Algae technology is unique in its ability to produce a useful, high-value oil and animal feed from waste Carbon Dioxide and poor quality water. Algae can be a provider of economic, non-polluting "algae oil" which can in turn be used as an input for the production of biodiesel. It is believed that algae can yield between 1,000 to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre, depending on the specific strain.
“At $10 to $20 a barrel of oil, algae is tough to bring to market,” says Thomas Byrne, secretary of the ABO. “If petroleum is at $50 to $60 a barrel, that’s very different. We think algae will be competitive.”
Bill Gates just invested in the San Diego start-up Sapphire Energy, which intends to make auto fuel from algae and then expand into developing gasoline equivalents like diesel and jet fuel.
“The yield is much higher than anything else we know of, and it’s not competing with food sources,” says Bill Glover, director of environmental strategy for Boeing Commercial Aircraft. “We want people to enjoy commercial aviation with a clean-energy solution. This is a way to do that.”
“We’re getting tremendous interest from plastics companies -- some really big companies -- that want to go over to green plastics,” Cohen says. “No one’s [gone] public yet, and it’s still in the research stage, but algae plastics and algae packaging are coming.”
The first step to any of this, though, is getting the algae oil. Companies such as Sapphire and Solazyme put the time horizon for their products at three to five years, but experts say it may be 10 years before the supply of algal oil is large enough to be felt in the market. Still, Solazyme’s biodiesel (Soladiesel) was tested in military trucks in April, and a Chicago chemistry teacher and his class of 140 students managed to produce enough algae biodiesel to drive a Volkswagen Vanagon to the Sears Tower from Al Raby School for Community and Environment on the West Side. And if a class of chemistry students can make it happen, then the rest of the world can’t be far behind.
10/02/10
For some time, we've been hearing about a lot of interest among scientists in the prospect of harvest algae to run vehicles. The big attraction: it's green, literally, and it grows fast. Now Ford is getting on board.
Michael Bellefeuille looks at algae inside a test tank at the XL Renewables Inc. research facility in Casa Grande, Ariz., on Thursday, May 22, 2008.
Ford says it wants to better understand the use of biomass to produce future biofuels as part of an overall strategy to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and address climate change.
The big automaker is only the latest to get on the algae bus. Big energy companies, universities and startups have been pondering whether algae could be the fuel of the future. That picture at right is from 2008, for instance. In it, Michael Bellefeuille looks at algae inside a test tank at the XL Renewables Inc. research facility in Casa Grande, Ariz.
Ford says it sees algae as one renewable fuel it needs to study:
"Ford has a long history of developing vehicles that run on renewable fuels and the increased use of biofuels is an important element of our sustainability strategy now and moving forward," said Tim Wallington, technical leader with the Ford Systems Analytics and Environmental Sciences Department.
Ford says algae biofuel research received an added boost this spring through a bill introduced in the House, the Green Jobs Act of 2010, that offers investment tax credits for algae-based biorefineries.
This year, Ford researchers visited Wayne State University's National Biofuels Energy Laboratory, which is actively analyzing suitable algae strains that could be used as a feedstock for biodiesel. The Ford researchers, part of the company's Systems Analytics and Environmental Sciences Department, also have conducted in-house research on the opportunities and challenges of producing biodiesel from algae oil.
"Algae have some very desirable characteristics as a potential biofuel feedstock and Ford wants to show its support any efforts that could lead to a viable, commercial-scale application of this technology," said Sherry Mueller, a research scientist at Ford.