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Government. An article from last November.
This is the first article I’ve read about government policy on renewable fuels. It’s one of the many threads to follow in the algae story. I’ve posted it because it seems to be a clear and concise description of the situation. Presumably there have been developments over the past 6 months, but this seems to set the stage pretty well and might serve as a starting point for following the thread forward.
It’s from U.S. News. I found it from a link on the Algenol site. The Algenol CEO is quoted in the article.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/11/21/obama-under-pressure-over-role-of-ethanol-in-energy-policy_print.htm
Obama Under Pressure Over Role of Ethanol in Energy Policy
Environmental groups are unhappy with his support of corn-based ethanol during the campaign
By Kent Garber
Posted November 21, 2008
Environmentalists agree with President-elect Barack Obama on many points, but his policy on ethanol isn't one of them.
In the ongoing debate over the future of the country's energy policy, biofuels occupy a unique and precarious position: reviled in some quarters, championed in others. Ethanol producers have enjoyed meteoric rises in the amount of ethanol they can make and sell, but they also have been accused of harming the environment, prompting food riots abroad, and throwing away government money on unsustainable endeavors.
Environmentalists are asking Congress and the next administration for a far-reaching overhaul of the current biofuel policy.
They want sharp cutbacks on ethanol subsidies, tougher environmental regulations, more investment in advanced biofuels research, a new appreciation of scientific data, and acknowledgment of the ripple effects that biofuel production can have around the world. Some of these requests will conflict with energy policies likely to be set forth by Obama, who strongly supported ethanol subsidies when he was in the Senate.
This is not to say there is no room for compromise. Much of the desire to change the status quo rests upon the use of corn as the primary—virtually the only—source of commercially available ethanol. In the campaign, Obama and his advisers, while reiterating his support for corn-based ethanol, stressed that the future of biofuels lies not with corn but with nonfood alternatives like grasses, husks, and waste products. Those biofuel sources, they argued, are more energy-efficient and have a smaller impact on the environment and food prices. Congress said the same thing when it approved a giant tax credit for cellulosic ethanol earlier this year.
But since celluosic ethanol has yet to reach large-scale commercial production, the present situation presents some difficult choices for the next administration. What should the government do about corn ethanol subsidies? What can it do to get advanced biofuels developed more quickly? And do the benefits of ethanol, corn or otherwise, outweigh the costs?
For environmentalists, the answer to the funding issue is straightforward: Cut the subsidies. According to the Energy Information Administration, ethanol receives more than three quarters of all federal subsidies for renewable fuels, a category that includes wind and solar power. Many see such expenditures as not only a waste but also as an insidious danger. "We don't want to see any investments in what we consider to be false solutions, such as biofuels that can increase global warming pollution," says Shawnee Hoover, legislative director for Friends of the Earth.
Such a move would save several billion dollars annually. But it also would likely undercut, if not cripple, an industry that already is struggling financially and employs thousands of people. One alternative, some in the industry say, would be to reduce the handouts for corn ethanol (one such reduction took place earlier this year) and instead help companies working on more advanced biofuels. "All we are asking is that policy be technology neutral—that lawmakers don't advantage one party," says Paul Woods, CEO of Algenol Biofuels, which has developed technology to produce ethanol from algae. "Right now, we have no support at all, which is ridiculous."
Another dispute is playing out between environmentalists and the industry over the question of measuring the impact of biofuels on the environment. By law, biofuels have to be cleaner, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, than gasoline. Last year, Congress instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to prepare guidelines to make sure that the rule was being followed. (The EPA's response is due soon.)
But determining what counts or doesn't count under such measurements isn't an easy task. Because land is often cleared to grow crops for fuel, many say biofuel production "leads to substantial releases of soil- and plant-carbon" that should be counted as emissions, as several prominent environmental groups wrote in a letter to the EPA last month. Biofuel proponents disagree, arguing that current models are unreliable and immature. The outcome of this debate, both sides say, could have a profound impact on the future of biofuel policy in the United States.
Environmentalists are asking that Congress or the EPA put in place protections for water, soil, and wildlife habitat to guard against overzealous or reckless production. "You really need best-practice performance standards for all biofuels, which means looking not only at the impact on food prices but also at the impact on biodiversity,” says Carter Roberts, president of the World Wildlife Fund. "We've seen perverse outcomes with biofuels, like the destruction of some of our richest rain forests in the world."
Sapphire Energy at Senate Hearing
There's an Origin Oil press release on the OOIL board saying that OOIL was mentioned by the President of Sapphire Energy (Cynthia Warner) in her opening statement at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works on May 19th. The hearing was on the subject of “Business Opportunities and Climate Policy.” (She also mentioned Algenol, Solazyme, General Dynamics, LiveFuels, and Aurora Biofuels.)
This led me to the hearing, which is interesting enough to look into.
At the beginning of the hearing the Senators were given only two minutes to speak, but their whole opening statements (which I have not read) are available at the link below. There were three Democrats and two Republicans who spoke, so if anyone is interested in positions on both sides of alternative energy policies, the whole statements might be informative (if you can stand it).
Five Senators spoke. Boxer, Bond, Udall, Vonovich, and Lautenberg. Senator Udall is from New Mexico, which is where Sapphire Energy has some operations (as does CEHMM). Neither he nor Ms. Warner mentioned the Permian sea in the Southeastern part of the state as the source of the brackish water they are talking about.
Udall: “Let me say welcome to all of our witnesses. And a special welcome to Cynthia Warner, the President of Sapphire Energy. And I’d also like to thank the Chair for inviting Sapphire to testify. I know that Sapphire is based in California but I think you do much of your work in New Mexico. And this is an area that I will say we’re very interested in in New Mexico in terms of renewable energy and using some of the lands that we have in New Mexico that has the ability to produce renewable energy. You talk about desert lands, you talk about a hot climate and salty and brackish water. We have it all. We have it in a pretty significant quantity in certain parts of our state. So we really look forward to working closely with you in developing this resource because it’s something that I think is not only important for New Mexico, it’s important for the nation. So, welcome here and I would yield back any time ….”
OOIL PR on OOIL board:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=38008245
So below is Ms. Warner’s opening statement. The link below has the opening statements of the various participants and also a webcast of the hearing. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet or read the other statements.
Also some of the reports in the footnotes might be useful.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=37159346-802a-23ad-4ea2-afa619aa8c43
STATEMENT OF
CYNTHIA J. WARNER, PRESIDENT, SAPPHIRE ENERGY
BEFORE THE
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
HEARING ON “BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND CLIMATE POLICY”
May 19, 2009
Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Inhofe, and Members of the Committee:
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing. My name is Cynthia Warner. I am the President of Sapphire Energy, an algae-based energy company established in California in 2007.
Sapphire Energy was founded with one mission in mind: to change the world by developing a domestic, renewable source of energy that benefits the environment and hastens America’s energy independence. Thanks to a supportive syndicate of respected investors, including The Wellcome Trust (the world’s largest biomedical research charity), Cascade Investment (an investment holding company owned by Bill Gates), Venrock (the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family), ARCH Venture Partners, and other like-minded investors, Sapphire is well on its way to fulfilling this mission. Using algae as a feedstock, Sapphire has developed a breakthrough technology that produces fungible, drop-in transportation fuels – including 91-octane gasoline, 89 cetane diesel, and jet fuel - out of sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2).
Sapphire Energy is headquartered in San Diego, and we have established a growing presence in New Mexico. We currently have 107 employees who carry out our mission in both states, and, as I will explain in my testimony today, we expect to employ many more in the near future.
The Sapphire Business Model
Sapphire Energy’s goal is ambitious. It is to become the world’s leading producer of renewable fuels and petrochemical products. To accomplish this we brought together a team of people who, as entrepreneurs, scientists, and concerned citizens, hold several shared beliefs. We believe that climate change is a threat to our environment and that dependence on imported oil is a threat to our national security. We believe that existing alternatives to imported transportation fuels are too slow to commercialize, too expensive to produce, and have their own harmful environmental trade-offs. We believe that, through the application of vision and technology, we have found a better way to achieve energy independence and minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
To focus our efforts, we established four benchmarks to guide our work.
• First, to produce “drop in” transportation fuels that have equivalent or better energy density than the petroleum fuels we currently use and are also compatible with the existing energy infrastructure, including the existing network of refineries, pipelines, and terminals and the existing fleet of cars, trucks, and jets. Americans have spent more than seven trillion dollars developing our transportation fuel infrastructure. The most economically practical renewable fuel, therefore, is a “drop in” transportation fuel that does not require us to recreate this infrastructure.
• Second, to produce fuels that can be grown on marginal desert lands, and in brackish or salt water. We did not want to produce energy crops that compete with food crops for agricultural land; nor did we want to divert precious fresh water resources.
• Third, to produce fuels that have a low carbon impact. We wanted to produce alternative fuels with a life cycle carbon impact that is roughly 2/3 less than that of petroleum-based fuels, and significantly lower than other conventional biofuels.
• Fourth, to produce fuels that are scalable in the near term and cost competitive in the long term. We wanted to be able to produce over one million barrels a day of a renewable crude-oil equivalent, within the next fifteen years. We also recognized the need for this alternative to be competitive with current and future crude oil prices, anticipating that over time, our alternative would become more competitive as crude oil’s prices increase, and ours decrease.
I am here today to tell you that we are well on our way to meeting each and every one of these four benchmarks. After two years of dedicated research and development, fueled by the Department of Energy’s conclusions regarding algae’s suitability as an ideal energy crop, we have developed an algae-based fuel that is renewable, produced in the United States, has a low carbon footprint, has no adverse environmental side effects, is price-competitive, and fits seamlessly into our existing energy infrastructure. Let me be clear. I am not talking about an inferior substitute for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Rather, I am talking about a renewable, domestically produced, and environmentally sustainable fuel that is chemically identical – and in many ways superior – to gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. That product is our algae-based “Green Crude.”
The Technology of Algae-Based Fuel
Algae is uniquely suited to serve as the foundation for a new generation of renewable and low carbon transportation fuels. Algae is one of nature’s most prolific and efficient photosynthetic organisms; in fact, it is the source, millions of years ago, of all of the earth’s crude oil. Nearly all of algae’s biomass is concentrated in the chloroplast—the engine that turns sunlight and CO2 into organic carbon, so that algae does not “waste” time or energy making stalks, roots, leaves, or fruits. This efficiency leads to very high yields of oil. For example, while palm oil can yield 554 gallons of oil per acre, algae can yield 5,107 gallons per acre—increasing oil output by a factor of ten. Further, algae has a short growing cycle and does not require arable land or potable water—it can be grown quickly in brackish or salt water in the desert.
Drawing on years of algae discoveries in the academic and governmental realm, and building on that research with our high throughput biological experimentation with additional tens of thousands of strains, we have successfully developed algal feedstocks that turn sunlight and CO2 into drop-in transportation fuels that are, in many aspects, superior to petroleum fuels we use today. For example, our green fuels are very low in sulfur, have no benzene, result in superior diesel fuels with high cetane levels, and are higher in energy density than traditional petroleum-based fuels. These elements of superiority will command a higher premium for green crude and make us more cost competitive.
Furthermore, the environmental benefits of our algal fuels are exceptional. Carbon dioxide plays a critical role in the cultivation of algae. In other words, algae consumes enormous amounts of CO2, drawn from both industrial and atmospheric sources, in its growth process. For example, the amount of algae it takes to extract one gallon of Green Crude consumes between 29 and 33lbs (13-15 kg) of CO2. The environmental benefits of using algae as a feedstock are thus exceptional; algae-based green crude provides a “two for one” benefit from the use of fossil fuel, by using the CO2 emitted by a facility (such as a coal-fired electric utility) as a feedstock for the production of green crude. Using algae to beneficially reuse CO2 results in green electric power and a low carbon, drop-in hydrocarbon fuel.
Our green crude’s environmental superiority was recently confirmed by the results of a life cycle analysis conducted by Life Cycle Associates, a well-respected company that has conducted numerous life cycle analyses for the California Air Resources Board. The company determined that Sapphire’s algae-based fuels emit approximately two-thirds less CO2 than petroleum-based fuels at scale. When compared with conventional biofuels, such as corn ethanol and soy biodiesel, our green crude has significantly less than half their carbon impact, while delivering far greater energy density than either alternative.
Putting all of this together, we agree with the assessment of a team of scientists from Utah State University, who said, in a report released last week,
Growing algae, the most productive of all photosynthetic life, and converting it into plastics, fuels, and or secondary feedstocks, could significantly help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, reduce energy price shocks, reclaim wastewater, conserve fresh water (in some scenarios), lower food prices, reduce the transfer of U.S. wealth to other nations, and spur regional economic development.1
Most exciting, from Sapphire’s “the fuel producer’s” perspective, is the fact that our future customers – those who consume large amounts of fuel on a daily basis - are thrilled at algae’s potential. Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, was recently quoted as follows:
“Did you know that algae, which is a prolific eater of carbon dioxide, can double in mass quickly, sometimes in four to six hours? …
“Algae has 30 times the amount of oil inside its molecular structure than cellulose ethanol does. That gives it big potential for the production of jet fuel. In fact, you could produce enough jet fuel for the entire world in a land mass about the size of West Virginia, as compared to other biofuels, which would take a land mass the size of the United States. Amazing what you can do with a little pond scum!
