Italians to produce biodiesel from seaweed

Italian biodiesel producers currently producing from food crops are working together to substitute seaweed for first-generation feedstocks. The eight companies involved in the €10 million scheme currently produce diesel from crops like corn and rapeseed. They hope to be able to produce fuel from seaweed commercially within five years. ‘The initiative aims to substitute or integrate the raw material used today with another which does not compete with crop cultivation,’ said Pier Giuseppe Polla, vice-president of Italy's Union of Biodiesel Producers, which heads the project. The group is currently working with scientists at the University of Florence to select the most suitable species of seaweed. The crop will be contained in plastic tubes and fed with carbon captured from a local power station. The group hopes to have established the technology within two years. It will then build a plant, probably in southern Italy.