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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

French, a 48-year-old associate professor at Mississippi State University (MSU), has convinced the school and the US Department of Energy to build him a Sustainable Energy Research Center—a large building designed around French’s novel ideas about converting sewer sludge into biodiesel [arstechnica.com]. Based on numbers from French’s pilot project, if 50 percent of US wastewater treatment plants used his extraction process, the country could generate nearly 2 billion gallons of biodiesel a year. Although that’s only 0.5 percent of the national diesel demand, French believes it can still revolutionize our economy in the process.
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[Bacteria] double rapidly, and cell membranes contain phospholipids with two long-chain fatty acids of hydrogen and carbon. These fatty acids are “saponifiable,” which means that they can be used to make fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), greasy stuff that could lead to vegetable oil. If you could invent a way to raise the fat content in bacteria, you could extract a decent amount of this oil, which could then undergo transesterification for fuel production. Samples taken to French’s lab verified that a mixture of FAMEs could meet international requirements for biodiesel. But growing bacteria in the massive quantities needed for fuel was expensive.

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