I recently learned that oil is mostly composed of algae and phytoplankton capturing carbon out the atmosphere thousands of years ago. Later the organisms fall to the bottom of the ocean and through time turn into crude hydrocarbons. So why do we not attempt to create the same crude oil by using alge with waste water from water processing plants?
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It takes a lot of time and incredible pressure to make oil from algae. The process would be too slow to replace oil at the rate we use it, and too expensive to be competitive with oil we take from the ground.
We can, however, use algae to make biodiesel that we can use as fuel. We call it biodiesel because it behaves more similar to diesel fuel. Making a replacement other petroleum based products is still work that needs to be done.
Also, note that using algae as fuel is a carbon neutral process, but we need to do carbon negative things to reverse carbon change. Any carbon the algae takes out of the air, the burning of the fuel will release it again. Step one to fixing the planet is to stop releasing new carbon, which we can do, but to actually save the planet, we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
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