“Over the past year, there have been four successful demonstration flights with biofuels made from jatropha and algae, so this is not pie-in-the-sky thinking.”3
These are just a few of the many quotes from those in academia, the government, and industry, who are excited about algae’s ability to hasten America’s energy independence, and improve our environment.
Government officials are excited about algae’s promise as well. Just last week, Jonathan Trent, the lead researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center, proclaimed that “[a]lgae are the best source of biofuels on the planet that we know about.”2
The Practical Prospects for Algae-Based Fuel
As Fred Smith noted, algae-based fuel is not some science fiction fantasy, or a theory that works on a blackboard or in a laboratory but has little practical application. To the contrary, algae-based fuel can have a profound impact on our economy in the near future.
One year ago, Sapphire successfully produced 91-octane gasoline that fully conforms to ASTM certification standards. Five months ago, we participated in a test flight with a Boeing 737-800 twin-engine aircraft. One engine used conventional fuel, the other a mix of algae-and jatropha based fuel. The flight was a success, with the algae-based jet fuel meeting all performance standards and burning approximately 4% more efficiently – thus saving 100 gallons of biofuel – as compared with the petroleum-based fuel. This incredible fuel savings was due to the higher energy density of the algae-based fuel. The test pilot said that the biofueled engine’s performance was “textbook.” This and other tests show that algae-based fuel works well in existing vehicles and planes.
In terms of production, we currently operate a 100-acre R&D facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and will soon open an additional 300-acres of processing capacity in rural New Mexico. We will continue to expand as production increases. We plan to meet ambitious milestones, producing one million gallons of fuel per year by 2012, 135 million gallons by 2018, and 1 billion gallons by 2025. We believe that it is realistic to expect that, by 2050, Sapphire’s algae-based fuel can replace more than 25% of conventional petroleum, which would reduce CO2 emissions by 3.6 billion metric tons.
And I’m just talking about the output from one company – my company - Sapphire Energy. I haven’t even begun to touch upon the 90 plus algae-based fuel companies that have sprung up in the past two or three years. Noteworthy companies like Algenol – a Florida based company with operations in Baltimore, Maryland – are developing other types of algae-based fuels, such as algae-based ethanol, as well as valuable co-products, such as plastics and animal feed. Solazyme, General Dynamics, LiveFuels, Aurora Biofuels, and OriginOil, are just a few of the many other prominent names in the algae-based fuel industry. Most are producing transportation fuels or developing fascinating algae-based biological carbon capture and beneficial reuse applications. As an industry, we’re growing at an extraordinary rate.
We’re also creating jobs - thousands of green collar jobs - all across the country. In San Diego alone, research on algae-based fuel employs about 272 scientists, and provides nearly $16.5 million in payroll and $33 million in economic activity for the region, according to a recent San Diego Association of Governments assessment.4 Add to that jobs and spending related to service industries, and algae is responsible for 513 jobs, $25.4 million in wages and $63.5 million in economic output in the region.5
In December 2008, President-elect Obama’s transition team asked the Algal Biomass Organization (ABO), one of the algae industry’s associations, to estimate the number of jobs that could be created over the next three to four years. The ABO estimated that approximately 11,700 direct jobs will be created, with an additional 30,000 jobs from indirect sources. Clearly, the algae industry already is having a significant impact on green collar job creation and is stimulating the economy. And Congress could further boost these numbers by adopting carefully tailored climate change policies that account for algae’s unique role in beneficially reusing CO2.
The Relationship to Climate Policy
Sapphire’s commercial success is closely tied to the important work that this Committee has undertaken on climate policy. Our business model works best if this country is on a path towards reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and is doing so in the most economically efficient and environmentally sustainable way. Accordingly, we support legislation to establish a cap and trade system, and we have been working with this Committee and with others to assure that cap and trade legislation provides a proper carbon accounting for algae-based fuel.
Let me be more specific. As previously noted, CO2 will be one of our principal feedstocks. Therefore, the price of securing enough industrial-source CO2 to keep our algae growing at a steady rate is one of the primary factors determining the price of our algae-based fuels. Currently, CO2 costs an exorbitant amount – somewhere in the range of $130 per metric ton. This is particularly ironic, given the fact that so many industrial entities are desperately seeking methods to dispose of their CO2 emissions!
We ask that this Committee adopt legislation that would allow the beneficial reuse of CO2, through a medium like algae, to be added to the list of Congressionally-approved ways in which industrial emitters, like coal fired power-plants, can off-load their CO2. This will incentivize emitters to capture their CO2 and sell it to us as a substantially lower price, so that we can turn that CO2 into renewable fuel. It will also allow algae-based fuels to become truly competitive with a petroleum industry that has received decades of governmental incentives and support. This simple legislative action would make all the difference to our nascent algae industry and would give us the boost we need to help America become truly energy independent.
Conclusion
Madam Chairman, Sapphire Energy believes that the business opportunity presented by climate policy can be transformative. By getting ahead of the curve, we can produce a new generation of transportation fuels for the world, that are low-carbon, produced right here in the United States, and that generate renewed economic growth and new green-collar jobs.
We look forward to working with this Committee to turn this opportunity into reality. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I would be happy to answer any questions.
1 Utah State University, “Algae‐Based Carbon Recycling,” May, 2008, page 6. This study was released in conjunction with Jeff Muhs’ testimony before the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations subcommitte’s hearing on the Beneficial Reuse of Carbon Dioxide.
2 Jonathan Trent, “NASA Bags Algae, Wastewater, in Bid for Aviation Fuel,” GreenWire, May 12, 2009.
3 Fred Smith, “Keeping America Competitive: The View from the Commerce Street,” TownHall Los Angeles, Feb. 10, 2009.
4“New Center to Focus on Algae, Biofuels,” San Diego Union Tribune, April 29, 2009.
5 Id.
Thanks and updated..
It may be time to remove GeoBio Energy from the list.
It looks like it was reversed merged into by a company called EnviroPlastics, will be renamed Plastics Conversion Technologies, and will be focused on plastic recycling activities going forward.
It's also moved from the bulletin board to the pinksheets.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/GeoBio-Energy-and-pz-14897171.html
Algae front-runner GreenFuel shuts down
- Sad to see them shut down. I will leave the link to their website up since their site is still running and news may change anytime.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10239916-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
GreenFuel Technologies, one of the first companies to enter the algae biofuels business, is shutting down after running out of money.
Investor Duncan McIntyre of Polaris Venture Partners on Wednesday confirmed GreenFuel Technologies' demise, saying that the company is a "victim of the economy." The closing was reported by Greentech Media earlier on Wednesday.
McIntyre said investors, who have raised more than $70 million for GreenFuel Technologies since 2001, are exploring ways to sell the company's intellectual property and assets.
"The economy is a challenge to this industry so we are shutting our doors," he said. The company's CEO, Simon Upfill-Brown, had been seeking to raise money over the past several months. A company representative said the company doesn't intend to issue any statements on Wednesday.
The financial situation at GreenFuel Technologies had been degrading since last year, despite the fact that the company had landed a $92 million deal to sell algae-growing greenhouses to a cement maker in Spain.
In January of this year, the company laid off about half its staff, bringing the number of employees to 19. At the time, employees complained that the operation and finances were mismanaged.
Victim of credit crunch or poor execution?
GreenFuel's idea to use specially bred strains of algae to consume large amounts of carbon dioxide to make biodiesel captured the attention of many entrepreneurs and the media. But the company ran into trouble making the transition from pilot test to commercial product, referred to as the "Valley of Death" among investors.
Since 2001, GreenFuel Technologies has had a number of missteps.
Its first pilot project with Arizona Public Service tested ways to feed pollution from a power plant to algae growing in plastic bags. The company discovered that manually harvesting the algae made that process too expensive and had to create another product--a greenhouse for growing algae.
The company also replaced its original CEO with board member Bob Metcalfe, who ran the company until he found a replacement.
Although the biofuels industry as a whole is struggling right now, a number of companies have formed to turn the algae into biofuels, pharmaceutical products, or animal feed.
Algae is considered a promising feedstock for those products because it's rich in oil and can grow on marginal land. But no company has made algae at commercial scale that can be grown and harvested at a price competitive with petroleum-based products.
The initial design of GreenFuel's algae bioreactors on top of a building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(Credit: GreenFuel Technologies)
Utah State University Report
This is the report mentioned in the article. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks pretty comprehensive and also readable.
http://www.utah.gov/ustar/documents/63.pdf
Below is the list of contributors.
Jeff Muhs Utah State University
Sridhar Viamajala Utah State University
Barbara Heydorn SRI International
Mark Edwards Arizona State University
Quiang Hu Arizona State University
Ray Hobbs Arizona Public Service
Mark Allen Algal Biomass Organization
D. Barton Smith Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Tim Fenk Sapphire Energy
Dave Bayless Ohio University
Keith Cooksey Montana State University
Tanya Kuritz Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Mark Crocker University of Kentucky
Sam Morton University of Kentucky
Jim Sears A2BE Carbon Capture
Dave Daggett Boeing
Dave Hazlebeck General Atomics
Jeff Hassenia Diversified Energy Corporation
This is Jeff Muhs bio:
http://www.innovationutah.com/research/biofuel/jeffmuhs.html
Utah Biofuel Expert Urges Congress To Fund Accelerated R&D For Algae Biofuels
http://www.bioresearchonline.com/article.mvc/Utah-Biofuel-Expert-Urges-Congress-To-Fund-0001
Testifying before a Senate Subcommittee, Utah State University Proffessor Jeff Muhs urged greater federal investment in algae biofuel research and development. Utah State also released to the committee a new comprehensive report on using algae biofuels for carbon recycling. The report outlines the challenges facing several forms of carbon storage and sequestration and outline the way forward for developing commercial-scale biofuel production.
Washington, DC (PRWEB) -- Testifying before Congress, Utah State University researcher Jeff Muhs urged greater federal research investment in development of mass-scale technology to create algae biofuels. At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Muhs also released a new report by Utah State University's Energy Lab, entitled Algae Biofuels and Carbon Recycling.
The report is the first comprehensive look into the opportunities and challenges of utilizing algae not only to create biofuel but also to recycle carbon dioxide. The major new push is the concept of utilizing algae for CO2 recycling. Created as a collaborative effort with nine industry partners and several academic colleagues at other universities, the report also summarizes challenges to other methods of carbon sequestration and reuse.
Muhs emphasized to the committee the very real promise that algae biofuels could provide America a reliable source of liquid transportation fuel, with many important benefits.
"Growing algae, the most productive of all photosynthetic life on earth, and converting it into fuels could help mitigate carbon emissions, reduce oil imports and price shocks, reclaim wastewater, and lower food prices," said Muhs, an expert recruited to Utah as part of the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative (USTAR).
Muhs leads a team of scientists at Utah State University working on many of the key challenges to developing algae biofuels at commercialization scale. The team works to identify the most productive and useful strains of algae, and is also developing proprietary bioreactors in which algae can be grown efficiently and cost effectively.
The USU team is partnering with a Southwestern US utility company to develop a system to utilize algae and bioreactors for biological recycling of CO2 made by power plants. (Algae need CO2 to grow.)
In addition to USTAR funding, the Biofuels team at Utah State University also receives funding from the US Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, which has included the Energy Lab in a project to create bio-jetfuel.
The OOIL video on oil extraction was pretty impressive. They inject some proprietary gas into a container of algae mix and I guess that causes the algae cell walls to break apart causing oil to rise to the top and biomass to sink to the bottom. I guess the next question is what exactly is that gas, is it inexpensive to acquire or make and is it something the EPA would allow to be used on a commercial scale.. if it is very toxic it may face some resistance especially if the process involves releasing it back to the atmosphere or risk leaking back to the atmosphere.
http://www.originoil.com
NASA Envisions "Clean Energy" From Algae Grown in Waste Water
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/features/2009/clean_energy_042209.html
When astronauts go into space, they must bring everything they need to survive. Living quarters on a spaceship require careful planning and management of limited resources, which is what inspired the project called “Sustainable Energy for Spaceship Earth.” It is a process that produces "clean energy" biofuels very efficiently and very resourcefully.
"The reason why algae are so interesting is because some of them produce lots of oil," said Jonathan Trent, the lead research scientist on the Spaceship Earth project at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. “In fact, most of the oil we are now getting out of the ground comes from algae that lived millions of years ago. Algae are still the best source of oil we know."
Algae are similar to other plants in that they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis, and use phosphates, nitrogen, and trace elements to grow and flourish. Unlike many plants, they produce fatty, lipid cells loaded with oil that can be used as fuel.
Land plants currently used to produce biodiesel and other fuels include soy, canola, and palm trees. For the sake of comparison, soy beans produce about 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola produces about 160 gallons per acre per year, and palms about 600 gallons per acre per year. But some types of algae can produce at least 2,000 gallons of oil per acre per year.
