THE Algae Thread (merged)

[Graeme]

Department of Energy announces $24 million for algal biofuels research

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the investment of up to $24 million for three research groups to tackle key hurdles in the commercialization of algae-based biofuels. The selections will support the development of a clean, sustainable transportation sector -- a goal of the Department's continued effort to spur the creation of the domestic bio-industry while creating jobs. Developing cost-effective renewable transportation fuels is a key component of the Administration's strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions and move the Nation toward energy independence.

"Partnerships such as these focus the creative powers of the public, private, and academic sectors on key challenges facing the development of renewable energy for transportation," said Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi. "The United States must find effective ways to hasten the development of technologies for advanced biofuels made from algae and other renewable resources to reduce our need for foreign sources of oil." Zoi made the announcement while speaking today at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) 2010 World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing.

agprofessional

[ian807]

Interesting. If you just say it enough in press releases, it must be TRUE. Sort of like "House prices always go up!" or "Deepwater oil drilling is perfectly safe!"

So, I'm not sure what penny-stock the poster is pushing, but what does it matter?

Algae still has lousy EROEI if you actually calculate the entire energy cost of set up, maintenance, transportation, distribution, feedstock and so on, not to mention the fact that sunlight, fertilizer and land devoted to algae is sunlight, fertilizer and land that isn't growing food. It's corn ethanol and palm oil all over again. But, hey, the heck with those nasty third world types, eh?

Assuming algae ever becomes marginally profitable, economic pressure almost assures genetic engineering to produce an end product as close to refined fuel as possible instead of the rather benign lipid stew it makes now. Release this into the environment and Presto! An environmental disaster that makes the current well blow-out look like a glass of spilled milk.

As penny stock scams go, I prefer powering my car with water, or fusion.

I mean, why would we ever do anything so dull as to build thousands of little side diversion hydroelectric dams and make electricity so ubiquitous and cheap that we could afford to waste it on something as inefficient as hydrogen for portable power? That doesn't take any new technology. Just a lot of dull hard work and planning to accommodate the local ecology. All it does is solve the problem without stocks. Hell, even local governments could handle it, like they do with municipal water systems.

But of course, not spamming bozo scammer is going to make money with that.

[Graeme]

DOE Sees Long Road Ahead for Algae Fuels

Biofuels squeezed from the cells of purpose-grown algae hold promise to help meet the country's need for non-petroleum fuels, but the technology is at an early stage and will require years of development to reach commercialization, the Energy Department said in a report finalized yesterday.

DOE's "National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap" was released in final form yesterday after a year of public comment and revisions on a draft.

The document (pdf), which aims to summarize the state of technology today and point to directions for future work, dives into great detail on the biology of various kinds of algae, means of cultivating and harvesting them, and how they can be processed into fuel.

The paper offers little guidance on what strategies hold the most promise to replace petroleum-derived fuels in the long term. But it paints a picture of the extensive research that will be needed to do so. "The Roadmap Workshop effort suggests that many years of both basic and applied science and engineering will likely be needed to achieve affordable, scalable, and sustainable algal-based fuels," DOE wrote.

nytimes

[bcole]

Algae is one solution to help the US get off of foreign oil. Algae is renewable, does not affect the food channel and consumes CO2. It can go through any pipeline in the US and big oil knows it. The US has spent over $2.5 billion dollars on algae research at major universities in the last 35 years and there is nothing to show for it. All Algae IP has no value until you have commercial-scale algae production. So...What are we waiting for? The real question that needs to be raised is does the US really want to get off of foreign oil, create jobs here in the US and become energy independent or do we want to continue funding algae research? Algae research will continue but the time has come to scale-up the algae production industry.

Algae researchers have spent their entire careers researching algae and have not commercialized anything. Their focus is on research and publishing papers, not commercialization. As long as an algae researcher can say it is too expensive and we are 3-5 years away they will continue to receive grants from the government. The US needs to spend less on algae research and more on real commercial algae production, if we truly want to get off foreign oil. The algae industry is being built today using all off-the-shelf existing American technologies and equipment.

