The challenge of algae fuel: An expert speaks

Making fuel out of algae is one of those ideas that everyone loves. An acre of algae can produce 50 times more oil than an acre of soy, estimates John Sheehan, now vice president of strategy and sustainable development at LiveFuels.

"It can produce a lot of oil," he said in an interview on Wednesday.

The oil can be used to make biodiesel or synthetic forms of petroleum or both. Many hope that algae-based fuel can sell for around $40 to $50 a barrel, or a lot less than crude.

Algae facilities can also suck significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The fumes coming out of utility smokestacks can be piped into algae growing facilities. And to top it off, algae's not a massive food crop at the moment, so you aren't using a valuable food crop to gas cars.

Sheehan's not new to the field. He oversaw biomass, ethanol and algae programs at National Renewable Energy Labs. An NREL paper on algae--along with research from some of the national labs--forms the basis of a lot of the thinking around algae.

Right now, though, no one is producing it commercially. Companies such as LiveFuels, GreenFuel Technologies and Solazyme hope to start seeing algae oil get into the fuel markets in a substantial way over the next few years, but it's still mostly experimental. GreenFuel recently hit some snags and changed CEOs.

One challenge is removing the water. It's not uncommon to have 1 gram of usable algae in every liter of water. "That's 1,000 parts of water for every part of algae," he said.

The industry is also in the midst of a few religious wars. One is controlled versus open ponds. In controlled facilities, engineers can regulate the growth of organisms and control what kinds of species grow in the environment. These facilities cost quite a bit. Controlling the rate of growth can also be a problem.

"Open ponds are the cheapest, simplest solution," he said. "But it is much harder to maintain consistency."

Then there is the question of using biologically enhanced organisms or a mixture of naturally occurring species. Enhanced organisms can produce more oil per cell. However, they may not thrive if foreign species enter the pond.

LiveFuels is an open pond/multispecies company, by the way.

"The issue is: is it doable?" he said. "The question is: can we get the costs down to where it can compete" with fossil fuels?

[billmosby]

Best theoretical

From what I read, the conjectured productivity of algae makes it
better than the other biofuels, so its impact on land use might be
significantly less than that of the others. To say "algae's not a
massive food crop at the moment, so you aren't using a valuable
food crop to gas cars" kind of misses the point, though. It does
take space to grow it, and that alone could displace food crops if it
proved to be more valuable than food crops. So, caution is still in
order. Algae doesn't seem to be in any imminent danger of
becoming economic either financially or energetically.

[LuvThatCO2]

Plenty of room

" It does take space to grow it, and that alone could displace food crops if it proved to be more valuable than food crops. "

Unnecessary - if the algae is grown in artificial containers, it does not have to be on ariable land. They can be stuck out in the desert or places where the ground isnt good for farming.

[Nocturnex]

i can help him

i must have tons of algae in my old fish tank i enver took the water out, right now its so green you cant even see the layer of algae after the glass, and when you stick your hand in about a pound comes with it when you tkae it out... and its a 50 gallon tank so lol

[Urza9814]

well not really

Algae grows in water. corn grows on land. You may displace some of that corn with a processing plant, but then you can bulldoze an oil refinery and plant the corn there instead. I suppose there are other things that could perhaps use the pond space that would be edible...some type of fish maybe...but we have more oceans. So basically, if they use naturally occurring pond area, there's not much of a problem with it.

But talking about pumping in CO2 for the algae from industry made me think of giant greenhouses sitting midair atop smoke stacks, which has got me wondering if you could stack these things. And how deep can algae live? Would the pond be as efficient at 50 feet deep as at 5? You can't really stack a cornfield.

[billmosby]

You COULD do a lot of things...

But if it paid a farmer x times what he gets from wheat, say, per
acre, you'd have to pass a law to keep him from turning fields into
ponds and growing algae. Or perhaps a rice farmer. They already
have "ponds"- I remember hunting ducks on them in the winter in
Texas in the 60s.

[ralfthedog]

It takes water to grow food.

You may not be using a food crop, but you are using water that you could use to grow a food crop. Every technology has advantages and disadvantages. I think this one will come out as a net plus. We still need to be skeptical.

[cxar71]

sea weed?

Maybe the solution coul be oceanic algae... there's plenty of salt water around. That'd introduce the costs of desalinization, but those could be covered at least in part by selling the salt you've extracted... in this way you could come up with with three different sellable products: oil, water, salt. Am I too optimistic? =)

[bemenaker]

Most of the water is recyclable, closed loop

Especially if you are not using open ponds, you can recover almost all your water. Use presses, not heat to draw out the water from the slurry in preprocessing and you can reuse it.

[msf80]

ctrl aquarium.

Scientist from University Malaysia Pahang (Malaysia), Dr. Badrulhisham Abdul Aziz have already a prototype to built ctrl environment to accelerate growth of algae. Bravo..watchout LS9 and others.. here come Malaysia boleh! :)

[twotall610]

Pollution control

There are many uses for algae-sewage treatment,food,hydrogen
production,bioplastics,dyes,feedstock,pharmaceuticals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Pollution_Control

[likes2comment]

"Enhanced algae organisms" ??

Just what we need, another super bug on the planet to replace normal algae in the food chain. How long before the super algae is in the water supply and open oceans.

[billmosby]

Good point

It could happen, but I don't think it's too likely. Nature has tried a
lot of gene combinations already, so what are the chances we could
hit on one that not only has not been tried naturally but could
survive and prosper in the harsh natural environment. Just askin.

[FillmoreFuels]

trying to address the challenges

There is great potential in algae but people need to start working together to get there. Most business especially the larger corporations are not providing the necessary information to know of the progress. I am developing a marketplace for people to get involved in algae research and advance the industry faster http:www.fillmorefuels.com If people would work together algae can be part of the solution to our energy problems, if we don't work together it could just dwindle and become a joke and nobody will know if it can be achieved. PBR's could be helpful to address some of the problems he is speaking of if they can be produced cheaper.

[hutchins1]

Algae does grow in sea water and...

... it eats carbon dioxide which is a plus. There is a new story on CNN right now that explains how Algae can be grown vertically on a substrate. In the article it was plastic bags. It's said that 1 acre will produce 100,000 gallons of algae oil a year where as an acre will only produce 30 gallons of corn oil, and 50 gallons from soybeans. To me sounds as though it has a tremendous up side. As oil becomes more expensive it shoul become a much more viable option. See the article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/index.html

[hutchins1]

vertical

It can be grown vertically on a substrate.

[omegaman66]

Only 1 hurdle

Algae produces far more recoverable energy than any other biofuel producing organism.

Algae uses only a fraction of the water that other crops use (1-2%)

Super algae taking over the world is not the concern... the concern is contamination of the prefered strain of algae you want to grow getting contaminated and out competed by other species of algae that produce far far far less algae oil.

This is why a closed system is likely to win out over open ponds.

Only real problem seems to be harvesting the algae from the water. I find it hard to believe that all the scientist and engineers in the world won't be able to tackle that on problem.

[computergriff]

It can be grown in wastewater- check the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bAzW2Lf_FM