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Chemical engineers at the University of Michigan hope to make fuel in minutes. They are applying heat and pressure on microalgae, exploring a method to create affordable biofuel that could replace fossil fuels. They also hope to use the byproducts of bio-oil production as feedstock for more biofuel.

"The vision is that nothing would leave the refinery except oil. Everything would get reused," chemical engineering professor Phillip Savage said in a statement. "That is one of the things that makes this project novel. It’s an integrated process. We are combining hydrothermal, catalytic and biological approaches."

"We make an algae soup," Savage said. "We heat it to about 300 degrees and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil. We are trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we do not want to wait millions of years."

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/university-of-michigan-bio-oil/