The basic problem is growing enough algae to meet our country's enormous energy-consumption demands. Although algae live in water, land-based methods are used to grow algae. Two land-based methods used today are open ponds and closed bioreactors. Open ponds are shallow channels filled with freshwater or seawater, depending on the kind of algae that is grown. The water is circulated with paddle wheels to keep the algae suspended and the pond aerated. They are inexpensive to build and work well to grow algae, but have the inevitable problem of water evaporation. To prevent the ponds from drying out or becoming too salty, conditions that kill the algae, an endless supply of freshwater is needed to replenish the evaporating water.
When closed bioreactors are used to grow algae, water evaporation is no longer the biggest problem for algae's mass-production. Bioreactors, enclosed hardware systems made of clear plastic or glass, present their own problems. They can be computer-controlled and monitored around the clock for a more bountiful supply of algae. However, storing water on land and controlling its temperature are the big problems, making them prohibitively expensive to build and operate. In addition, both systems require a lot of land.
"The inspiration I had was to use offshore membrane enclosures to grow algae. We're going to deploy a large plastic bag in the ocean, and fill it with sewage. The algae use sewage to grow, and in the process of growing they clean up the sewage," said Trent.
It is a simple, but elegant concept. The bag will be made of semi-permeable membranes that allow fresh water to flow out into the ocean, while retaining the algae and nutrients. The membranes are called “forward-osmosis membranes.” NASA is testing these membranes for recycling dirty water on future long-duration space missions. They are normal membranes that allow the water to run one way. With salt water on the outside and fresh water on the inside, the membrane prevents the salt from diluting the fresh water. It’s a natural process, where large amounts of fresh water flow into the sea.
Floating on the ocean's surface, the inexpensive plastic bags will be collecting solar energy as the algae inside produce oxygen by photosynthesis. The algae will feed on the nutrients in the sewage, growing rich, fatty cells. Through osmosis, the bag will absorb carbon dioxide from the air, and release oxygen and fresh water. The temperature will be controlled by the heat capacity of the ocean, and the ocean's waves will keep the system mixed and active.
When the process is completed, biofuels will be made and sewage will be processed. For the first time, harmful sewage will no longer be dumped into the ocean. The algae and nutrients will be contained and collected in a bag. Not only will oil be produced, but nutrients will no longer be lost to the sea. According to Trent, the system ideally is fail proof. Even if the bag leaks, it won’t contaminate the local environment. The enclosed fresh water algae will die in the ocean.
The bags are expected to last two years, and will be recycled afterwards. The plastic material may be used as plastic mulch, or possibly as a solid amendment in fields to retain moisture.
“We have to remember,” Trent said, quoting Marshall McLuhan: “we are not passengers on spaceship Earth, we are the crew.”
Plastic bags with semi-permeable membranes allow fresh water to flow out into the ocean, while retaining the algae and nutrients.Plastic bags with semi-permeable membranes allow fresh water to flow out into the ocean, while retaining the algae and nutrients. Photo Credit: Penny Slinger Hills NASA scientists have proposed an ingenious and remarkably resourceful process to produce "clean energy" biofuels, that cleans waste water, removes carbon dioxide from the air, retains important nutrients, and does not compete with agriculture for land or freshwater.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/greenspace/
Growing Algae: Open Pond vs. Closed Bioreactors
http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/post/open-pond-vs.-closed-bioreactors-4012/
NREL’s Aquatic Species Program concluded that open ponds are the optimal economic design and used open ponds for its experiments and economic models.
Algae can be grown in natural or man-made ponds. The advantage is cost: open pond growth requires less capital equipment than other techniques. The disadvantage comes in quality control. Raceway ponds, shaped like horse tracks, for growing algae for human consumption are not yet economical for fuel production (while nutraceutical algae can sell for several thousand dollars a ton).
Raceway ponds, usually lined with plastic or cement, are about 20 to 35 cm deep to ensure adequate exposure to sunlight. Paddlewheels provide motive force and keep the algae suspended in the water. The ponds are supplied with water and nutrients, and mature algae are continuously removed at one end.
NREL’s Aquatic Species Program concluded that open ponds are the optimal economic design and used open ponds for its experiments and economic models. The productivity of raceways is much higher than unmixed algae ponds.
Raceway Pond (Diagram From NRELOpen Pond Algae Farmers)
Here is a list of open pond algae players:
Aquatic Energy looks to develop, construct and operate open pond algae farms in the Louisiana Gulf area, converting algal oils into biofuel.
Aquaflow Bionomics looks to produce biofuel from wild algae harvested from open-air environments. The firm harvests algae from the settling ponds of effluent management systems and other nutrient-rich water, typical of industries that produce a waste stream including the dairy, meat and paper industries. Aquaflow has a relationship with Boeing, targets jet-fuel production, and are trying to raise capital.
Aurora Biofuels is VC funded with more than $23 million from Oak Investment Partners, Noventi Ventures, and Gabriel Venture Partners. They are using open ponds and selected strains of algae in a pilot project in Florida.
Aurora is looking to use wastewater treatment models and is experimenting with drying algae with a “wet extraction” method. Wet extraction has the potential to eliminate or reduce the costly and energy-consuming de-watering step.
Aurora Biofuels uses selected and genetically modified algae with technology developed by Berkeley microbial biology professor Tasios Melis, ostensibly producing biodiesel with greater yields and lower costs than existing production methods.
According to Matt Caspari, Aurora’s VP of Business Development, the biggest challenges are in selecting the feedstock and sites. The company has patents pending on algae growth, harvesting, oil extraction and conversion to biodiesel.
Aurora expects to have commercial-scale facilities in 2012.
Carbon Capture Corp. operates open algae ponds with a total capacity of 8 million gallons located on a 40-acre Algae Research Center, part of a 326-acre R&D facility in Imperial Valley, California.
Cellana, a JV created by algae-to-biofuel startup HR Biopetroleum and Shell Oil, is building an open-pond demo facility in Hawaii. Cellena is developing a process for extracting algae oil without using chemicals, drying or an oil press.
General Atomics developing improved processes for growing and extracting oil from algae in open ponds.
Infinifuel Biodiesel is developing algae ponds in Nevada.
Ingrepo plans to build open pond algae production facilities in Malaysia.
Kai BioEnergy has a continuous, open system that produces bio crude oil from microalgae. The technology overcomes the risk of algae contamination in open systems and allows for high yield growth of a dominant species.
Kent BioEnergy develops open ponds algae farms with extensive experience in aquaculture and licenses from Clemson University. The company has operations in southern California, including a 160-acre process development/production facility south of Palm Springs.
The Glamour of the Algae Harvest at Kent BioEnergy
Kent Bio Energy’s Development Facility in Southern California
LiveFuels of San Carlos, Calif. received $10 million in funding from The Quercus Trust in 2007 and looks to continue the Aquatic Species Program’s research in using open-pond algae systems to develop biofuel. The firm is trying to develop green crude to be integrated into the nation’s existing refinery infrastructure. The firm initially planned to grow algae in ponds at the Salton Sea, an inland saline lake in Southern California, but has shifted to Texas.
David Jones, LiveFuel’s COO spoke at a recent algae summit and revisited common themes in stating, “The biggest challenge is scale and scope.” And “figuring out how to manage the water and recycling wastewater.
LiveFuels is focused on wild type algae, not GMO algae although they have “come 180 degrees on that.
PetroAlgae of Melbourne, Fla. has 110 employees and plans to complete a 20-acre demonstration algae farm by the end of the year according to Fred Tennant, the firm’s VP of business development. They have patented natural strains and according to Tennant, “are making tremendous strides towards a commercially viable solution.
The company’s business model is to develop turnkey algae farms that they will license to investors with a stress on scalability and cost.
PetroSun (PINKSHEETS: PSUD) of Scottsdale, Ariz. is looking to develop an algae farm network of 1,100 acres of saltwater ponds. They claim the ponds will produce 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass per year. PetroSun has a partnership with Science Applications International on algae-to-jet fuel and has been working to convert catfish ponds to algae ponds in the Southeastern U.S. They have numerous DOE grant applications in process.
Tom Konrad of Alt Energy Stocks writes: “Even if Petrosun does execute on its algae farms, will there be any first mover advantage? It seems unlikely to me; growing algae in open saltwater ponds will depend on access to suitable land near coastlines... later entrants who can acquire suitable land should be able to produce algae just as efficiently as Petrosun, since they do not seem to have any special technology or expertise. After all, the company is simply an unsuccessful oil exploration company with an algae farm division.”
Aerial View of PetroSun’s Texas-Based Algae Farms
Seambiotic, an Israeli firm, uses raceway/paddle-wheel open-pond algae cultivation growth fed by C02 flue-gas from a nearby IEC power plant. The company uses genetic optimization and has teamed up with Inventure Chemical to turn the algae into fuel.
Seambiotic’s Raceway Open Ponds
XL Renewables, formerly XL Dairy Group, of Phoenix, Arizona, is developing an algal production system using dairy waste streams and attempting to integrate and co-locate dairy production, algal production, and biorefineries producing ethanol and biodiesel.
XL is focused on biomass production more than biofuels – using a semi-closed system based on a farming model and a farming mentality – making use of agricultural and irrigation components. Their trough system uses a greenhouse-type process to cultivate algae in 18-inch deep, 1,250-foot long plastic-lined troughs with aeration and lighting integrated along the six-foot wide troughs.
A plastic cover (also called plastic mulch) can extend their season from six months to 240 days. They apply and retrieve the solar cover with low-hp tractors resulting in a low labor cost – one man and one implement can service 160 acres at a claimed capital cost of $35K/acre.
Oil extraction is not necessary in XL’s case as it wants to produce high omega-oil content algae biomass for animal feeds. Ben Cloud, XL’s COO, believes that we are starting to see protein shortages and that the consumption of soybeans and corn has created an imbalance in our diet which algae omegas can mitigate.
Harvesting is accomplished via a simple flocculation system in a weir tank. The design is expected to provide an annual algae yield of 300 dry tons per acre
XL Renewables is developing a 400-acre integrated biorefinery in Westen Arizona that combines a dairy operation with a biofuels plant to produce ethanol, biodiesel, milk, animal feed and compost fertilizer. The biorefinery would use the dairy manure and other waste streams to provide all of the power, heat and steam requirements of the project.
Diversified Energy Corp. has licensed this technology from XL Renewables under the name Simgae for simple algae.
This is a small excerpt from the April issue of the Greentech Innovations Report, which dives deep into the algae pond. You can subscribe to it here.
Oil Extraction
EXTRACTION AS A BOTTLENECK & USE OF CHEMICALS A PROBLEM
This was interesting in the United Environment & Energy article:
“Other refining or fuel companies, such as Illinois-headquartered UOP and San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, are also aiming at producing oil and fuel alternatives from algae but have struggled to get adequate supplies of it. Wen says his company has a "stable supplier" of algae oil that he also refused to identify for competitive reasons. He adds that said supplier was not U.S.-based as environmental regulations in this country hamper use of the toxic solvents necessary to extract oil from the algae. "Algae growth is not a big problem, people know how to grow it," he says. "The big barrier is extraction."
From Biofuels Digest, commenting on Origin Oil’s new extraction method:
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2009/04/20/originoil-announces-breakthrough-one-step-process-to-extract-oil-from-algae-without-dewatering-clears-barrier-to-algae-commercialization/
“The dewatering of algae and extraction of algal oil has been rated by many sources as the most perplexing barrier preventing the rapid expansion of commercial algal fuels.”
From Origin Oil’s Desmet PR:
”In contrast, the OriginOil Single Step Extraction technology does not require a petrochemical solvent, such as hexane, which is known to require an extensive permitting process before implementation, thus allowing for a more cost-effective production of algal oil."
SOLUTIONS
So we’ve got
1. Origin Oil’s new method.
"The company’s technology combines electromagnetism and pH modification to break down cell walls, releasing algal oil within the cells. The oil rises to the top for skimming and refining, while the remaining biomass settles to the bottom for further processing as fuel and other valuable products."
As a sidelight, here’s a brief video of Gov. Schwarzenegger and an OOIL exec:
http://katynally.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/origin-oil/
2. We have this comment in an article on Aurora Biofuels:
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2009/03/12/aurora-biofuels-in-florida-the-panther-roars-as-a-little-seen-algae-producer-targets-130-algae-fuel-at-the-gate/
“The cost of fuel is in the feedstock,” Walsh adds. “About 80 percent of it. That’s where you have to focus. With algae, you have to get a good dominant species, and no GMO,” and confirmed that Aurora has made breakthroughs in extracting oil from algae without passing through a drying stage, bypassing the most expensive and energy-intensive part of the algae production process.”
It doesn’t say that they do it without chemicals, so that would be interesting to find out.
3. CEHMM using SRS in Dexter, Michigan:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=37496964&txt2find=extraction
“The algae was grown in New Mexico in outdoor, oval-shaped, “raceway” type ponds and extraction of the oils was done in Dexter Michigan by SRS, a company who is at the forefront of commercial extraction technology....The raw oils extracted from CEHMM’s algae show incredible purity and viability for fuel production.”
