“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.

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Genetically engineered algae, whether in open ponds or enclosed bioreactors, are likely to be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, which now regulates genetically engineered microbes under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Still, there has been at least one case in which genetically modified algae seem to have fallen between the regulatory cracks. When Mera Pharmaceuticals, which is based in Hawaii, wanted to test the feasibility of producing human pharmaceuticals in genetically engineered algae in 2005, none of the three federal agencies that regulate the various areas of biotechnology — E.P.A., the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department — claimed jurisdiction.

Steven G. Chalk, acting deputy assistant secretary for renewable energy at the Energy Department, said any federally financed project, like Sapphire’s New Mexico demonstration, would have to undergo an environmental assessment. But risks would be assessed case by case, he said, not for all conceivable genetically modified algae. “

By Robert Rapier on R-Squared Energy Blog

1. The present cost of algae production from open ponds is too high to make fuel production economically viable.

2. Photobioreactors (PBRs) are too expensive.

3. The energy inputs into the algae production process are very high.

4. Some algae don’t need sunlight, and can produce oil in a fermentor.

5. Don’t believe the cited per acre yields that some proponents claim.

With many companies investing heavily in algae-based biofuels, researchers from the University of Virginia’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have found there are significant environmental hurdles to overcome before fuel production ramps up. They propose using wastewater as a solution to some of these challenges.

These findings come after ExxonMobil invested $600 million last summer and the U.S. Department of Energy announced last week that it is awarding $78 million in stimulus money for research and development of the biofuel.

The U.Va. research, just published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, demonstrates that algae production consumes more energy, has higher greenhouse gas emissions and uses more water than other biofuel sources, such as switchgrass, canola and corn.

“Researchers at Arizona State University have genetically engineered cyanobacteria to dissolve from the inside out, making it easy to access the high-energy fats and biofuel byproducts located within. To do this they combined the bacteria’s genes with genes from the bacteriaphage — a so-called ‘mortal enemy’ of bacteria that cause it to explode. Cyanobacteria have a higher yield potential than most biofuels currently being used, and this new strain eliminates the need for costly and energy intensive processing steps.”

Two Kansas State University engineers are assessing systematic production methods that could make the costs of algae oil production more reasonable, helping move the U.S. from fossil fuel dependency to renewable energy replacements. The idea by K-State’s Wenqiao “Wayne” Yuan and Zhijian “Z.J.” Pei is to grow algae in the ocean on very large, supporting platforms. The National Science Foundation awarded them a $98,560 Small Grant for Exploratory Research in 2009 for their work.

Compared to soybeans that produce 50 gallons of oil an acre a year, some algae can average 6,000 gallons — but it’s not cheap to produce. Current algae growing methods use ponds and bioreactor columns, and algae float around suspended in water. Harvesting such a moving target systematically requires using very costly inputs like centrifuges and electricity. Even with these best technologies for algae growth and production, the end product biodiesel is expensive at about $56 a gallon.

Yuan, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at K-State, thinks it will be five to 10 years scientists before understand the fundamentals of large-scale algae production sufficiently that cost can be reduced to the target of about $5 a gallon.

RR: Talk about some of the challenges of growing algae.

CEO: The list is exhaustive. It takes a lot of water. It takes a lot of electricity. Solar penetration is only about an inch into the water, so we really have to keep the ponds mixed well. One thing people never mention is the phosphorous requirement. Phosphorous is a limited resource, but a critical one for the algal growth. If you are trying to make oil, then you have to stress the algae and push it into a lipid production mode. But that causes growth rates to stall. If you engineer algae for higher oil production rates, they can’t out-compete the native species in the ponds.

RR: What about photobioreactors? Some people envision them as a solution to some of the problems (evaporation, contamination) of the open pond system.

CEO: They are ungodly expensive relative to how much algae they can produce.

RR: So how do you foresee the future of algal fuels?

CEO: There is no future. Look, some of these guys are out there committing fraud with their yield claims. Nobody is making fuel except for small amounts in the lab. I just don’t see how anyone will ever make cost-competitive fuel from algae.

RR: So you see the main barrier to commercialization of algal fuel as cost?

CEO: Yes, but it is important to note why the cost is high. I don’t see much hope of dramatically cutting those costs. For algae that has other uses – like in the nutraceutical market – the economics are sometimes there because the product is much more valuable. I can make 4-5 times as much revenue per acre growing algae for the supplements market, and at a lower cost than it would take to make fuel.

By Soulskill on it’s-not-easy-being-green

chrnb sends along this quote from a report at Reuters: “Filling your vehicle’s tank with fuel made from algae is still as much as a decade away, as the emerging industry faces a series of hurdles to find an economical way to make the biofuel commercially. Estimates on a timeline for a commercial product, and profits, vary from two to 10 years or more. Executives and industry players who gathered at the Algae Biomass Summit this week in San Diego said they need to push for breakthroughs along the entire chain — from identifying the best organisms to developing efficient harvesting methods. … So far on the list: finding the right strain of algae among thousands of species that will produce high yields; designing systems where the desired algae can multiply and other species don’t invade and disrupt the process; and extracting its oils without degrading other parts of the algae that can be made into side products and sold as well.”

