Biocentric Energy Holdings, Inc. (BEHL)

[inthemix]

CHINESE ALGAE FARMING
Thursday, 02 July 2009
Trevor Williams
China is starting to get into the bio-algae market in a big way; with Chinese innovation group ENN
making large investments in algae bioreactors to help sequestrate carbon from China’s coal fired
power plants.
The 24,000 employee, 4 US$billion company, is heavily involved in the energy business and
developing technology to pass carbon dioxide through algae to help reduce China’s greenhouse gas
emissions from their coal power plants that currently provide 70% of the electrical energy needs of the
country.
Many people are searching for the bio-algae ‘holy grail’ (see Algae and Bacteria Oil), and whoever
gets there first are likely to be both the Carbon Sequestration Kings and the new Algae-Oil Queens of
the future, as well as being fabulously wealthy, they will also be doing a great job in cleaning up the
carbon emissions mess.
It seems ENN are pulling out all the stops in making the process as green as possible, by using wind
and solar power to make hydrogen, and to drive the machinery to capture and compress the carbon
dioxide emitted from the coal plants. They also have an algae demonstration facility and plan on a
commercial scale operation in the next few years. Since algae’s growth rate is exponential –it doubles
in number every couple of hours - there might soon be billions of microscopic Chinese algae happily
chewing on carbon dioxide atoms and making synthetic oil in the process. This not only helps reduce
global greenhouse gases but also provides an alternative to fossil fuel oil.
ENN’s other work on sub-surface carbon dioxide sequestration is another high-tech approach to
minimizing emissions but they are also maximizing use of fossil resources by using gasification to
access difficult coal seams, and extracting methane from the coal while avoiding the release of sulphur
dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. While not as clean as just leaving it underground and going for
renewable energy, if you must use it use it as cleanly as possible.
All this effort is aimed at trying to mitigate the greenhouse gases coming from China’s massive
electrical demand which has been growing as rapidly as its economy, requiring a new 5ooMW sized
coal power plant every few weeks. China plans on building upwards of 600GW of extra generating
capacity by 2030 that means an estimated 1200 coal-fired power plants. No wonder China’s
greenhouse gas emissions have been growing at around 3.5% a year and they have become the world’s
largest greenhouse gas emitter.
Let’s hope they can find the magic formula for carbon-digesting algae for China and for the planet.

Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specialising in
renewable energy, power grid modelling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in
Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international
experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications
satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.