MAKING OIL IN THE LABORATORY

We all learned in school that petroleum - crude oil - that black sticky stuff that comes out of the ground was made from pre-historic biomass placed under intense heat and pressure over millions of years. This is all explained in the Wikipedia article about Petroleum.

But, did you know that in the 21st century we are making petroleum out of biomass, above ground, in the laboratory, in just minutes or hours? The following webpages describe what these various organizations are doing in this field.

Making Oil in Minutes, Not Millenia
University of Michigan

Production of Jet Fuel
Batelle Laboratories

Algae to Crude Oil
US Department of Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Clean Conversion of Wet Waste to Fuel
Genifuel Corporation