Forget cellulosic ethanol: If you’ve been following the biofuel sector lately, you probably already know that algae is the hot new game in town. New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic may be getting close to achieving its goal of becoming the world’s first company to viably produce large amounts of biofuel from wild algae.
Barrie Leay, Aquaflow’s chairman, said his company had successfully achieved “commercial-scale continuous harvesting of tons of wild algae” in a recent interview with Ethanol Producer Magazine. He outlined what he believed will become the new energy model -– “distributed” production –- which would do away with the inefficiencies he believes are inherent in the central plant model used by both the oil industry and ethanol producers.
In practice, this means Aquaflow would seek to spread its algae-to-biofuel production process over many harvest areas -– typically 1,000 acre oxidation ponds located around the U.S. The company’s existing facilities are churning out several tons of algae a day, a number it aims to rapidly scale up over the coming months as it invests in larger biorefineries.
Aquaflow’s two-step process consists of first optimizing the ponds’ productive capacity and then harvesting the algae, producing an extract ready to be converted into a usable biofuel. By taking up all the available nutrients in the ponds, the algae help clean the water, making it available for irrigation, various treatment processes and industrial washing and cooling. Aquaflow is also developing a bio-remediation process that could eventually be used to make the water drinkable.
Leay revealed little in terms of the conversion processes and their costs, likely for competitive reasons. However, there is some reason for concern as the company attempts to scale up production. Another algal biofuel maker that aimed for rapid growth, GreenFuels, ran into major problems last year when it tried to scale up, resulting in the company laying off half its workforce. Other companies have faced similar setbacks. Algae are notoriously difficult to grow in the wild because they need just the right amount of light and temperature; getting them to grow quickly requires a large amount of carbon dioxide and nutrients, and they are prone to succumbing to invasive species, or dying off en masse as a result of overcrowding.
Aquaflow disclosed earlier this year that it was seeking $5 million to continue improving the refining process; its technology has garnered interest from investors in the U.K., U.S., Australia and Asia. It is currently in talks with Boeing to develop an algae-based jet fuel. Its next step is to begin commercial-scale production, which Leay expects to do within the next few months.
Other companies working on producing algal biofuels include Solazyme, which recently some venture funding and debt (coverage here and here ), LiveFuels and Aurora Biofuels. Unlike Aquaflow, most of these companies are choosing to engineer their own proprietary algae strains, in an attempt to avoid many of the problems laid out above.
7 Comments
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Markz said:
My concern with biofuel projects is that they have uncertain impacts on our ecosystem - for example, in this case, couldn’t we end up disrupting an important part of the food/oxygen chain?
We’ve seen similar undesirable consequences in other so-called renewables areas, e.g. sharply increased food prices in response to crop switching for ethanol production.
Seems like solar, wind and wave have the least probability of undesirable externalities and that’s where we should be focusing.
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Mike said:
Well this algae sounds like it might be preferable to utilizing farm areas for producing biofuels. Prices for a lot of products have increased recently because farms are being used to make biofuels instead of regular crops. This would circument that, seeing as it utilizes water instead of farmland.
I think in the future, most biofuels will be produced by artificial life that scientists create. However, this is a step in the right direction.
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anon said:
Suffering through another algae bloom in my aquarium. Plecostomus can’t keep up. The bane of all aquarists. Impossible to stop growth, multiple varieties (green in lighted areas, brown in shaded). While I am sure “…Algae are notoriously difficult to grow in the wild …” is true for these biofuel varieties, I am always amazed at the tenacity and growth of my own undesired algae farms (two tanks).
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Biology Guy said:
I’ve got my criticisms with bio fuel…
I hold nothing against the guys cultivating their own algae, but there are huge problems with companies harvesting wild algae.
First of all the majority of the world’s oxygen comes from our oceans - yes algae produces oxygen.
2ndly this does disrupt the food chain. Krill eat algae, which pound for pound is the most abundant species in the world. Fish eat krill, whales eat krill, larger fish eat smaller fish… etc etc.
I’m not a global warming Al Gore supporting hippie or anything.
Just the facts.
Don’t forget there is an international rice and wheat crisis going on right now. Bio-fuel is not an alternative.
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grmd said:
folks
according to those who know the most, wild algae cultivation in open ocean isnt feasible, nor is it where these efforts are headed.
most of the work is focused on using saline water found in aquifers in the american southwest or in other salt water where the cultivation happens in advanced and dedicated ponding systems. These processes create more algae in these close systems than exists in total in the natural world, resulting in an ambient increase in carbon sequestering biomass.
This is NOT stealing algae from open oceans, as previous poster points out, algae thrives quite well…in the right conditions, and the open ocean simply is not the right place to engage in harvesting for fuel or other purpose–wont work economically, so there is no chance of somehow stealing algae from the bottom of the ocean’s food chain.
there is a compelling body of evidence showing that much of the world’s oil stems from ancient aglal deposits from when the earth was a much different place climatically. conceptually, harvesting algae is using today’s solar energy rather than stored solar energy from oil.
So, biomass cultivation, when does sustainably, is nothing more than using solar energy. algae appears to be one of the game changers, although much more work needs to be done to see if it can be scaled in a significant way.
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Anthony Kuhn said:
I’m all in favor of harvesting algae to make fuel as long as it is raised in non-”wild” locations and specifically for biofuel generation. Harvesting algae in the wild is a terrifically bad idea that could have long-lasting harmful side effects for many years to come.
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Hamish said:
Don’t confuse this company’s process with all manufacturers of all types of biofuels. This process uses algae which grows naturally (wild) in sewerage ponds. Until now, not only have local authorities(throughout the world) had to regularly clean out these ponds because of a build up or surplus of live and dead algae, but the unclean waste discharge usually ends up in the ocean. The process above has achieved the following: cleaned the ponds by harvesting the wild algae from them and used the end product to create a viable clean burning fuel, remediated polluted water (which improves the quality of the discharge), and further creates what is rapidly becoming a valuable global resource - clean, useable water for irrigation, industry and ultimately drinking (Australia does it - drinks it I mean!). So, no valuable land used for fuel crops instead of food crops, no pinching food from the food chain in the oceans, and creating clean burning fuel with the by product being clean water!! These guys need all the help they can get in my opinion.
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The algae (claims) just keep getting better | Me Too! said:
[...] from agricultural runoff and other polluted sources. Another startup, Aquaflow, said it could just skim up unwanted wild algae, which it may use for jet [...]