[mellotango]

On the subject of algae biocrude, there are a few questions that I'm trying to find answers for. I'd appreciate any help on this. Not long ago, it seemed that the focus was on finding the best strains of algae with the highest lipid yield, extracting into algal oil and converting to biodiesel. Nowadays, the trend seem to be locating algae strains (not necessarily high in lipids e.g. wild algae) and converting them directly to algae biocrude which can be refined to efficient transportation fuels via petroleum infrastructure. I'm just wondering if work on cultivating high lipid algae is still as important these days. Which brings me to a few questions:

1) Is biocrude generated from high lipids algae more superior to low lipids algae? (in terms of heating value or quality of transportation fuels derived from it)

2) How about comparison of biocrude from cellulosic biomass vs biocrude from algae biomass?

[vtsnowedin]

. Which brings me to a few questions:

1) Is biocrude generated from high lipids algae more superior to low lipids algae? (in terms of heating value or quality of transportation fuels derived from it)

2) How about comparison of biocrude from cellulosic biomass vs biocrude from algae biomass?

1. No answer on that as yet. Until the price of gas in the USA. gets above say $6.00/gallon you won't have people actually trying to make an algae based substitute. All you have in the mean time is scammers trying to rip off chumps with ground floor IPOs.
The researchers back in the 80"s when faced with 20$/barrel oil devolved into a race to see who could waste their research grant money in the most exotic place. The winners got to build their algae ponds in Hawaii
High lipids vs. Low lipids will get sorted out when actual plants start making real fuel for real unsubsidised dollars.
As to cellulosic biomass my net impression is that it is a loser as the proposed processes have a low net return and all the biomass they propose to use would be better used by composting it and returning it to the top soil.

[SeaGypsy]

Probably repeating earlier posts but:
The reason high lipid species search and breeding is no longer flavour of the month is the relative inputs for a controlled environment are far higher than for a 'wild' system. In a wild system the waste is simply oxegenated and agitated to promote growth of whatever algae nature provides. It's a self regulating system to some extent; wheras high lipids are attractive food for so many other organisms that regulation becomes a nightmare. As MD pointed out ages ago, the idea of specialised hybrid oil producing algae escaping into the wild and creating oilslicks is rediculuous and a missunderstanding of how nature works. I think he put it "these fat oozing algaes are going to escape into the wild and be ignored by other species?" (tongue in cheek).
Every high tech breeding facility I have heard of has eventually had serious problems with bio-contamination, often resulting in species wipeout and big downtime. Wild systems theoreticly have no downtime as nature is regulating species balance.

[americandream]

I can't see how any synthetic variant of crude can ever be upscaled to match oil. Not for a growing global JIT capitalism aspiring to cross the 50% mark and beyond into the upper percentiles.

[vtsnowedin]

I can't see how any synthetic variant of crude can ever be upscaled to match oil. Not for a growing global JIT capitalism aspiring to cross the 50% mark and beyond into the upper percentiles.

I doubt if matching oil at our present rate of consumption is necessary. At present we waste between a third and half the oil we consume on such frivolity's as trips to Vegas and driving to the corner .mart to buy lottery tickets.
Again what we need is not a complete substitute for oil but a replacement that will fill the gap between the supply of oil and the hard demand for liquid fuel. This is a much smaller number at least in the next few years and I think we can achieve it if we can control corporate and government malfeasance.

[americandream]

It's not going to happen. Any frivolity that America and the West successfully control, the other 65% of the world waiting in the wings of capitalist consumerism will overwhelm by sheer weight of numbers, global frivolity controls notwithstanding. Famously known as Jevon's Paradox.

I can't see how any synthetic variant of crude can ever be upscaled to match oil. Not for a growing global JIT capitalism aspiring to cross the 50% mark and beyond into the upper percentiles.

I doubt if matching oil at our present rate of consumption is necessary. At present we waste between a third and half the oil we consume on such frivolity's as trips to Vegas and driving to the corner .mart to buy lottery tickets.
Again what we need is not a complete substitute for oil but a replacement that will fill the gap between the supply of oil and the hard demand for liquid fuel. This is a much smaller number at least in the next few years and I think we can achieve it if we can control corporate and government malfeasance.

[vtsnowedin]

It's not going to happen. Any frivolity that America and the West successfully control, the other 65% of the world waiting in the wings of capitalist consumerism will overwhelm by sheer weight of numbers, global frivolity controls notwithstanding. Famously known as Jevon's Paradox.