Does the purity imply that SRS doesn't use chemicals? Not necessarily, so it's something to find out.
4. This is from an April 7 biofuel post concerning a nanotechnology extraction method in Iowa that doesn’t even harm the algae.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=36875725&txt2find=extraction
“The so-called "nanofarming" technology uses sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles to extract oil from the algae. The process doesn't harm the algae like other methods being developed, which helps reduce both production costs and the production cycle.”
5. I wonder what else is out there.
DOE announces $786 million for third-generation biofuels
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/05/05/doe-announces-786-million-for-third-generation-biofuels/
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a huge, $786.5 million program to speed development and commercialization of biofuels today. The money comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and is intended for the following specific projects:
* $480 Million Solicitation for Integrated Pilot- and Demonstration-Scale Biorefineries
* $176.5 Million for Commercial-Scale Biorefinery Projects
* $110 Million for Fundamental Research in Key Program Areas
* $20 Million for Ethanol Research
The stated goal of the money is to create "third-generation biofuels like green gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels." Full details available after the jump, but the highlights include $50 million to create an algal biofuels consortium that will push hard to make things like algae biodiesel a reality and $20 million that will be used, in part, to "evaluate the impact of higher ethanol blends in conventional vehicles." All signs point towards E15 becoming the new standard, don't they? A big step forward for biofuels will come from the new Biofuels Interagency Working Group that will be headed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Chu. The ethanol industry was quick to praise today's announcement.
If you don't remember, Chu was a biofuel researcher before becoming Energy Secretary and announced plans to fast track loans to get DOE programs started quickly. In mid-April, Chu announced $41.9 million for the fuel cell industry.
[Source: EERE]
PRESS RELEASE:
Secretary Chu Announces Nearly $800 Million from Recovery Act to Accelerate Biofuels Research and Commercialization
May 5, 2009
New green jobs a benefit of effort to end dependence on foreign oil
WASHINGTON, D.C. - As part of the ongoing effort to increase the use of domestic renewable fuels, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced plans to provide $786.5 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate advanced biofuels research and development and to provide additional funding for commercial-scale biorefinery demonstration projects.
"Developing the next generation of biofuels is key to our effort to end our dependence on foreign oil and address the climate crisis -- while creating millions of new jobs that can't be outsourced," Secretary Chu said. "With American investment and ingenuity -- and resources grown right here at home -- we can lead the way toward a new green energy economy."
The DOE biomass program will leverage DOE's national laboratories, universities, and the private sector to help improve biofuels reliability and overcome key technical challenges, with the goal of creating third-generation biofuels like green gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels.
The $786.5 million in Recovery Act funding is a mix of new funding opportunities and additional funding for existing projects. It will be allocated across four main areas:
$480 million solicitation for integrated pilot- and demonstration-scale biorefineries
Projects selected under this Funding Opportunity Announcement will work to validate integrated biorefinery technologies that produce advanced biofuels, bioproducts, and heat and power in an integrated system, thus enabling private financing of commercial-scale replications.
DOE anticipates making 10 to 20 awards for refineries at various scales and designs, all to be operational in the next three years. The DOE funding ceiling is $25 million for pilot-scale projects and $50 million for demonstration scale projects.
These integrated biorefineries will reduce dependence on petroleum-based transportation fuels and chemicals. They will also facilitate the development of an "advanced biofuels" industry to meet the federal Renewable Fuel Standards.
$176.5 million for commercial-scale biorefinery projects
$176.5 million will be used to increase the federal funding ceiling on two or more demonstration- or commercial-scale biorefinery projects that were selected and awarded within the last two years.
The goal of these efforts is to reduce the risk of the development and deployment of these first-of-a-kind operations. These funds are expected to expedite the construction phase of these projects and ultimately accelerate the timeline for start up and commissioning.
$110 million for fundamental research in key program areas
The Biomass Program plans to use $110 million to support fundamental research in key program areas, distributed in the following manner:
* Expand the resources available for sustainability research through the Office of Science Bioenergy Research Centers and establish a user-facility/small-scale integrated pilot plant ($25 million);
* Create an advanced research consortium to develop technologies and facilitate subsequent demonstration of infrastructure-compatible biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($35 million); and
* Create an algal biofuels consortium to accelerate demonstration of algal biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($50 million).
This funding will help to develop cutting-edge conversion technologies, including generating more desirable catalysts, fuel-producing microbes, and feedstocks.
$20 million for ethanol research
The Biomass Program is planning to use $20 million of the Recovery Act funding in a competitive solicitation to achieve the following:
* Optimize flex-fuel vehicles operating on high octane E85 fuel (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend);
* Evaluate the impact of higher ethanol blends in conventional vehicles; and
* Upgrade existing refueling infrastructure to be compatible with fuels up to E85.
For more information on these and other Recovery Act related funding opportunities, visit energy.gov/recovery.
Sapphire Energy says it aims to deploy commercial-ready algae-based jet fuel in three years time
http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=430
Sapphire Energy says it aims to deploy commercial-ready algae-based jet fuel in three years time | Sapphire Energy, biofuels, algae
Algae-based jet fuel for the Continental Airlines biofuel test flight in January was supplied by Sapphire Energy
Fri 1 May 2009 – California-based Sapphire Energy, which supplied algae-based jet fuel for the recent Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines biofuel test flights, has doubled its initial estimates on production of diesel and jet fuel. It claims it will be in a position to supply one million gallons of fuel by 2011, increasing to more than 100 million gallons annually by 2018. By 2025, the company predicts it will be producing one billion gallons by 2025, enough to meet around three percent of the United States’ 36 billion gallon renewable fuel standard.
Sapphire says it cannot provide any indication of how much of the fuel it aims to produce will be for airline use. “It will be market dependent – we’ll produce what our customers need,” a spokesperson told GreenAir Online.
The company, which is backed by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller family, says it is set to be the first to bring in a drop-in replacement fuel for air and land transportation.
“Fuel from algae is not just a laboratory experiment or something to speculate on for years to come. We’ve worked tirelessly, and the technology is ready now,” said Dr Brian Goodall, Sapphire’s Vice President Downstream Technology. “We’ve successfully tested our fuel with two commercial airlines and within the next three years we’ll be producing enough to help meet the growing demands of industry and the military. Fuel from algae is an extremely logical approach to meet the needs for a green solution to our dependence on fossil fuels.”
Tim Zenk, the company’s Vice President of Corporate Affairs, told the New York Times that the Continental test flight showed that algae fuel gets better mileage than petroleum-based jet fuel. “We noticed a 4% increase in energy density in the fuels because of the lower-burning temperatures in the engine itself, which resulted in greater fuel mileage,” he said.
As a feedstock, algae consumes large quantities of carbon dioxide. In Sapphire’s production process, one kilogram of algae biomass uses 1.8kg of CO2. About half of that algal biomass is oil, so the production of each gallon of oil consumes 13 to 14kg of the greenhouse gas, Zenk told the newspaper. “You can see it’s just completely packed full of the stuff. That’s what makes it one of the most unique plants on planet Earth for consumption of carbon.”
And while the company uses energy to transport CO2 and water to its algae production facilities in the New Mexico desert and to transport the fuels they produce, Zenk said Sapphire’s lifecycle emissions are two-thirds to three-quarters less than those of producing standard diesel.
Low-cost process produces natural gas from algae
http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=4814
DOE lab licenses high-yield gasification technology.
RICHLAND, Wash. – A new method for converting algae into renewable natural gas for use in pipelines and power generation has been transferred from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to the marketplace under a license between Genifuel Corporation and Battelle.
The method, called catalytic hydrothermal gasification, creates natural gas out of algae - more quickly, more efficiently and at higher yields than other biofuel processes. Genifuel expects the process also requires less capital investment. The license agreement moves this technology for renewable energy production a step closer to commercial reality. Battelle operates PNNL for DOE.
"Algae and other aquatic biomass hold significant promise for our country's ability to produce renewable energy domestically," said Genifuel President Jim Oyler. "At Genifuel we have developed efficient growth and harvesting techniques for the aquatic biomass. With this gasification process, we can convert the biomass to a clean fuel that is almost completely carbon-neutral."
He calls the PNNL process an "elegant system," noting that more than 99 percent of the biomass is gasified to produce renewable natural gas and byproducts such as carbon dioxide which can be recycled and reused in the algae growth ponds.
PNNL originally developed the catalytic gasification process to clean up industrial and food processing waste as an alternative to incineration. Over the past 10 years, PNNL scientists advanced the technology to include a more stable catalyst that enables it to also convert wet biomass, such as algae. PNNL has tested the gasifier with terrestrial plants, kelp and water hyacinths. It works especially well for aquatic biomass such as algae, because the feedstock doesn't require drying before fuel production.
Battelle granted Genifuel an exclusive license for the technology. As a national laboratory, one of PNNL's missions is to advance science and technology toward solutions that industry can take to the marketplace.
"Electricity produced from this natural gas can help electric utilities meet Renewable Portfolio Standards that require renewable energy sources," Oyler said. "Existing natural gas pipelines can deliver the fuel, or it can be used to produce electricity onsite in conventional natural-gas turbine generators."
The PNNL gasifier runs at relatively low temperatures - 350-degrees Celsius compared with 700-degrees or more for other systems - in a small stainless steel reactor.
According to Doug Elliott, the PNNL scientist who invented the gasification process, "It is simple - we put wet biomass like algae in the gasifier, where it is catalytically converted, and we collect fuel gas and byproducts.
"It's serendipity that our system creates carbon dioxide as a byproduct that Genifuel needs naturally to grow the algae," he said. "It's a completely green process."
Compared with other methods of gasifying biomass, such as anaerobic digestion, PNNL's process works 400 times faster and gives higher yields.
While simple in concept, the science behind the gasification process is actually quite complex. The technology has been under development for a number of years. PNNL scientists have achieved significant advances in the chemistry of catalysts and the selection of the optimum temperatures and pressures for the process, as well as improving the systems to protect the catalyst from impurities in the biomass.
PNNL scientists have extensive expertise in catalysis and reaction engineering, with particular focus on solutions for efficient use of bioproducts, converting biomass and renewable feedstocks to fuels and chemicals, and reducing environmental emissions.
Genifuel grows aquatic biomass, such as algae, in shallow ponds or troughs, then harvests and processes the biomass for conversion using the PNNL technology. Water used in the growth ponds doesn't have to be high-quality fresh water, and can be treated wastewater, brackish or alkaline water, or even salt water, Oyler said. Non-crop land can be used, so the process doesn't compete with food production.
Genifuel Corporation was formed in 2006 to advance commercial production of renewable energy. The company has developed efficient means to grow and harvest aquatic biomass and has been working with PNNL for nearly two years to demonstrate low-cost production of renewable natural gas from this feedstock. In addition to the license from Battelle, Genifuel also has a number of patents pending for its growth and production technologies using aquatic biomass.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory where interdisciplinary teams advance science and technology and deliver solutions to America's most intractable problems in energy, national security and the environment. PNNL employs 4,250 staff, has a $918 million annual budget, and has been managed by Ohio-based Battelle since the lab's inception in 1965.
Contacts:
Staci West, PNNL, (509) 372-6313
Jim Oyler, Genifuel Corporation, (801) 467-9976
Solid catalyst simplifies turning algae into biodiesel
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=solid-catalyst-simplifies-turning-a-2009-03-26
As home biodiesel brewers know, it's a time-consuming and chemically intensive process to transform French fry grease into a fuel. And then there's the problem of burning something in your truck that could have fed people; canola oil can be used for food or fuel, for example.
That's why many biodiesel devotees—including DARPA, the Defense Department's research arm—have turned to plentiful algae: it grows like a weed and certain strains can be turned into buckets of oil. Plus, it's not a nutritional staple like soy or palm oil.
The question is: How do you convert algae oil into biodiesel efficiently?
United Environment & Energy, an engineering company in Horseheads, N.Y., believes it has the answer. By using a "mixed metal oxide" catalyst (a form of certain metals resistant to corrosion but reactive), chemical engineer Ben Wen and his colleagues at United have come up with a conversion process that is 40 percent cheaper than an industrial scale version of the traditional methanol and lye process (methanol costs about 65¢ per gallon while lye is about $4 per pound). That process must also be finished by purifying the biodiesel with water to wash out left over chemicals that then linger in the water.
This new process would make biodiesel that also doesn't require the purification step, because there is no liquid catalyst mixed into the resulting fuel, Wen says. He notes that his company has made around 10 gallons of algae biodiesel this way to date, though its main interest is not in manufacturing the fuel but in selling the technology to make it to other companies. He says there are already some takers—including one that has made at least 100 gallons of the fuel and certified it to ASTM standards, a legal requirement to be sold in the U.S.—but he declined to identify any of them.
