Algea Cultivating Medium

San Diego California is the host of 2 start-up companies aiming at developing algae stains to produce oil. Sapphire Energy (http://www.sapphireenergy.com/) and Synthetic Genomics(http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/ lead by Craig Venter) are working to tackle this challenge.

Synthetic Genomics has signed a $300M contract with Exxon Mobile.

Sapphire has received over $50M DOE grant in December 2009.

With all this momentum, we question whether the industrial scaling of algae culture and systems used to grow and control its environment is receiving similar attention.

Here is couple of links, as a result of our web search:

http://www.extension.org/pages/Algae_for_Biofuel_Production

http://www.iimsam.org/images/growthtech.pdf

http://www.soley.cn/index.php

http://www.citeulike.org/user/bcl/article/2667411

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6391238/fulltext.html