1.2. Synthetic fuels

Unlike biofuels, which transform biological molecules into petroleum substitutes, synthetic fuels take a raw biological material, and through chemical processing, create compounds identical to petroleum fuel. This has a very distinct advantage over common biofuels in that there are no compatibility issues between the traditional fuels nor is there a need for any en­gine or fuel line modifications required. Synthetic fuels are usually made by utilizing a com­plex biological molecule and through thermal processing, break down the material into simple chemical building blocks (i. e., methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, etc.) and re­form them into target chemicals. There are limitations with synthetic fuels production, espe­cially when pertaining to production from aquatic and marine biomass where the water content is naturally higher than 99% by weight in its natural state, since initial breaking down of the products is usually through thermal processing that require dry or near dry conditions. However, since algae and aquatic biomass has such diverse characteristics and high cellular energy density, there is benefit for using either algae where the lipids have been extracted or whole algal cells as feedstock for these thermal synthetic fuel processes and thus can be considered as an option for production of synthetic fuels.