Other refining or fuel companies, such as Illinois-headquartered UOP and San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, are also aiming at producing oil and fuel alternatives from algae but have struggled to get adequate supplies of it. Wen says his company has a "stable supplier" of algae oil that he also refused to identify for competitive reasons. He adds that said supplier was not U.S.-based as environmental regulations in this country hamper use of the toxic solvents necessary to extract oil from the algae. "Algae growth is not a big problem, people know how to grow it," he says. "The big barrier is extraction."
GERS: I wish I’d been paying attention.
GreenShift (GERS) is up from .004 to .01 today because its patent on its method to extract more oil from an ethanol production by-product, distillers grain, was approved.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/GreenShift-Receives-Notice-of-bw-15147307.html?.v=1
As I understand it, this patent doesn’t have anything to do with algae, and I think the algae bioreactor the company licensed from Ohio University may be on the back burner. I’m not clear at this point where algae comes into their plans.
They have an interesting business model around supporting ethanol producers by building corn oil extraction facilities at the ethanol producers’ plants (free to the ethanol producer) and then buying the oil for use in GreenShift's own biodiesel facilities at a price which guarantees a profit. They can also sell the oil. Last December they announced an arrangement to received $38 million to build 12 facilities at ethanol producers' plants and increase their own biodiesel capacity, but it fell through. You can see that it is a capital intensive business model.
Financially, they may be on the brink at this point, so it will be interesting to see if this helps.
We also would need to get clear more clarify on the algae aspect of their business.
OriginOil Announces Partnership Agreement With Desmet Ballestra At National Algae Association Conference 2009
Global Supplier of Oil Extraction Systems to Help Accelerate Commercialization of OriginOil's Single-Step Extraction(TM) Technology
May 5, 2009 5:00:00 AM
Copyright Business Wire 2009
Email Story Discuss on ZenoBank
View Additional ProfilesLOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- OriginOil, Inc. (OTCBB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, recently announced a partnership with Desmet Ballestra, an international pioneer in oil and fats technologies.
OriginOil CEO and President Riggs Eckelberry announced this partnership during a speaking engagement at the National Algae Association's fifth quarterly meeting in which he discussed potential gains from this technology breakthrough. Eckelberry's presentation from the conference can also be found on the OriginOil website.
"Desmet Ballestra is an early leader in the implementation and sale of full-scale algae extraction systems. With Desmet Ballestra as a worldwide partner, OriginOil can begin commercializing its algae-to-oil technology on a global scale," said Riggs Eckelberry, CEO of OriginOil. "Like most current algae oil extraction systems on the market, the Desmet systems are quite expensive. Our patent-pending Single-Step Oil Extraction technology will help Desmet Ballestra create a more cost-efficient algae oil extraction system. In early studies, Desmet and OriginOil have estimated that energy efficiency gains may reach 90% in certain configurations."
"We are looking forward to working with OriginOil on a partnership that we believe will be mutually beneficial," said Desmet Ballestra North America president and CEO Timothy G. Kemper. "We are enthusiastically modeling the use of OriginOil's Single Step Extraction technology in commercial algal oil extraction systems, and expect to announce further industry-impacting details in the months to come."
Conventional algae oil extraction systems use petrochemical or alcohol solvents to extract algae oil. In this process, the largest amount of energy consumption comes from the initial steps of dewatering and drying the algal biomass. The novel OriginOil Single Step Extraction technology, however, allows the oil to be separated from the algal biomass in water with no dewatering or drying steps. As a result, substantial electrical and thermal energy can be saved.
The OriginOil Single Step Extraction technology also requires significantly less capital expenditure per ton of oil extracted. Conventional oil extraction systems utilizing petrochemical and alcohol solvents are rather complex and need to be large-scaled to keep the capital cost per ton of oil within reason. In contrast, the OriginOil Single Step Extraction technology does not require a petrochemical solvent, such as hexane, which is known to require an extensive permitting process before implementation, thus allowing for a more cost-effective production of algal oil.
Desmet Ballestra is a private company based in Zaventem, Belgium, serving the seed crushing, oil refining, oleochemical, surfactant, and detergent markets. It has operations in Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, the United States, China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. More information can be found on the Desmet Ballestra website: www.desmetballestra.com.
About OriginOil, Inc.
OriginOil, Inc. is developing a breakthrough technology that will transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum. Much of the world's oil and gas is made up of ancient algae deposits. Today, our technology will produce "new oil" from algae, through a cost-effective, high-speed manufacturing process. This endless supply of new oil can be used for many products, such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents, without the global warming effects of petroleum. Other oil-producing feedstock, such as corn and sugarcane, often destroy vital farmlands and rainforests, disrupt global food supplies and create new environmental problems. Our unique technology, based on algae, is targeted at fundamentally changing our source of oil without disrupting the environment or food supplies. To learn more about OriginOil(TM), please visit our website at www.originoil.com.
Safe Harbor Statement:
Matters discussed in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "may," "intend," "expect" and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein, and while expected, there is no guarantee that we will attain the aforementioned anticipated developmental milestones. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations of the Company and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. These include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties associated with: the impact of economic, competitive and other factors affecting the Company and its operations, markets, product, and distributor performance, the impact on the national and local economies resulting from terrorist actions, and U.S. actions subsequently; and other factors detailed in reports filed by the Company.
Abstract/Short Description
OriginOil announces worldwide algae-to-oil commercialization partnership with Desmet Ballestra.
Keyword List
algae fuel production, algae oil, algae oil extraction, algae to oil, alternative fuel source, alternative fuel sources, desmet ballestra, oil from algae, oleochemical, ooil, originoil, originoil inc
Source: OriginOil, Inc.
----------------------------------------------
Avalanche Strategic Communications
Maria-Christina Zajac
201-488-0049
maria-christina@avalanchepr.com
or
Investor Relations Contact:
Tom Becker
Toll-free: 877-999-OOIL(6645) Ext. 641
International: +1-323-939-6645
Fax: 323-315-2301
ir@originoil.com
www.originoil.com
Dennis Fisher, CEO and Board Member for BioCentric Energy Holdings, Inc., Accepts Position to Head the National Algae Associatio
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/05/09 -- BioCentric Energy (PINKSHEETS: BEHL) CEO and Board Member Dennis Fisher accepted the position to head up a new West Coast Division for the National Algae Association.
On May 1st Mr. Fisher attended the National Algae Forum in Houston, Texas, where Mr. Fisher released details, including a concise schematic, of the BioCentric Algae Pro Photobioreactor in his speech titled "Cost and Revenue of Algae Production." Afterwards, Mr. Barry Cohen, President of the National Algae Association, welcomed Mr. Fisher to the new management position of West Coast Division of the National Algae Association.
Dennis Fisher, CEO for BioCentric Energy Inc. (PINKSHEETS: BEHL), stated today, "This opportunity is another step for our company to educate, inform, and build a consensus of the unique attributes algae can assist our country and planet with in adopting a clear path of the reduction of CO2 emissions and energy independence from fossil fuels." Mr. Fisher went on to state, "Next Tuesday I will be releasing a plethora of information to bring our shareholders up to date on recent occurrences...some of which are still happening as our team is still in the field bringing our ambitions to fruition."
BioCentric Energy, Inc. is dedicated to the development of new technologies as well as acquiring and fostering companies with innovative technologies designed to provide unique and effective green energy solutions for the 21st century. Along with the cultivation of important relationships and partnerships with synergistic entities, BioCentric Energy has devoted substantial time and effort in research and development in order to bring a range of innovative green alternatives to the marketplace.
Safe Harbor Statement:
Except for historical information contained herein, the matters set forth above may be forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company or its management, identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current beliefs of management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors such as the level of business and consumer spending, the amount of sales of the Company's products, the competitive environment within the industry, the ability of the Company to continue to expand its operations, the level of costs incurred in connection with the Company's expansion efforts, economic conditions in the industry and the financial strength of the Company's customers and suppliers. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update such forward-looking statements. Investors are also directed to consider all other risks and uncertainties.
Contact:
BioCentric Investor Relations
Dale Baeten
Investing In Stock Market, Inc.
http://www.investinginstockmarket.net
Office: 920-273-7941
Green Plains Renewable Energy PR
As explained in the PR in post #102, Green Plains Renewable Energy [GPRE] is an ethanol company which formed a small joint venture to experiment with algae production. The joint venture is called BioProcessAlgae LLC. This is explained in more detail in the excerpts at the end of this post from a March 26 presentation.
The four BioProcessAlgae joint venture partners are GPRE, CLARCOR, BioprocessH2O, and NTR plc.
CLARCOR, Inc. [NYSE: CLC]
“CLARCOR is a global provider of filtration products” located in Tennessee. Q12009 sales were $214 million.
NTR plc
NTR is located in Dublin. Per their website: “NTR is an Irish public limited company. Its shares are not listed on any stock exchange, but may be traded via the company's stockbrokers.” Last October, NTR merged its North American ethanol operations with GPRE. This is how GPRE got as big as it is and why NTR is now GPRE’s biggest shareholder. “As a result of the merger, Green Plains triples its operating capacity…”
BioProcessH2O LLC
Located in Rhode Island. Develops wastewater treatment systems. Here I guess is where the “bioreactor” expertise comes from: “Our objective is to simplify wastewater treatment. Our specialty is identifying complete solutions, including Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) systems for water reuse or high-concentrate wastewater streams that can be segregated and treated at a lower cost than a facility designed to treat total flow at all times.”
Today’s GPRE PR is about the finalization of a $2.1 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund for BioProcessAlgae to build pilot bioreactor units at one of GPRE’s ethanol plants:
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. and BioProcessAlgae LLC Complete $2.1 Million Grant Funding for Algae Pilot Project
OMAHA, NE--(MARKET WIRE)--May 4, 2009 10:14 AM-- Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. (NasdaqGM:GPRE - News) and BioProcessAlgae LLC have executed a grant award agreement with the Iowa Office of Energy Independence for a $2.1 million research and development grant from the Iowa Power Fund to build an algae pilot project at Green Plains' ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
"Algae has the potential to become an important carbon sequestration solution, biofuel feedstock and feed product," said Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Green Plains. "If the pilot project is successful, BioProcessAlgae will move to expand the photobioreactor system to full commercial scale. We believe that this pilot project will be one of the first operational installations of a photobioreactor system at an industrial plant in the United Sates utilizing emerging technology out of the laboratory."
The Iowa Power Fund grant provides matching funds to install a series of photobioreactor units at Green Plains' Shenandoah ethanol plant. Water, heat and carbon dioxide will be recycled from the ethanol manufacturing process to support continuous algae production. The grant provides funding through the end of the first quarter of calendar year 2010 with installation of the pilot project expected in the third quarter of 2009.
"BioProcessAlgae and its technology partners have made significant progress in the engineering, design and development of photobioreactor systems for algae production," said Kevin Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of BioProcessAlgae. "The project will give us the opportunity to test our systems on a larger scale. This is a very important step toward system commercialization of algae technology."
"The Shenandoah algae project is an opportunity to help the environment, the ethanol industry and the Iowa economy," Becker stated. "Green Plains is committed to the advancement of next generation technologies and we appreciate the vision and assistance of Iowa Governor Chet Culver and the Iowa Office of Energy Independence in the development of this project."
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, NTR plc (a significant shareholder of Green Plains), CLARCOR Inc. and BioProcessH20.
About Green Plains
Green Plains Renewable Energy, Inc. is based in Omaha, Nebraska. Green Plains is a vertically-integrated, low-cost ethanol producer operating four ethanol plants in Iowa, Indiana and Tennessee with a combined expected operating capacity of 330 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains also operates an independent third-party ethanol marketing service, with marketing capacity of 305 million gallons of ethanol per year. Green Plains owns 51% of Blendstar, LLC, a Houston-based biofuel terminal operator with 6 facilities in 5 states. Green Plains' Agribusiness segment operates grain storage facilities and complementary agronomy, feed, and fuel businesses. Green Plains has grain storage capacity of approximately 22 million bushels.
About BioProcessAlgae
BioProcessAlgae LLC is a joint venture between Green Plains, CLARCOR Inc. (NYSE:CLC - News), BioProcessH2O LLC and NTR plc. BioProcessAlgae was created to commercialize advanced photobioreactor technologies for continuous production of algal biomass.
EXCERPT FROM GPRE's presentation at Wall Street Analyst Forum's 20th Annual Institutional Investor Conference
March 26, 2009 9:10 am ET
The transcript is on seekingalpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/128076-green-plains-renewable-energy-inc-wall-street-analyst-forum-s-20th-annual-institutional-investor-conference-transcript
EARLY IN PRESENTATION:
So who is Green Plains Renewable Energy? We are a leader in ethanol production, and marketing with a combined volume of 635 million gallons per year. That represents approximately 6% of the total US ethanol demand for this year. We have 330 million gallons of production capacity, 305 million gallons of third party marketing contracts. We continue to look to build each of our pieces of the platform, or we're going to look to expand ethanol production as well as in our marketing services.
What we're trying to do is build a vertically integrated ethanol platform that ranges all the way from the farm, where we provide agronomy services, all the way through to the blender, where we provide terminal services. And we're going to walk through each of those pieces of our platform today.