Crop – Gallons of oil/acre/year
Soybeans – 43
Sunflower – 86
Canola – 171
Jatrjopha – 214
Palm oil – 641
Microalgae – up to 6,000 (with future technology)

Biotech’s green gold?

Algae have long been touted as a rich and ubiquitous source of renewable fuel but thus far have failed to be economically competitive with other sources of energy. Could new advances change that? Emily Waltz investigates.

When the UK’s Carbon Trust last year set out to fund algal biofuels research, organizers quickly met with a mélange of overzealous claims coming from the industry. Companies were projecting biofuel yields ten times what is theoretically possible and proposing techniques that are not now and may never be economical. A year later, after wading through the claims and gathering opinions from a network of more than 300 experts, the agency announced on October 23 the creation of the Algae Biofuel Challenge, a £16 ($24) million fund that will support the development and large-scale production of algal oil.

I classified this as a pretender based on the fact that technological improvements are needed in order to make algal biofuel economical – yet the hype over algae is mind-boggling. We don’t even know if it will work at scale, and yet it is going to be the solution to all our problems? Following my previous essay, I had a discussion with someone involved in testing fuels for the U.S. military. They are optimistic about the future of fuel from algae, but admitted that they were only able to secure algal fuel for testing at the cost of $100/gal! How likely is it that there will be a more than 20-fold decrease in production costs?

Having said that, there are three situations in which I think algae can work. Two of these are niches. The first is a situation in which the oil is produced as a by-product. Algae has a great number of uses in consumer products, and oil can be produced as a by-product of those consumer products. As a hypothetical, assume that algae can be engineered to produce a valuable pharmaceutical. This is certainly not science fiction; the first commercial usage of genetic engineering was to design bacteria to produce human insulin. Imagine instead algae, and oil that is removed during processing. The costs are largely born by the more valuable primary product. The problem of course is that this approach isn’t scalable. Imagine again that something like insulin production is the primary role of the algae. If you tried to scale that up to a significant fraction of our fuel usage, you will have thoroughly saturated the market for the insulin. But perhaps if we can pair up a number of primary products with oil production, algae can make a contribution to our fuel supply.

The second situation is similar. If algae production is one step in an integrated energy complex, it could work. For instance, I was recently asked to comment on just such an approach by Desert Biofuels, a company in Arizona. Without endorsing their specific approach, this sort of approach may work. (Actually their approach is quite complex and has unique technical risks). But algae can be effective at cleaning up waste water. Imagine algal-cleanup as one step of an integrated complex, and the costs go down substantially.

The only scalable approach I can see is for algae to be engineered to excrete their oil in situ. What drives the cost of algae up so much are the difficulties of collecting the algae, separating from water, and then separating the oil from the algae. (Often overlooked is that the oil must be further processed to biodiesel or green diesel). Now imagine a pond of algae in which the oil “leaks” out while the algae grow. The process of collecting the oil would be dramatically simplified. A caveat of course is that engineered algae tend to get out-competed by native strains. The bigger caveat is that this technology doesn’t exist, but companies are working on it.

The wild card out there is the Solazyme approach. Think sugarcane ethanol, except instead of yeast producing ethanol you have algae producing oil. The approach is interesting – which is why I mention it – and gets away from many of the problems inherent in trying to produce fuel from algae. Is it more efficient than sugarcane ethanol? I think it’s too early to tell. But one poster at The Oil Drum indicated that during a Q&A with a Solazyme representative, he couldn’t come close to a believable answer regarding scale-up costs. So while I think this one bears watching, it is far too early to suggest that this will pan out.

For a balanced overview of fuel from algae, see Biotech’s green gold?

I have had a number of people ask me about the E-Fuel MicroFueler, so at one point I did a bit of investigating. It is essentially a small still, but apparently has a fermentation capability if the feedstock contains sugar. However, they stress that it works best with wastes that contain alcohols (which a still would simply clean up) and they say in their FAQ that “under most circumstances consumers will contract with their dealer to service the MicroFueler and maintain a regular delivery and supply of feedstock.” What that means to me is that they will send you spoiled beer or wine, and the person who failed Economics 101 and bought one of these can then use electricity to turn the feedstock into alcohol. They can then tell those Arabs that they don’t need their stinking oil.

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But today, a journalist who has absolutely no business writing about something like this wrote a very misleading story on the unit. And the reason the story is so misleading is that the journalist was completely out of her element and couldn’t tell how badly she was being duped.

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So, let’s get this straight. A brewing company has a bunch of liquid waste that contains alcohol. They aren’t going to clean up this waste themselves and recover the alcohol. Instead, they are going to put it in a tanker truck and haul that waste to people’s houses and dump it in their MicroFuelers. The owner of the MicroFueler, having paid $10K to buy one of these things, is now going to pay for the electricity and then pay another $2 a gallon for the finished product. They are then going to put it into their vehicle, hopefully in proportions that don’t ruin their cars. Wow.