanese group hopes to extract oil from the usually uneaten Pseudochoricystis algae and turn it into car and jet fuel within 10 years. If successful, algae-based bio-fuel could meet 10-20 percent of Japan’s demand for refined crude, writes The Nikkei [sub]. For years, the process had been registered as a patent by Denso. The green stuff reduces the carbon footprint in two ways. One by reducing the amount of oil. Two by munching on CO2 emissions from factories or power plants. The CO2 is introduced into water, the algae feed on it. Add some sun, and voila, gobs of algae.

Meanwhile in France, Michelin uses sunflower oil to produce their Primacy MXM4 tire, reports Tire Review. The patented “Helio Compound” incorporates sunflower oil in order to offer improved handling in both wet and snowy weather.

Using greens for cars is as old as the hemp car that was developed by Henry Ford in the 1930s. It had plastic bodywork made with hemp and used hemp oil as fuel. Would it have been successful, then “smoking the other guy” would have taken on a whole other meaning.