Photanol
Both first-generation and second-generation biofuel production technologies consist essentially of two phases. First, solar energy drives synthesis of highly complex molecules (cell constituents) and structures (cells and plants) from CO2. In the second phase a (small) fraction of these complex products are converted to small mol ecules (like ethanol) in the case of plants, or are extracted and converted chemically to fatty acid-methyl esters in the case of algae. Thus, much of the light energy is lost in nonfermentable waste (but see e.g. [8]) and both pro- cesses contain numerous steps, each with its typical efficiency, which leads to low overall efficiencies. Second, both processes are limited by the capacity of the phototrophs to intracellularly store the substrates to be fermented or extracted. A third disadvantage is the fact that these technologies cannot be carried out in a continuous process design.