Companies To Produce Biodiesel From Seaweed in Italy

Italian biodiesel producers led by the Union of Biodiesel Producers have found a way to use seaweed instead of corn/rapeseed to produce biodiesel. The efforts are targeted to finish in 2010, and with that would come the building of a manufacturing plant.

The producers hope that using seaweed will eliminate the debate over using food to produce biodiesel. In light of my research and decisions to start adding sea vegetables as food, I would disagree that this new process moves away from that debate. Treehugger notes that the Italians might actually be using algae and not seaweed, since the word for algae and seaweed are the same in Italian. If they are in fact using algae and not "seaweed" or "sea vegetables," then this would be a great solution. If not, the problem still exists.

And that brings us to a clarification of the difference between algae, seaweed and sea vegetables:

• Algae is "a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms (about 30,000 species)
  
• Seaweed is a loose term used for "macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae" (includes red, brown, green algae) (courtesy of Wikipedia
• Sea Vegetable is the term for edible seaweeds (algae) that are used as vegetables
  

I find it really interesting to keep learning the numerous uses for seaweed/sea vegetables and can only imagine the uses we haven't yet discovered.