Nippon Oil, others to mass-produce microbe-derived jet fuel

Nippon Oil Corp. and its partners plan to develop technology for mass-producing biofuel from a freshwater microorganism within five years and use it to produce jet fuel, The Nikkei learned. The major oil wholesaler and Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd. have acquired some stakes in Tokyo start-up Euglena Co. and begun working together to develop the technology. They now intend to build a test plant to culture euglena–green single-celled organisms commonly found in lakes and ponds–and extract oil from them to produce fuel. Nippon Oil, Hitachi Plant and Euglena aim to lower the production cost of their euglena-based jet fuel to around 70 yen per liter to keep the supply price not much higher than that of conventional jet fuel. (March 8, 2010)