There’s oil in them thar algae
December 27th, 2007 by adminThere’s been a steady stream of stories about producing biofuels from algae, which are said to contain as much as 50 percent oil. The trick is to grow the right kinds of algae and find a way to extract the oil efficiently. The Kitsap Sun carried an AP story last month about a University of Minnesota project.
Popular Science explored the issue in a detailed article last summer.
That story, which features Jim Sears of Solix, focuses the research and development of algae-to-fuel technology:
Algae has some important advantages over other oil-producing crops, like canola and soybeans. It can be grown in almost any enclosed space, it multiplies like gangbusters, and it requires very few inputs to flourish—mainly just sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
“Because algae has a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, it can absorb nutrients very quickly,” Sears says. “Its small size is what makes it mighty.”
The proof is in the numbers. About 140 billion gallons of biodiesel would be needed every year to replace all petroleum-based transportation fuel in the U.S. It would take nearly three billion acres of fertile land to produce that amount with soybeans, and more than one billion acres to produce it with canola. Unfortunately, there are only 434 million acres of cropland in the entire country, and we probably want to reserve some of that to grow food. But because of its ability to propagate almost virally in a small space, algae could do the job in just 95 million acres of land. What’s more, it doesn’t need fertile soil to thrive. It grows in ponds, bags or tanks that can be just as easily set up in the desert—or next to a carbon-dioxide-spewing power plant—as in the country’s breadbasket.
Green Star Products, Inc., of Chula Vista, Calif., has announced that it will build a 100-acre algae facility next year in the Midwest, with plans for several 1,000-acre facilities. The facility will be constructed adjacent to an existing biodiesel plant and will use the CO2 emitted from the biodiesel plant’s boilers to provide a portion of the needs of the algae facility. The algae oil produced from the facility will be turned into biodiesel through the existing biodiesel plant equipment.
Green Star has released a five-minute video of its research facility at the University of Baja California, Mexico.
Algae is not a new idea. The U.S. Department of Energy (PDF 3.6 mb) funded the development of fuels from algae from 1978 to 1996, but discontinued the effort in the face of federal budget cuts. One idea that received some enthusiasm was using algae as a kind of solar collector, capturing energy from the sun in desert areas not suitable for farming and converting the algae into biodiesel or hydrogen.
Earlier this month, Business Week magazine discussed the business aspects of producing biodiesel from “pond scum.” And today the Financial Times of London picked up on the subject.
Someone has set up a Web site, called Oilgae.com, with lots and lots of information about fuel-from-algae technology. I was so impressed with the amount of information contained on the site that I began to explore the identity of the person who posted all this information. I stopped when I discovered that Andrew Leonard, who writes a blog for salon.com was equally fascinated and had conducted his own search, finally exchanging e-mail with this guy in India who appears to be consumed by algae and other vegetable oils.
Backing out of this distraction, I would like readers of this blog to know that I am interested in locating folks in Washington state who are conducting research on algae or production facilities for converting the tiny plants into biofuels.
I have heard that some folks at Washington State University are working on various species of algae, perhaps in conjunction with livestock waste. A call to the WSU News Service today was unfruitful, though it may be because so many people are out this holiday week. Anyway, I would like to hear from anyone who can point me toward developments taking place anywhere in the Northwest.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
December 28th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Christopher,
You might find this site interesting: http://www.greenfuelonline.com
The company, Greenfuel Technologies has several test sites associated with large utility companies around the US. Most recently, they were associated with a proposed plant in Kansas that was supposed to co-locate a new coal generation plant with algae bioreactors, an ethanol plant, a bio-diesel plant and an anaerobic digester. The varioius processes were to beneficially use each other’s waste products.
The plant’s permit was denied by the state’s environmental agency based on the CO2 emissions of the coal plant and the unproven nature of the algae bioreactors.
But there is a lot of research being done by this company. Their facility in Arizona saw problems this summer when they had trouble harvesting the algae before they died. This sounds promising, but the cost would have to come down significantly to make it viable.
That said, if it can be made to work, this would be the most exciting technological development of the decade. Greenfuel has demonstrated at a test bioreactor at MIT (attached to the university’s cogen plant) that they can consume an average of 40% of the CO2 with over 80% during daylight hours. So if the process becomes scalable and feasible financially, it could be the answer to all the legacy fossil fuel generation we’re going to have to deal with. That and replace the equivalent of our oil consumption.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Maybe someone from the Kitsap SEED project should comment.
December 28th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Now if someone could come up with a way of harvesting the massive algae blooms that cause the low dissolved oxygen problems in Hood Canal we would really have something!