Algae-based biofuels hold enormous promise as an alternative transportation fuel, but investors had better have patience. Fuel made from algal feedstocks is forecast to reach commercial availability by 2012, according to a report released today by Pike Research on the global biofuels industry, but isn’t expected to have a significant effect on the market until 2016. Algae startups like Solazyme with aggressive production timelines, however, might disagree.

Pike Research expects algae-based fuels to be the third key wave of next-generation transportation fuels in coming years, just after those based on waste greases hit the market followed by jatropha-based fuels. Yet while algal oil, which can be used to make biodiesel, ethanol and more, might be a late comer, it has enormous appeal, according to the report. “Algae is the only feedstock that has the potential to replace the world’s demand for transportation fuels,” the report said.

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While algae based biofuels may be useful, they have the potential to be an ecological disaster.

If such an algae gets out into the wild, and survives, it might release unlimited amounts of free hydrocarbons into the aquatic environments of the world. Imagine dumping,say, a few hundred gallons of gasoline into your local pond, ever day, and you get the idea.

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You are assuming some genetically modified monster that contains actual hydrocarbons?

In the years since the discovery of significant concentrations of lipids in certain species of algae, estimates for the potential of the single-cell water-borne plant have varied wildly. What is agreed is the substantial potential for algae to become a valuable resource in the portfolio of second generation biofuels. The tiny plants can produce at least 15 times more oil per hectare than alternatives like jatropha, rapeseed and palm, and are 20 times as productive as corn and soy. Today, high-end food supplements are still the main algal product, but some estimate their fuels could compete with petroleum at US$60 per barrel.

At team of researchers from Solix Biofuels (earlier post), Colorado State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have calculated both an absolute upper limit to solar-based algal oil production as well as a feasible target range for production based on realistic efficiencies (calculated for six global sites). Algal oil can be used as a biofuel feedstock.

Based on physical laws and assumptions of perfect efficiencies, the team calculated the theoretical limit to be 38,000 gal·ac-1·yr-1 (354,000 L·ha-1·yr-1) of unrefined oil with an uncertainty of roughly 10% and with 50% cell oil content. Limits for the practical cases examined in their report ranged from 4,900 to 6,500 gal·ac-1·yr-1 (46,300-60,500 L·ha-1·yr-1) of unrefined oil.

I just read your article on growing algae to produce bio-diesel. I was wondering about the relative amounts of CO2 input/output, i.e. has anyone done the math to figure out how much CO2 algae take in to produce a gallon of diesel fuel, compared to the amount of CO2 produced when that same gallon is burned. If the amount released from burning is equal to or less than the amount algae consume, then this is a win/win situation. If the amount released by burning is greater than the amount consumed, then we have a problem.

For algae, it takes about one ton of CO2 to make two tons of algal material. It's difficult to say how much biodiesel or ethanol two tons would make because different companies are achieving different results.

Taking average conversion numbers, about 190 gallons of fuel (both biodiesel and ethanol) can be made from those two tons of algae.

When burned, those 190 gallons will emit about 10.5 pounds of CO2 each. This is better than the 20 pounds that comes from each gallon of gas burned in an internal combustion engine. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml

So the short answer is: algae biofuel, when burned, releases the same amount of CO2 that was used to grow it, which is still less than burning gas. So it's a winner already.

If you have an algae cultivation system attached directly to a coal-burning power plant, emissions can be reduced by some 40%. So the resultant emissions when the algae biofuel is burned come not only from powering the car, but also from burning coal to produce hundreds of thousand of kilowatt-hours.

This effectively makes algae a carbon sink.

Aurora Biofuels said that it has succeeded in optimizing its base algae strains to more than double CO2 consumption and fuel production. The company has proven these results in an outdoor open system over the last several months.

Using tools developed in the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry, Aurora Biofuels scientists have developed a proprietary process which allows for the selection and breeding of non-transgenic algae. Using these techniques, the company has optimized its base algae strains with an increased ability to process sunlight and carbon dioxide into algal oil.

As a result, these algae strains can produce more than twice the amount of oil. Optimized algae have been producing oil in Aurora Biofuels' outdoor pilot ponds for several months, providing evidence that these strains will remain robust at the industrial scale and remove more carbon emissions than previously thought possible, the company said.

OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, today announced that Single Step Extraction™, OriginOil's low energy process to extract oil from algae, has reached the highest industry standards for oil extraction efficiency.

In a long-running collaboration with an advanced research lab at California State University, Long Beach, OriginOil has optimized its Single Step Extraction process to reach the highest industry level for algae oil extraction. The typical efficiency for oil extraction is 94-97%. OriginOil's recent breakthrough can extract up to 97% of the oil from algae cells.

"This level of efficiency is astonishing for a process that requires less than a tenth of the energy of conventional processes, and without needing chemicals," said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil's CEO. "I congratulate our lead researcher, Dr. Dheeban Kannan, and the team at Cal-State Long Beach IIRMES for their achievement and very hard work."