LATER IN PRESENTATION:
And this is – this is our biotech – or this is our investment in next generation. We have a small investment in an algae production company that’s working on commercializing photobioreactor technology for continuous algae production. We have a 25.5% interest in that company.
As you look at our partners, it’s a pretty impressive list. It’s CLARCOR, which is the $1.6 billion New York Stock Exchange-listed company; bioprocessH2O, which is a filtration company partially owned by CLARCOR; and, NTR plc, which is our largest shareholder. The four of us got together. We funded the enterprise. We believe our technology has a lot of potential. And our goal is to roll out a pilot project at our Green Plains Shenandoah plant in spring 2009. So hopefully, by July – June, July of this year, we will have a working photobioreactor producing algae at an ethanol plant.
If you think about what – what it takes to grow algae, it takes CO2, it takes warm water, it takes waste, it takes heat, and it takes sunlight. And we have most of those things in our ethanol plant. Light, the sunshine, we’re okay. We have the CO2. Then we produce a very clean CO2 at the ethanol plant. The thing about ethanol, ethanol is actually a closed-loop process. The CO2 that we emit in the atmosphere is used to grow the corn, the corn is grown, and then we use the corn then to make ethanol. That's why it's considered closed-loop.
What we can do actually now is to capture that CO2 into the algae production process, run it through the bioreactor. We produce a lot of very clean, warm water in the process of ethanol. We have large water cleaning systems at our plants. So we produce a lot of very warm water. We run that through the algae. We produce a lot of waste heat. We run that through the production. And then with the sunlight and the technology that we think we have, we’ll be able to grow algae in large scale photobioreactors. So we’ll see how that goes.
Again, we’re not going to spend a lot of money on R&D. We are not an R&D company. We don’t plan on being an R&D company. But we do have a little bit of our money invested into this company. We received a grant from the state of Iowa for $2.3 million, which is a matching grant. So we’re fully funded through our startup phase here on our pilot project.
Awesome! iBox updated. CEHMM also added under organization. I got the link for neptuneindustries.net from one of their PR's.
ex. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS136064+24-Jul-2008+MW20080724
I will still leave it up for now in case they bring it back online.
biofuel, Public Companies in iBox
I thought it might be a help to identify in the iBox which companies are currently public. I checked Yahoo Finance for each name and went to each site. Maybe everyone else on the board already knows which are public, but for newcomers it would be a help I think.
Biocentric Energy – [Pinksheets: BEHL]
GeoBioEnergy – [OTCBB: GBOE]
Global Green Solutions– [OTCBB: GGRN]
Green Plains Renewable Energy – [NASDAQ GM: GPRE]
GreenShift – [OTCBB: GERS]
Green Star Products – [Pinksheets: GSPI]
OriginOil – [OTCBB: OOIL]
Neptune Industries – [broken link] [OCTBB: NPDI]
PetroAlgae – [OTCBB: PALG]
PetroSun – [Pinksheets: PSUD]
Valcent Products – [OCTBB: VCTPF]
The rest are private, as far as I can tell.
Also, I believe Inventure and Inventure Chemical are the same company.
Thanks and regards.
CEHMM: not-for-profit in New Mexico
I’ve just begun to look into algae. Thanks for this board.
I stumbled on this not-for-profit research organization located at Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is in New Mexico’s piece of the southwest’s Permian Basin. I don't think it's been mentioned on the board so far. It’s called Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management (CEHMM). In spite of the name, it looks like their main project is their Algae Biodiesel Project.
This is a link to their site:
http://www.cehmm.org/
Sorry this post is so long, but I wanted to give enough detail to place them in the picture.
GOALS
I haven’t absorbed all the details, but they use a saltwater microalgae (with a very high oil content) so they can use the salt groundwater. Their hope, I gather, is to guide New Mexico to a leading place in algae cultivation.
Their plan apparently is to develop a full system and license the technology if they’re successful. March 7, 2008 article: “The Center for Hazardous Materials has so far invested about $5 million in the research. Lynn expects the technology to be commercially viable within two years, at which point it will be licensed to private partners.” April 2009: “A fully integrated, commercial scale system that places no burden on our domestic water supplies and can be run entirely on renewable energy is our goal. This means embedding wind, solar, and wastewaters into our strategic plan for the future.” (I don't know if this includes the processing into biodiesel, but their ambitious goals seem to point in that direction.)
A video from last summer/fall (from the home page, click on “Algae Biofuel”) talks about a goal of $80 per barrel.
Articles tracing their work so far can be found under “CEHMM News Articles” from the home page. Some of the articles are from Biodiesel Magazine and some are from local magazines and newspapers. I’ve skimmed most of them but haven’t yet read them carefully.
FUNDING
They work with New Mexico State University and are funded by federal earmarks (their term) and also through the state of New Mexico’s Energy and Innovation Fund. A State Representative is on the center’s BOD and apparently New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman is a supporter of alternative energy. (I note from a previous post that New Mexico's Senator Udall just got Sapphire some federal money for a New Mexico project):
http://www.cehmm.org/2007/10/what-senate-shift-could-mean-for-carlsbad/
From an October, 2007 article when Sen. Pete Domenici was retiring: “It probably goes without saying the Bingaman brings a different set of priorities to the table than Domenici. Bingaman is unlikely, for example, to ever be as much of a supporter of Global Nuclear Energy Partnership efforts as Domenici has been. However, Bingaman is just as likely to continue to be a strong supporter of Carlsbad’s efforts in biodiesel research.”
LATEST REPORT
[This is their latest information release, from April 2009, currently on the home page:]
New Algae Technology Brightens Future of Renewable Fuels
Dateline: April 2009
CEHMM has developed breakthrough technology for growing algae and producing oil from it. Algae oil is considered by many to be the most promising renewable source of oil that can be used to produce large quantities of biofuels without impacting the production of traditional food crops.
The new technology delivers large amounts of concentrated algae that gets over half of its dry weight from oil. Until now, the amount of oil that could be extracted from algae has been much lower. The algae was grown in New Mexico in outdoor, oval-shaped, “raceway” type ponds and extraction of the oils was done in Dexter Michigan by SRS, a company who is at the forefront of commercial extraction technology.
The first demonstration was conducted on 2000 gallons of concentrate and has since been repeated in order to validate the original results. The raw oils extracted from CEHMM’s algae show incredible purity and viability for fuel production. Industry specialists have long speculated that in order for algae biofuels to become commercially viable, a strain would have to be developed that yielded at least 25% oil. CEHMM is consistently growing algae with twice that oil content.
“Of course we’re excited about this,” stated Douglas Lynn, Executive Director for CEHMM, “At first we were being cautiously optimistic, but now we can predict our lipid (oil) levels and repeat those actions that stimulate lipid production in a procedural, scientifically sound manner.” By doing this CEHMM has abandoned many of the traditional aspects of algal cultivation and has discovered some new and innovative means for raising and harvesting these microorganisms. “Once we get to commercial demonstration with consistent yields, we’ll start looking at integrating water and energy conservation strategies into our project design. A fully integrated, commercial scale system that places no burden on our domestic water supplies and can be run entirely on renewable energy is our goal. This means embedding wind, solar, and wastewaters into our strategic plan for the future.” Lynn said.
Lynn credited his staff with the groundbreaking accomplishment and added, “Our partnership with New Mexico State University has been a critical component to this success story, and now we’re beginning to develop some lines of technological development with Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. I couldn’t be more fortunate than to be a member of this team.”
2007 BLOG REPORT FROM VEGETABLEOILROADTRIP.COM
[This is a couple of years old but it is useful because it gives a third-party view with a few colorful details and also gives a brief overview of algae production steps (good for neophytes like me).]
http://blog.vegetableoilroadtrip.com/2007/05/algae-in-desert-cehmm.html
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Algae in the desert: CEHMM
About a week and a half ago, we visited the wonderful folks at CEHMM, shot an hour and a half of video, saw their research, and generally had a good time. Here are my notes:
We drove into Carlsbad, New Mexico, a little mining and oil town in southeastern New Mexico surrounded by high desert. This humble location is home to one of the world's few algae-based biofuels research organizations.
CEHMM (pronounced "chem" - the Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management) is a research organization whose primary aim is to protect human and environmental health while advancing economic development of the area. If they are successful in their algae work, they will certainly have achieved this goal.
Producing biodiesel from algae requires 4 basic steps:
-- Growing the algae
-- Harvesting (separating water from algae)
-- Extracting the oil from the algae
-- Processing the oil into biodiesel
1. Growing
Growing algae is the easy part - algae requires sunlight, water, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and some way to protect the purity and health of the algae.
30 miles north of Carlsbad, in Artesia, NM, on the grounds of New Mexico State University's agricultural research station, reside CEHMM's test ponds. To protect their algae, they are using saltwater algae in a brine - the brine water protects the algae from intruders and keeps the strain fairly pure.
Here is a photo of test pond #1: the paddle wheel both agitates and aerates the algae - providing it with atmospheric CO2.
And here is a photo of the soon to be completed 1/8 acre test pond:
2. Harvesting
These algae ponds reach about 1 gram of (useful) biomass per liter of (useless) water. Getting rid of the water is a difficult step. There are many methods of harvesting algae (see this Wikipedia article on algaculture for other ideas), CEHMM is using a proprietary technology that involves membranes (think: very fine mesh filters that don't clog) to create a very concentrated mixture of water and algae.
3. Extracting
If harvesting is difficult, extracting is extremely difficult. This step is again proprietary (darn NDAs), and I was only given hand-waving explanations of how CEHMM accomplishes this bit. They are apparently looking at two competing technologies - one is able to produce biodiesel directly from the harvested algae by melting cell membranes, etc. I have no idea what other products are made in this process.
Another process they are looking at involves separating the oil from the cell membranes (which can then be composted, used as fertilizer, fed to animals, etc).
4. Processing
If CEHMM chooses to go with the second of the two extraction methods, they will have to process the resulting oil into biodiesel. In a retired gas station in Carlsbad, NM CEHMM has a small scale biodiesel production facility. Here is where they experiment with biodiesel production techniques (and fill up the local fire department with the resulting fuel).
Here is Terry showing off the second ever batch of biodiesel produced from algae. "A group in New Zealand beat us by a week."
I can't wait to see the fruits of CEHMM's research, it is my hope that in the not too distant future, many of us will be driving around on algae-produced biodiesel.
I'd love to get some feedback form this board
behl starting to make head way , look for good news tomorrow out of bio fuels conference , share are up 500% this month
Louisiana’s Aquatic Energy moving from pilot to demo stage with algae-to-energy; 2500 gallons per acre achieved without external CO2
http://biofuelsdigest.com/blog2/2009/04/24/louisianas-aquatic-energy-moving-from-pilot-to-demo-stage-with-algae-to-energy-2500-gallons-per-acre-achieved-without-external-co2/
In Louisiana, Aquatic Energy unveiled significant progress in its pilot algae-to-energy project in the Lake Charles-Lafayette corridor of the state. The company is now preparing to expand from a “couple of acre” pilot in Lake Charles, to an 30-acre demonstration project that will feature the company’s 1-acre open-pond system that is yielding 2500 gallons per acre without using an external CO2 source.
CEO David Johnston said that the company is able to support its yields with more than 70 percent of its CO2 coming from ambient CO2 in the atmosphere, with the remainder generated from the natural gas burned in the last stage of the algae drying process. The company said it is generating 32-34 tons per acre of algae biomass for the animal feed market, with a goal of 40 tons of meal per acre in the proposed expansion.
Algae paste from the Aquatic Energy pilot
Algae paste from the Aquatic Energy pilot
The company said it has funds identified to take it through the demonstration phase, but expects to raise $32 million for a 617-acre commercial-scale expansion, which will generate 1.5 Mgy in algal fuel and 24,500 tons of algae meal.
Johnston said that the 617 (250 hectare) acre size is the minimum scale necessary for a stand-alone operation. The company projects that it will reach 5000 hectares in production by 2016.
Johnston, a veteran of the Maryland biodiesel business, said he selected Louisiana because its rainfall exceeded its evaporation rate, giving him access to free water, plus the wide availability of lands formerly used in rice cultivation, which has the clay soil base, low cost and zoning and infrastructure for aquaculture.
Aquatic Energy pilot plant during construction phase
Aquatic Energy pilot plant during construction phase
“Water is the biggest factor,” he commented on the site selection process for open ponds. Interestingly, the use of clay soils allows the venture to proceed without using fixed structures or plastic liners on its ponds. Algae-to-energy pioneer John Benemann has commented on the impracticality of plastic liners, with cheap liners requiring too much repair and expensive liners making open-pond projects economically unfeasible.
Johnston also commented that he had looked at several alternative states that had extensive salt-water resources, but that no state environmental agency had seriously entertained permitting a project that would have the potential to leach extensive amounts of salt water into the soil.
