Fuel from pond scum

By Ron Beasley

I applaud T. Boone Pickens' energy plan while I don't agree with all of it. It sure as hell beats the hot air coming from the politicians including the much touted Lexington Project of John McCain. The Pickens plan calls for extensive use of wind and solar power – good thing, but I'm not so excited about his plan to use natural gas for transportation. Pickens is correct when he says that we are years away from putting the internal combustion engine in the dust bin of history where it belongs. The first mass produced all electric cars are at least two years away and there are millions of cars on the road. So if not natural gas how do we fuel them? Up to this point our experience with ethanol has not been that good. It has been largely based on ethanol from corn – perhaps about the worst crop to make ethanol from. But of course it was a political decision to keep the corn belt happy. You can get about 370 gallons of ethanol per year per acre. The ethanol economy of Brazil is based on sugar cane which will produce about 900 gallons per acre per year; better but still not a great use of arable land.

But what if you could get six to ten thousand gallons of ethanol per acre per year and use a green house gas to do it. Well it looks like that is possible.

Pond-Powered Biofuels: Turning Algae into America's New Energy

Just three years ago, Colorado-based inventor Jim Sears shuttered himself in his garage and began tinkering with a design to mass-produce biofuel. His reactor (plastic bags) and his feedstock (algae) may have struck soybean farmers as a laughable gamble. But the experiment worked, and today, Sears’ company, Solix Biofuels in Fort Collins, is among several startups betting their futures on the photosynthetic powers of unicellular green goo.

The science is simple: Algae need water, sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow. The oil they produce can then be harvested and converted into biodiesel; the algae’s carbohydrate content can be fermented into ethanol. Both are much cleaner-burning fuels than petroleum-based diesel or gas.

The reality is more complex. Trying to grow concentrations of the finicky organism is a bit like trying to balance the water in a fish tank. It’s also expensive. The water needs to be just the right temperature for algae to proliferate, and even then open ponds can become choked with invasive species. Atmospheric levels of CO₂ also aren’t high enough to spur exponential growth.

Solix addresses these problems by containing the algae in closed “photobioreactors”—triangular chambers made from sheets of polyethylene plastic (similar to a painter’s dropcloth)—and bubbling supplemental carbon dioxide through the system. Eventually, the source of the CO₂ will be exhaust from power plants and other industrial processes, providing the added benefit of capturing a potent greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere.

Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga’s body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.

And Solix Biofuels is not alone:

Algae farm in Mexico to produce ethanol in '09

Rather than squeeze algae for its oil, Algenol wants to turn each algae cell into a tiny ethanol factory.

The Maryland-based company said that business partner BioFields has licensed its technology and committed $850 million to build a saltwater algae farm in the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico. Production is scheduled to begin next year.

BioFields paid over $100 million to license Algenol's technology, Algenol CEO Paul Woods said Thursday. He said the ethanol produced at the farm will cost $1 less than today's gasoline, or about $3 per gallon.

Algenol's technology was first developed in the mid 1980s. When oil hit $50 a barrel in 2006, Woods stepped up efforts to commercialize it.

The company chose from a collection of 10,000 strains of algae and used molecular biology to enhance certain traits. Specifically, company engineers enhanced certain algaes' ability to make sugar and, through their enzymes, to ferment sugar into ethanol.

"Most algae have a really tiny ability to make ethanol, and we've enhanced it greatly," Woods said. "We take in sunlight, massive amounts of carbon dioxide, and we grow (algae) in what look like a huge soda bottle on its side."

There are a number of companies developing technology to grow algae and convert it into fuel, typically biodiesel. The algae is grown in tubes, plastic bags, or open ponds and then harvested and pressed for its oil. Some companies propose taking the leftover biomass and burning it or using it as animal feed.

Algenol's process is very different in that the algae are not cultivated. Instead, algae produce ethanol in gas form that is siphoned off from the bioreactor tubes and condensed to a liquid, Woods explained.

He claimed that the system can produce 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year, far more than corn's rate of 370 gallons per acre per year or sugar cane's at 890 gallons per acre per year.

And once again with CO₂ from a nearby power plant it will be able to produce 10,000 gallons per acre.  I have not been too excited about ethanol as even a stop gap fix but this leaves me re-thinking my position.

Related Post

Update:

Our researcher Kat just sent me this:

Algal Fuels and Massice Scales

He raises some good points but it still beats ethanol from corn or sugar cane/beets by a long shot.

Comments

[BJ Bjornson]

There is also a lot of potential in ethanol from switch grass. Can't find the link I had to a story on it, but it can produce even more than sugar beets/cane, and it isn't a food crop and can grow in far more marginal environments so it shouldn't compete directly with food crops for acreage.

But then what would we do with all those corn subsidies?

[Kat]

http://www.hoosieragtoday.com/wire/news/01150_stover_123456.php>Cellulosic ethanol made from corn stover and switchgrass could be the next big thing in liquefied energy.

Tennessee is well on its way to utilizing switchgrass to produce http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_131308.asp>'grassahol'.

Breakthroughs in http://www.biomassmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=1731>Green Gasoline Production.
A http://www.biomassmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=1787>Biomass Commodity Exchange is in development.

That ought to keep you busy for now. ;-)

Kat

[BJ Bjornson]

Thanks Kat!

[Jerry P]

I'm excited about Algae Fuel, I think it's the future of alternative fuels. Jan 7th 2009 it was tested in a
737 airliner. On January 30th it will be tested in a 747-300 Japan Airlaines !

Jerry From
http://AlgaeFuel.ws