This Young Scientist project is turning algae into pints of the black stuff (crude oil, that is)

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THE NUMBER OF projects relating to climate change and renewables at this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition shows they are key issues for teenagers.

One attracting interest – partly thanks to it’s clever branding, alluding to pints of the ‘black stuff’ – targets the efficiency of a decades-old method of producing biofuel, but one which has gained interest in recent years.

Greg Tarr from Brandon Grammar School, Cork, built a reactor to convert algae into a relatively clean form of crude oil. However, his reactor has one crucial difference – it agitates the mixture using ultrasonic waves, giving it a higher yield than normal.

Watch the video above for more.