Greenhouse Gas Analysis Reveals Solazyme’s Algal Biofuels Including SoladieselTM Reduce Field-to-Wheels (Full Lifecycle) Carbon Dioxide Emissions by More Than 85 Percent Versus Petroleum-Based Ultra-low Sulfur Diesel
http://algaeoilbiodiesel.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/greenhouse-gas-analysis-reveals-solazyme%E2%80%99s-algal-biofuels-including-soladieseltm-reduce-field-to-wheels-full-lifecycle-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-more-than-85-percent-versus-petroleum-base/
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A study undertaken by Life Cycle Associates, LLC, using the Argonne National Laboratories GREET model, concluded that full lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from field-to-wheels for Solazyme’s algal biofuel, SoladieselTM, are 85 to 93 percent lower than standard petroleum based ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD). The analysis also reveals that Solazyme’s advanced biofuels result in a significantly lower carbon footprint than any currently available first-generation biofuels.
“Solazyme’s advanced biofuels substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions per mile driven over petroleum-based fuels and result in much lower carbon emissions than currently available first generation biofuels. Lower process energy inputs combined with the production of algae derived feed results in much lower GHG emissions than currently available first-generation biofuels,” said Stefan Unnasch, President of Life Cycle Associates, LLC. “With findings like these, we are confident that algal-biofuels have the potential to play a significant role in alternative fuels and are excited that such a promising technology is in commercial development.”
Additionally, testing undertaken by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) ReFUEL laboratory shows that Solazyme, Inc.’s SoladieselBDTM significantly outperforms ULSD in total Hydrocarbons (THC), Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Particulate Matter tailpipe emissions. This includes an approximately 30 percent reduction in particulates, an approximately 20 percent reduction in CO and an approximately 10 percent reduction in THC.
“Solazyme is committed to working with the most rigorous and well-respected external experts to independently validate the real-world environmental benefits of our technologies. Part of our mandate is to ensure we are producing products that will meet our growing energy needs in an effective, green and highly-sustainable way,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme. “Solazyme’s SoladieselTM can exploit a wide variety of non-food feedstocks including cellulosics to achieve up to a 93 percent reduction in GHG emissions. We are very pleased with the findings by both NREL and Life Cycle Associates and look forward to playing a significant role in providing the clean, renewable fuels of the future.”
About Solazyme:
Solazyme, Inc. is a renewable oil production company that harnesses the power of microalgae to produce clean and scalable high performance biofuels, “green” chemicals and health products. The company was founded in 2003 and has its headquarters in South San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.solazyme.com.
OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Process to Extract Oil from Algae
http://www.originoil.com/company-news/originoil-announces-breakthrough-process-to-extract-oil-from-algae.html
Company to Rapidly Commercialize Patent-Pending, Single-Step Extraction Process -
Los Angeles, CA - April 20, 2009 - 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 an innovative single-step process to extract oil from algae. In addition to integrating this process into its own production system, OriginOil plans to rapidly commercialize the patent-pending process for use by others in the fast-growing algae industry.
Initial testing indicates that the new algae oil extraction process is simpler and more efficient than current systems, without requiring chemicals or significant capital expenditure for heavy machinery.
A dramatic time-lapse video posted today at www.originoil.com begins with a batch of algae that has just gone through OriginOil’s process. In less than an hour, the oil, water and biomass separate by gravity alone. Unlike conventional systems, no chemicals or heavy machinery are used in this single-step process, and no initial dewatering is required.
“Throughout the world, algae production is becoming a fact, but it still has to be harvested efficiently,” said Riggs Eckelberry, CEO of OriginOil. “Our breakthrough technology accomplishes key parts of the harvesting process in a single, cost-effective step. We are planning to make our new technology available to our fast-growing industry.”
The company recently filed for patent protection of the new algae oil extraction process, its seventh patent application, entitled “Device and Method for Separation, Cell Lysing and Flocculation of Algae From Water.” OriginOil CTO Dr Vikram Pattarkine said, “With this new process, we have greatly improved on our previous harvesting technology. We now have a single device and process that we will optimize and scale up in upcoming trials for commercialization.”
Harvesting algae is a challenge. Algae grow suspended in large volumes of water. Once ready for harvest, the algae culture must be concentrated and the oil extracted from each cell. Then, the oil, water and biomass must all be separated for processing. The new OriginOil process achieves all these steps in one pass.
In the process, the company’s Quantum Fracturing™ combines with electromagnetism and pH modification to break down cell walls, thereby releasing the oil within these cells. Algae oil rises to the top for skimming and refining, while the remaining biomass settles to the bottom for further processing as fuel and other valuable products.
CEO Riggs Eckelberry will provide process details at the National Algae Association’s Forum on April 30, 2009. Meanwhile, he will discuss the technology and OriginOil’s work with the Department of Energy on scaling up biofuels production in Washington, DC this week. “The Obama Administration has targeted renewable energy for 10 million new jobs in the next decade,” concluded Eckelberry. “OriginOil plans to license its technology to help transform algae into a renewable and sustainable replacement for petroleum.”
To learn more about OriginOil and its breakthrough single-step extraction process, please visit www.originoil.com.
Video:
http://www.originoil.com/multimedia/player.php?f=single-step-extraction-640.flv&w=640&h=360
Sapphire Energy Hikes Green Crude Production Estimates
http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2009/04/16/sapphire-energy-hikes-green-crude-production-estimates/
Citing a breakthrough, San Diego’s Sapphire Energy, a startup developing algae-to-fuel technology, today doubled its estimated production for 2011, saying that by then the company will be capable of producing 1 million gallons of diesel and jet fuel annually.
“We have made a recent significant technological breakthrough within our company and, combined with our ongoing development improvements, we’re able to project a higher number,” said C.J. Warner, who was named Sapphire’s president in December. “This is pretty exciting for us and, given the urgency of finding a renewable fuel solution across the nation and around the globe, we wanted to share our updated time line.” Warner, who provided the comment by email through a spokeswoman, did not explain the nature of Sapphire’s breakthrough.
Sapphire says it has developed proprietary methods that enable algae growing in non-potable water in desert areas to produce a “green crude” substitute that requires no changes to the petrochemical industry’s pipeline and refining infrastructure.
In a statement released by Sapphire around a military energy and fuels conference in Alexandria, VA, Sapphire vice president Brian Goodall said the company’s technology is ready now. The company says production will ramp up over the next several years, hitting the 1 million gallon figure sometime in 2011, climbing to 100 million gallons annually by 2018, and then to 1 billion gallons of fuel per year by 2025. Sapphire says this means it could be supplying enough fuel to meet nearly 3 percent of the country’s 36 billion gallon renewable fuel standard.
In January, Sapphire participated in test flights that successfully substituted jet fuel made from its “green crude” for conventional jet fuel. Aviation fuel is viewed as a key market for the biofuels industry because the U.S. Air Force is the largest single customer, and the specifications are more rigorous than for any other transportation fuel. The company says it has conducted several test flights with commercial airlines Continental and JAL.
Nanofarming technology harvest biofuel oils without harming algae
http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/Nanofarming-technology-harvest-biofuel-oils-without-harming-algae-7896-2/
AMES, Iowa Algae is widely touted as the next best source for fueling the world's energy needs. But one of the greatest challenges in creating biofuels from algae is that when you extract the oil from the algae, it kills the organisms, dramatically raising production costs. Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University have developed groundbreaking "nanofarming" technology that safely harvests oil from the algae so the pond-based "crop" can keep on producing.
Commercialization of this new technology is at the center of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the Ames Laboratory and Catilin, a nano-technology-based company that specializes in biofuel production. The agreement targets development of this novel approach to reduce the cost and energy consumption of the industrial processing of non- food source biofuel feedstock. The three-year project is being funded with $885,000 from DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and $216,000 from Catilin and $16,000 from Iowa State University in matching funds.
The so-called "nanofarming" technology uses sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles to extract oil from the algae. The process doesn't harm the algae like other methods being developed, which helps reduce both production costs and the production cycle. Once the algal oil is extracted, a separate and proven solid catalyst from Catilin will be used to produce ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and EN certified biodiesel.
The potential of algae for fuel is tremendous as up to 10,000 gallons of oil may be produced on a single acre of land. The DOE estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require only 15,000 square miles, which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland. This is less than one-seventh the area devoted to corn production in the United States in 2000.
The driving force behind this combination of nanotechnology and biofuels is Ames Laboratory Chemical and Biological Sciences Program Director Victor Lin. Since 2000, Lin, who is also a chemistry professor at Iowa State University, has been leading research on using nanotechnology to dramatically change the production process of biodiesel. This successful technology led Lin to found Catilin one and a half years ago.
"By combining nanotechnology, chemistry and catalysis, we have been able to find solutions that have not been considered to date," Lin said. "Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University offer valuable research capabilities and resources that will play a key role in this exciting collaboration with Catilin."
According to Marek Pruski, Ames Laboratory senior physicist and co- investigator on the project, phase one and two of the project will cover the culturing and selection of microalgae as well as the development of the specific nanoparticle-based extraction and catalyst technologies for the removal of algal oil and the production of biodiesel, respectively. Phase three will focus on scale-up of the catalyst and pilot plant testing on conversion to biodiesel.
"When we ultimately put together this exceptional extraction technology with Catilin's existing solid biodiesel catalyst, we will dramatically increase the reality of renewable energy," said Catilin's CEO, Larry Lenhart. "Given the Obama administration's objectives, the timing is perfect."
Algae biodiesel technology to go commercial this year
http://www.biofuelreview.com/content/view/1866/1
Algae biodiesel technology to go commercial this year
The order for what is potentially the first commercial algae biodiesel plant should be signed later this year according to Dr John Scott, chairman of the US company Petroalgae. Speaking to Biofuel Review at the World Biofuels Markets in Brussels today (17th March) Dr Scott said that the company was now in a position to supply a commercially viable algae biodiesel plant that could produce between 4,000 to 9,000 gallons per acre, depending on customer requirements.
Petroalgae has developed a technology, says Scott, that can produce "just a shade under 50 grammes/square metre/day of algae" right now and should be able to produce somewhere between 60 and 70 g/sqm/day within the next couple of months. This, he says, makes the technology truly commercial.
The company is offering turnkey plants, outside the USA, of 5,000 hectares which can, depending on the algae variety used in the system, be tuned to focus on producing fuel or protien. The variety of alage strains available with the system also allows the plant to be finely tuned to local conditions, maximizing output, explained Scott. "We're not", he added, "just a one strain pony."
The 5,000 hectare size was chosen, said Scott, because it is the point where several business targets, including economies of scale, roughly meet making the plant the most effective from a variety of benchmarks.
The meal produced from the plant is also treated as a premium product in the Petroalgae model, producing a high protien feed for many animals. "The varieties of algae we have allow the plant owner to choose to produce more biodiesel or more meal", explained Scott. "For some this will be hugely attractive."
The model the company is offering outside the USA is based on the 5,000 hectare module plant, and is sold commercially on an upfront license payment and a royalty stream over a 20 year period. The customer is also responsible for providing the site and the carbon dioxide. The model within the USA will be different, though the company still has to nail down the detail of the US offering. The change in business model for the US market is primarily because of the way the government incentivizes the production of biodiesel, explained Dr Scott.
Sapphire Energy Algae to Fuel Demonstration Project - $951,000
- Sapphire Energy getting some stimulus funding.
http://tomudall.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=308562
This funding establishes a demonstration project in Portales, New Mexico, to create and grow a fuel-producing algae using technology that genetically enhances algal organisms. It is estimated that 100 local jobs will be created from this funding and could help in significantly reducing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Down market? oil? Haven't heard many news specific to algae companies since the Jan algae flight demonstration. For now I'm focusing on other investments.. but keeping a close eye on the algae sector. Still waiting to see who gets to economic commercialization first. I think once oil recovers this sector will pick up steam. Also the Obama administration putting some attention into biofuels should help this sector. For now the economic downturn is impacting a lot of companies. GreenFuel recently laid off a big chunk of their staff..
thanx - al ways curious when post disappear - a broad spectrum board like this have pretty good range of discussion
iHub admin deleted it. Off topic.
Lampasas, you or your company have attempted to grow and harvest algal oil? Can you tell us to what extent your experience is in this sector? We are mostly investors looking for companies advancing in this field. Have you been able to extract enough feedstock to make viable biofuel? What kind of other problems are you facing? What you describe with the tubing problem is one area of concern I see with photobioreactors. It's not just the lifespan of the tube but also what about cleaning and maintaining the tubes on a regular basis? Does the algae not stick to the surface of the tube and thus blocking more light? How are you extracting the algal oil? These are the very questions that plague algae from becoming a viable source of feedstock for biofuel. Thanks.
thanx - did come up, not much meat on first look, regurgatated other data and lots of yip yap on capabilities --- not complaining but is frank reality of many of the algae firms - no meat on the bone
Ihub added the parenthesis as part of the link. Try this one:
http://www.biocentricenergyalgae.com
one of the leads appears to be ex-solix - their pbr appears to be early generation solix (that Solix abandoned)
location appears to have some water in area due to nearby center pivot irrigation, also likely source of water could be the N Valmy power plant that would have blowdown water from their cooling towers that could be used.
link shows up broken, do they have a new website?
the light penetration is an old wives tale - I have large scale lab tanks (500 gal) and we get good light penetration accross the tank - diameter is about 4 foot - get about one half the sun's lumens on the other side of the tank - this is at commercial production algal densities - if one does careful read of the most successful installations, one finds that algae are very happy at lower light intensities - any of the formerly wild strains have to be able to survive on cloudy days --- other literature warns about too much sunlight - what we see is that even for chlorella, there is movement in and out of the direct sun.