Jevan's paradox is theory developed when the world was sitting on vast resources of coal and oil. The human behavior observed has always been seen with that base condition in place. Once we get well past peak oil and peak coal there will be no easy way for the practioner of efficiency to turn around and consume more total energy by choice.
Some estimates of energy waste in the USA are above 30 percent. Let our supplies drop by thirty percent or more and higher prices will force all but the very rich to choose very carefully how to use any energy they can afford.
This is not to say that a dramatic drop in supply and consumption would not be a negative to our economy. After all people make quite a bit of money providing the energy we waste and the things we waste it on like joy riding around in cars and Mall trolling(Shopping for non essentials). Whole industries will dry up or have to reinvent themselves. RVs and the camp grounds that serve them for one and all of La's Vegas for another.

[americandream]

As the capitalist seeks desperately for continued annual growth by both developing efficiencies and extending his markets worldwide (as we see in Asia, with Africa poised for the next bout of bubble expansion), he will consistently trigger the efficiencies paradox by virtue of that annual growth impulse. The growth process simply neutralises gains and then enters leakage mode as expansion embeds the growth model in the new market.

On the other hand, NO SOONER does the growth impulse neutralise by virtue of mechanisms instituted to extinguish it, we no longer have capitalism but communism (not fascism nor national socialism as these two are growth paradigms as well and variants of capitalism, albeit with elements of feudalism.). To that extent, the energy profile inherited from capitalism becomes an academic one and biocrude's role assume a stature more consistent with the new profile.

But this cheerleading of biocrude as the new lifeblood of capitalism, in whatever form, is a pipe dream and fails to consider the bigger pocture.

It's not going to happen. Any frivolity that America and the West successfully control, the other 65% of the world waiting in the wings of capitalist consumerism will overwhelm by sheer weight of numbers, global frivolity controls notwithstanding. Famously known as Jevon's Paradox.

Jevan's paradox is theory developed when the world was sitting on vast resources of coal and oil. The human behavior observed has always been seen with that base condition in place. Once we get well past peak oil and peak coal there will be no easy way for the practioner of efficiency to turn around and consume more total energy by choice.
Some estimates of energy waste in the USA are above 30 percent. Let our supplies drop by thirty percent or more and higher prices will force all but the very rich to choose very carefully how to use any energy they can afford.
This is not to say that a dramatic drop in supply and consumption would not be a negative to our economy. After all people make quite a bit of money providing the energy we waste and the things we waste it on like joy riding around in cars and Mall trolling(Shopping for non essentials). Whole industries will dry up or have to reinvent themselves. RVs and the camp grounds that serve them for one and all of La's Vegas for another.

[Graeme]

The Race to Make Fuel Out of Algae Poses Risks as Well as Benefits

One day, Big Algae may be competitive with Big Oil, but as researchers search for the ideal oil-producing algae strain to grow in commercial quantities, there are still a host of uncertainties standing in the way.

The first is simply supply. A central question dominating algal biofuel conferences is whether the best oil-producing algae crop will come from strains occurring in nature, or if they will need to be genetically modified to enhance their fuel-producing potential.

If researchers choose to modify them, then the algae basking in open pools under the sun's rays will have genomes dotted with genes from foreign species. Those algae could cause problems, according to a small group of academics and researchers.

Their concerns begin with something as ephemeral as a breeze that could pick up genetically modified microalgae and carry them into nearby fields and streams to displace natural strains, alter the ecosystem, and perhaps get into the human food chain. Just what would happen then is unknown, but the uncertainty is what is keeping them up at night. When it comes to genetically modified algae, they say, no one is asking the difficult questions, so it is impossible to get any of the answers.

nytimes

[PrestonSturges]

I talked to someone in the field, and the military is interested in this, but not for photosynthesis, but dark grown alga with a carbon source. Even without light, you still get the sophisticated lipid synthesis pathways of the plant cell. They'd like to synthesize their own fuel in bunkers or factories from very simple carbon compounds, like acetate rather than the sugars needed by yeast.

[americandream]

We don't have the funds or resources for long road building projects I've heard recently so this is another pipe dream in the trash.

DOE Sees Long Road Ahead for Algae Fuels

Biofuels squeezed from the cells of purpose-grown algae hold promise to help meet the country's need for non-petroleum fuels, but the technology is at an early stage and will require years of development to reach commercialization, the Energy Department said in a report finalized yesterday.

DOE's "National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap" was released in final form yesterday after a year of public comment and revisions on a draft.

