MOULTRIE — For most folks algae is something that you clean out of a fish-tank, but for David James of Opelika, Ala., it just may be a solution to the ever increasing gas prices.

James has been researching and experimenting with alternative energies for the past eight years at Eastwood Christian School, where he is founder, headmaster and math/science teacher.

“Our school needed energy,” he said was the reason he got involved with alternative energies.

He uses biodiesel fuels to run the school’s buses, other vehicles and machinery. He has been working with algae in this capacity for the past 15 months, according to his biography posted on the T-CO Alternative Fuels and Energy Systems website.

Tommy Greene, founder of T-CO Alternative Fuels and Energy Systems, has been championing the cause for alternative fuels for more than 25 years. He brought James into his video-conferencing center in Moultrie to give a seminar on the use of algae as an alternative fuel source.

During the seminar people “tuned-in” via Internet from all over the world including India, Brazil, and Germany. Local individuals in attendance were Tommy Hall, who teaches physics at the high school, and Thomas Voss.

He started out by telling the audience that he had tried many different alternative energy sources at his private school including a wind generator, which he said broke down easily, and solar panels, which were expensive. He said he has also tried making ethanol but found it to be expensive and got 30 percent less gas mileage.

“I don’t burn it. I don’t like it,” he said.

He said when they first started making biodiesel, methanol (a key component) was cheap and no one else in the community was collecting used vegetable (the other main ingredient). He said he tried the algae, initially, because he was looking for a cheap feedstock to make the biodiesel but he found it to be very difficult to extract the oil. In addition, the algae oil is worth $60 a gallon to chemical companies, so it would be more profitable to sell it than make fuel from it.

He said it also takes three times longer to make the biodiesel from the algae and he said that the University of Georgia had experienced the same problem. He said they told him that it was a “protein problem.”

“It’s just too costly to make this stuff now. ... Only a few people have done this algae oil. So, it’s unperfected,” James said.

Now, however, he said, the prices of methanol have increased and that makes it more expensive to actually make the biodiesel.

“The answer is gasification. ... I believe the gasifier is the way of the future,” he said.

Gasification is a process of converting biomass into carbon monoxide and hydrogen by exposing it to high temperatures with a certain amount of oxygen or steam. James said this was not a new discovery because he had friends who rode around with gasifiers on their trucks.

“All this technology came from Germany. It’s old technology,” he said.