MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Algae oil companies nearly all dream about displacing the billions of fossil fuels the world consumes every year with oil from microorganisms.

But in the meantime, Solazyme is going to also see what it can do for people like Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The South San Francisco, Calif.-based algae oil company has created a food science lab where it experiments with substituting algae oil with olive and other types food oil, said Harrison Dillon, Solazyme's president, during a lunch break at the Western Energy Summit taking place at NASA Ames in Mountain View today. It is also in discussions with large food processors.

Economics and convenience are behind the wheel. Olive oils can sell for $15 a pound at the wholesale level, or more than diesel. The scale is a lot different too. You don't have to worry about filling up pipelines to keep the food court at the airport humming. Thus, Solazyme can start to garner revenue in the near term while it paves the way for fuel sales. In fact, most established algae companies specialize in algae for health or baby foods.

Earlier this year, I ate some brownies made with their oils. They tasted good. (Disclosure: I once accidentally bit into a fridge magnet, so keep that in mind.) Don't expect the word 'algae' to be mentioned much in brand names.

In other algae news, Don Paul, the former CTO of Chevron, has joined LiveFuels as a scientific advisor.