The document (pdf), which aims to summarize the state of technology today and point to directions for future work, dives into great detail on the biology of various kinds of algae, means of cultivating and harvesting them, and how they can be processed into fuel.

The paper offers little guidance on what strategies hold the most promise to replace petroleum-derived fuels in the long term. But it paints a picture of the extensive research that will be needed to do so. "The Roadmap Workshop effort suggests that many years of both basic and applied science and engineering will likely be needed to achieve affordable, scalable, and sustainable algal-based fuels," DOE wrote.

nytimes

[Graeme]

Exploring Algae as Fuel

In a laboratory where almost all the test tubes look green, the tools of modern biotechnology are being applied to lowly pond scum.

Foreign genes are being spliced into algae and native genes are being tweaked, The New York Times’s Andrew Pollack writes.

Different strains of algae are pitted against one another in survival-of-the-fittest contests in an effort to accelerate the evolution of fast-growing, hardy strains.

The goal is nothing less than to create superalgae, highly efficient at converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into lipids and oils that can be sent to a refinery and made into diesel or jet fuel.

“We’ve probably engineered over 4,000 strains,” said Mike Mendez, a co-founder and vice president for technology at Sapphire Energy, the owner of the laboratory. “My whole goal here at Sapphire is to domesticate algae, to make it a crop.”

Dozens of companies, as well as many academic laboratories, are pursuing the same goal — to produce algae as a source of, literally, green energy. And many of them are using genetic engineering or other biological techniques, like chemically induced mutations, to improve how algae functions.

nytimes

[Graeme]

E. coli engineered to make convenient 'drop-in' biofuel

Genetically modified bacteria that munch on sugar to produce refinable fuels could bring down the cost of switching to cleaner energy.

Although many biodiesels produced from crops and cooking fat can be fed directly into car and truck engines, they are not suitable for existing refineries and pipelines, and so require a separate distribution network. Efforts to produce "drop-in" biofuels that can use the existing fuel infrastructure have so far involved prohibitively expensive chemical conversion steps, says Steve del Cardayre at biofuel developer LS9, based in San Francisco.


The functions of some of the genes were already understood, leaving two prime suspects for a role in alkane production. So the team then inserted them into a new host, a strain of Escherichia coli – chosen because it breeds readily in laboratory conditions and so is a good candidate for industrial-scale processes. As hoped, they found that the re-engineered bacterium began making enzymes that produced alkanes.

"We have a one-step process to make alkane" in an industrial process, says Schirmer. "Basically, in goes the feedstock – sugar – and out comes the vehicle-ready fuel. It's really simple," he adds.

newscientist

[Graeme]

Industrial Production of Biodiesel Feasible Within 15 Years, Researchers Predict

Within 10 to 15 years, it will be technically possible to produce sustainable and economically viable biodiesel from micro-algae on a large scale. Technological innovations during this period should extend the scale of production by a factor of three, while at the same time reducing production costs by 90%. Two researchers from Wageningen UR (University & Research Centre) believe this to be possible.

In their article in Science (published 13 August), they provide a detailed explanation of the route that needs to be taken.

By producing microscopically small algae in bulk in large-scale installations, Europe should be able to become independent of fossil fuels in a sustainable way. Algae could even contribute to the sustainable production of food. To cultivate algae on a large scale, fertilisers (nitrogen and phosphates) could be extracted from manure surpluses and wastewater, with CO2 coming from industrial residues. The energy source for algae is sunlight. Biodiesel and an almost unlimited quantity of protein and oxygen are the sustainable products of this process. The amount of fresh water consumed in algal cultivation is minimal because seawater can be used.

sciencedaily

[yeahbut]

By producing microscopically small algae in bulk in large-scale installations, Europe should be able to become independent of fossil fuels

Mate, I didn't know you'd started making billboards for Tui!

[Carlhole]

PhysOrg

Industrial production of biodiesel feasible within 15 years

Within 10 to 15 years, it will be technically possible to produce sustainable and economically viable biodiesel from micro-algae on a large scale. Technological innovations during this period should extend the scale of production by a factor of three, while at the same time reducing production costs by 90%. Two researchers from Wageningen UR (University & Research Centre) believe this to be possible. In their article in Science (published 13 August), they provide a detailed explanation of the route that needs to be taken.