I think with artificial lighting, one can increase production per unit volume of reactor but am sure the energy balance is negative so the resultant product has to be something that sells for a premium and frankly will never be transportation fuel - maybe algal gel caps or energy bars but nothing that I could afford to put into my fueltank
Bionavitas Announces Breakthrough Algae Growth Technology for Biofuels Production
- Bionavitas's technology sounds very similiar to that of Origin Oil. Both using artificial lighting to facilitate algae growth. This article brings up a good point about light penetrating deeper. However I don't know about the economics of using artificial light. These companies have to start demonstrating on a large commercial scale to determine economic feasibility.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/bionavitas-announces-breakthrough-algae-growth-technology-for-biofuels-production,727861.shtml
REDMOND, Wash. - (Business Wire) Bionavitas, Inc. today unveiled its patent-pending Light Immersion Technology™ (LIT™), a scientific breakthrough that dramatically increases algae yields in a cost-efficient and scalable model. Algae, shown to have the potential for solving the reliance on fossil fuels for energy production, are widely recognized as an important source for biodiesel production. Harnessing the power of the sun or an artificial light source by immersing it in the culture, Light Immersion Technology effectively produces an order of magnitude more algae biomass than existing growth methods, thereby increasing yields and reducing the cost to make algae-based biofuels price competitive with petroleum products.
Algae are the ultimate feedstock for biofuel production, promising yields that are hundreds of times greater than those of traditional land-based oil crops such as soy beans or rapeseed (canola oil). The dramatic yields depend upon the efficient use of solar energy not possible using previously existing technologies. Before Bionavitas made its Light Immersion Technology available to the public, nearly every large scale approach to algae growth has been challenged by a simple fact of nature: as algae grow, they become so dense they block the light needed for continued growth.
This “self-shading” phenomenon results in a layer that limits the amount of algae per acre that can be grown and harvested. The Light Immersion Technology developed by Bionavitas fundamentally changes this equation by enabling the algae growth layer in open ponds to be up to a meter deep. This represents a 10 to 12 time increase in yield over previous methods that produced only 3-5 centimeters of growth.
“With the recent successful test flights by Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines using biofuels made partially with algae, we’re seeing a broader recognition and acceptance of the huge commercial potential for algae,” said Michael Weaver, co-founder and CEO of Bionavitas. “Our Light Immersion Technology gives algae a legitimate shot at becoming a cost-effective and sustainable biofuel feedstock because we have cracked the code of the previous problem related to self-shading in algae growth. This new technology is a game-changer because it results in quantities of algae production necessary for commercial use.”
At the core of Light Immersion Technology is an innovative approach at bringing light to the algae culture in both open ponds and closed bioreactors through a system of light rods which extend deep into the algae culture. By distributing light below the surface “shade” layer and releasing the light in controlled locations, algae cultures can grow denser. In external canal systems, the rods distribute light from the sun into the culture. This abundant and free energy source is ideal for generating large amounts of algae for use as biofuels.
In closed bioreactors, the rods evenly distribute more readily absorbed red and blue spectrum light from high efficiency LEDs. While the LEDs increase the cost of production, algae grown in these systems are used for higher value markets such as nutraceuticals.
“In order to grow algae in the large-scale, cost-efficient manner needed for biofuels, we have specifically designed our technology to require as little energy as possible,” said Weaver. “Light Immersion Technology has all of the attributes needed to allow algae to compete with petroleum. It is designed as a passive, low input, net energy positive system which is inexpensive to mass produce.”
Because Light Immersion Technology is designed to be independent of the light source, distributing solar as well as artificial light, Bionavitas can leverage its technology across many marketplaces. Using the high quality, high density algae produced with Light Immersion Technology, Bionavitas plans to make the technology available for three distinct purposes:
Biofuels:
Light Immersion Technology dramatically increases the yield and lowers the cost of algae production, thereby enabling algae’s future as a biofuel feedstock that is renewable, carbon neutral, and can be produced at a comparable cost to current petroleum resources.
Health:
To address the nutraceutical and pharmaeutical markets, Bionavitas will put its Light Immersion Technology to work in a series of closed bioreactors to create high quality algae that meets the specifications of the health industry.
Environment:
By co-locating with a heavy industrial or power generation operation, Bionavitas will put algae to work in cleaning up toxic and/or contaminated water sources and capturing large carbon dioxide emissions — effectively removing toxins such as high concentrations of heavy metals or excess nutrients as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
About Bionavitas
Bionavitas is a Redmond, Washington-based bioscience company committed to revolutionizing the clean technology industry. Bionavitas harnesses the power of algae for biofuel production, health and nutraceutical products and environmental remediation. The company’s innovative, patent-pending Light Immersion Technology™ addresses the problem of algae “self-shading” by allowing more light to penetrate the algae biomass. This permits the algae to grow deeper and thicker, resulting in the more efficient and expansive algae production necessary for cost effective commercial applications. More information is available at www.bionavitas.com.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=5903564&lang=en
very similar to approach we are doing in Texas - poly tubes with UV inhibitors - poly-tube technology is well-developed and widely used for ag irrigation, some sites are in sugar cane fields where tubing gets run over by tractors and pulled equipment - tubing guys claim multi-year life --- essentially all of the poly-tube has colorant, in talking to poly-tube manufacturers, seems they can produce without color but get the UV protection - samples we got deeteriorated within 5 months under normal sunlight - almost immediately got pinhole leaks followed by running cracks and then flaking as material failed
tech needs more work
Diversified is an accumulator company - appears to partner with a techno company - I am familar with the Hydro-Max technology - curiously Diversified has done zero with it since "acquiring" the techno
need to find out who is real techno developer for the algae system
appears to have new symbol PALG
what a crock of crap - what makes algae work is the use of sunlight to supply the energy to make the photosynthesis work - likely likely that using artificial light is energy negative and you would never get enough energy from the algea to generate the electricity you need for the lights - NREL looked at this and abandoned this strategy.
looks sexy, would attract ignorant investors but not sure how makes any sense -
good forum and discussion!
1) yield is still a question frankly, not a single algae company is sustaining yields of those levels - what they do in the lab is not getting translated into anything like commercial production
2) appears to be right on analysis
Revisiting Algae Biofuel Stocks (OriginOil Inc)
Submitted by Frank Lara Jr. on Sun, 01/11/2009 - 20:30.
in CVX GSPI OOIL RDS.A Investor Attention
Its been a month since we published Investing in Algae Biofuel Stocks, let's take a look at how the stocks have performed (including OriginOil Inc. (OTC:OOIL)) and this month the first flight of algae-fuelled jet took place.
The Algae Index
OTC:GERS PINK:NNFC OTC:VCTPF PINK:GSPI OTC:OOIL PINK:PSUD NYSE:RDS.A NYSE:CVX
The big winner for a one month gain of 40% is OriginOil Inc. (OTC:OOIL), here's how the rest of the stocks have done, only one other company from our Algae Index had a positive return:
Symbol Dec 8th Price Jan 9th Price Gain/Loss % Gain
GERS $ 0.02 $ 0.02 $ (0.01) -20.8%
NNFC $
0.00 $
0.00 $
(0.00) -42.9%
VCTPF $ 0.31 $ 0.27 $ (0.04) -12.9%
GSPI $ 0.02 $ 0.02 $ (0.00) -2.2%
OOIL $ 0.30 $ 0.42 $ 0.12 40.0%
PSUD $ 0.06 $ 0.06 $ (0.00) -5.0%
RDS.A $ 50.46 $ 53.98 $ 3.52 7.0%
CVX $ 78.09 $ 72.82 $ (5.27) -6.7%
Last week a U.S. airline has completed the first test flight of a plane partly powered by biofuel derived from algae. The 90-minute flight by a Continental Boeing 737-800 went better than expected, a spokesperson said.
One of its engines was powered by a 50-50 blend of biofuel and normal aircraft fuel.
The biofuel used in the demonstration flight was a blend of two different types of alternative oils - algae and jatropha.
Jatropha is a plant that can grow successfully in poor soils and marginal land, yet it yields four times more fuel per hectare than soybean.
However, algae is viewed by many as a key fuel for the future because it is fast growing, does not compete with food crops for arable land, and yields up to 30 times more fuel than standard energy crops.
But despite advances in the technology, biofuels derived from algae have yet to be proven as commercially competitive.
But back to OriginOil Inc., the company was covered by Reuters on Dec 31st, here is the story:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - One could say they are working on the green slime that could change the world.
In an unassuming converted warehouse in Los Angeles, the 10 employees of OriginOil are working to perfect the way microscopic algae is grown and refined.
They hope that within a few years the methods they use to make small batches of greenish-colored algae mixtures in the laboratory will be imitated in 2,500-gallon (9,460 liter) tanks around the world. And that the oil extracted from the algae will in many cases replace petroleum.
OriginOil is in a race with hundreds of other companies to find an affordable way to convert algae to energy. Algae promises to use less land, water and other resources than other biofuels, such as corn.
The company is led by co-founders and brothers Riggs Eckelberry, CEO and president, and inventor Nicholas Eckelberry. Recently hired Vikram Pattarkine is chief technology officer.
OriginOil was founded in June 2007 and came up with its key invention -- a bioreactor that speeds algae growth and acts more like a brewery than an algae farm -- in February 2008. It plans to roll out working models built by partners beginning in 2010.
Among the hundreds of companies seeking algae energy, "less than a dozen stand out," said Riggs Eckelberry, and he includes his own among the elite few.
"We are more of a collaborator than a competitor," he said, explaining a major reason why he felt the company stood out.
OriginOil, he says, wants to provide the method, the technology of algae growth and leave the manufacture of machines and devices to others. In OriginOil's plan, it would link with licensed partners around the world where its style of algae bioreactors would be deployed.
BARRIERS
"We think of ourselves as the operating system of the algae industry," Riggs Eckelberry said.
"Once all the technology barriers to make algae are overcome -- and that goes hand-in-hand with resolving the price barriers -- everybody is going to make algae. It won't be five producers. It will be 100,000 producers around the world," he said.
He said costs of the technology were still being studied, along with oil yield but that yields compared favorably with large-scale algae refineries in Japan, although OriginOil's results were from small tanks in the laboratory.
OriginOil's technology involves a Helix BioReactor. A shaft in the middle of the bioreactor, which will be built to scale depending on the size of the tank, rotates to allow low-energy lights to speed the growth of algae in layers around-the-clock. The same system feeds the algae nutrients and carbon dioxide it needs.
The oil is then extracted from the organism's cell walls using a chemical-free microwave process. The technology is modular, scalable and portable, Riggs Eckelberry said.
In an algae pond, growth occurs only near the top that is exposed to sunlight. Algae is also prone to being eaten or damaged by infection or chemicals in the pond.
Nicholas Eckelberry said the system he and Pattarkine work with limits those types of problems to a single tank, without impacting a tank stacked right on it.
Technology being developed by some other firms involves growing algae in a series of large plastic bags.
Privately held Sapphire Energy of San Diego has made a form of gasoline from algae and is lobbying the incoming Obama Administration to fund algae research.
Sapphire has been funded by $100 million in venture capital from Bill Gates, Arch Venture Partners and others.
Nine algae-to-energy companies were on a list of the "50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy" complied by Biofuels Digest and issued earlier this month.
Sapphire was listed number 2, while OriginOil was at number 45.
Riggs Eckelberry said he was surprised his company was even on the list.
"We are still very much in the research and development stage," he said.
OriginOil ended trade on Tuesday at 38 cents per share, against a year-high of 51 cents and a low of 18 cents. Riggs Eckelberry says the company was adequately funded and would begin reporting revenues by 2010 but won't be profitable for a few years.
"Our investors want us to build out our technology first and not rush it," he said.
To learn more about OriginOil, try visiting their website: http://www.originoil.com/investors/investors.html
http://wallstnation.com/algae-stocks-investing-01112009.html
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The purpose of this board is to not only examine companies in the algae to biofuel sector, but to see the "cream" rise to the top. This sector is a whole new industry that can change the way we fuel the world from petroleum to algae based biofuel. Over time we should be able to tell who the winners and the losers are in this industry by cross examining all the players in this game. Some of the companies listed may be in very questionable situations and being listed does not mean they are endorse in any way. They are there because they "appear" to be players. But we will see who the "top" players are in this alternative energy sector as time goes on and that is the point of this board. Great DD skills are called for! Do not use this board to promote any one company but use it as a cross examination for all companies.
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* Many of the above list was obtained from http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Biodiesel_from_Algae_Oil
* The information listed above may not be accurate descriptions of the companies and are subject to change.
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