Algae

U.T. researchers breaking new ground in biofuels

General Algae News , , , , ,

With the price of gas still putting a serious dent in your pocketbook, the search for alternatives to fossil fuel is a priority for researchers.

Scientists at the University of Texas are making breakthroughs which could turn a common species of green algae named Chlorella into the newest source of diesel fuel for cars and trucks. The process is called “lysing.”

“It’s been well-studied,” Dr. Rhykka Connelly with the U.T. Center for Electromechanics said. “It’s known to produce significant amounts of oil under stress conditions.”

As promising as algae may be, there are still a number of obstacles keeping it from being an economically viable alternative.

The process to extract the oil from the algae is the first challenge faced by researchers. The team at U.T. say they have developed a new cost-effective way to pull the oil from the Chlorella with a new device.

“Before (the procedure), they look nice and round, they look like little tennis balls. Afterwards, their cell walls are stripped off,” Connelly said. “The pulse width is very short, making the power consumption very low, making this a very cost-effective way to bust open the algae.”

Next, researchers are faced with the challenge to separate the oil from the organic matter without using poisonous solvents. The U.T. team says they’ve figured that out as well.

“There’s absolutely no contact with the solvents that are used to remove the algae oil,” Connelly said.

The last hurdle is to grow enough algae to be able to scale up the process. A company involved in the project called AlgEternal designed what they call an “algae reactor”.

“At peak capacity, we’ll be able to offer the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics approximately five thousand gallons a day,” Michael Jochum with AlgEternal said.

All of the equipment used by the U.T. team to turn the algae into oil is compact enough to fit inside of a trailer.

“We can go to any location, back up to that pond and pump in green pond water,” Mike Werst with U.T. said. “We go through the electromechanical lysing. Then we have an oil separation unit where we literally have oil dripping out the other end.”

The end product is similar to vegetable oil and still needs to be refined, but thanks to the work here at UT, algae-based biofuels may soon be a viable replacement for fossil fuels.

Source: http://austin.ynn.com/content/top_stories/280583/u-t–researchers-breaking-new-ground-in-biofuels

Algae Biotech

Biofuel- and Biotech Companies , , , ,

Algae Biotech is a company founded in 2008 with the head office in Spain and a branch office in the Netherlands. Algae Biotech’s core business started with the idea of replacing the highly unsustainable food grade fish oil with sustainably grown and processed food grade algae oil. This way, we would offer consumers of fish oil healthier and more sustainably produced omega-3 food products and supplements containing EPA fatty acid obtained from microalgae.

The growing of the algae, as well as the process technologies involved have been developed by sister company CleanAlgae and parent company FeyeCon B.V. respectively

Algae Biotech SL’s major shareholder is a Dutch company called FeyeCon B.V., which specializes in the application of scientific and carbon dioxide technology. FeyeCon employees over 40 people from a mainly scientific background, many of which supply knowledge and expertise to Algae Biotech SL and its associated companies.

FeyeCon DI Logo

Algae Biotech SL has a sister company, CleanAlgae SL, which focuses on the growing of algae. At this moment, CleanAlgae SL is developing its main growing operations in Gran Canaria, with its initial pilot algae growing facility on an area of 2500 square meters being located in Den Bosch, The Netherlands. CleanAlgae plans to be a substantial grower of micro-algae in the near future.

CleanAlgae S.L. logo
Source: http://www.algaebiotech.es

Algae Could Replace 17% of U.S. Oil Imports

General Algae News , , , ,

High oil prices and environmental and economic security concerns have triggered interest in using algae-derived oils as an alternative to fossil fuels. But growing algae — or any other biofuel source — can require a lot of water.

However, a new study shows that being smart about where we grow algae can drastically reduce how much water is needed for algal biofuel. Growing algae for biofuel, while being water-wise, could also help meet congressionally mandated renewable fuel targets by replacing 17 percent of the nation’s imported oil for transportation, according to a paper published in the journal Water Resources Research.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that water use is much less if algae are grown in the U.S. regions that have the sunniest and most humid climates: the Gulf Coast, the Southeastern Seaboard and the Great Lakes.

“Algae has been a hot topic of biofuel discussions recently, but no one has taken such a detailed look at how much America could make – and how much water and land it would require — until now,” said Mark Wigmosta, lead author and a PNNL hydrologist. “This research provides the groundwork and initial estimates needed to better inform renewable energy decisions.”

Algal biofuel can be made by extracting and refining the oils, called lipids, that algae produce as they grow. Policy makers and researchers are interested in developing biofuels because they can create fewer overall greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels. And biofuels can be made here in the United States. In 2009, slightly more than half of the petroleum consumed by the U.S. was from foreign oil.

Wigmosta and his co-authors provide the first in-depth assessment of America’s algal biofuel potential given available land and water. The study also estimated how much water would need to be replaced due to evaporation over 30 years. The team analyzed previously published data to determine how much algae can be grown in open, outdoor ponds of fresh water while using current technologies. Algae can also be grown in salt water and covered ponds. But the authors focused on open, freshwater ponds as a benchmark for this study. Much of today’s commercial algae production is done in open ponds.

Crunching the Numbers

First, the scientists developed a comprehensive national geographic information system database that evaluated topography, population, land use and other information about the contiguous United States. That database contained information spaced every 100 feet throughout the U.S., which is a much more detailed view than previous research. This data allowed them to identify available areas that are better suited for algae growth, such as those with flat land that isn’t used for farming and isn’t near cities or environmentally sensitive areas like wetlands or national parks.

Next, the researchers gathered 30 years of meteorological information. That helped them determine the amount of sunlight that algae could realistically photosynthesize and how warm the ponds would become. Combined with a mathematical model on how much typical algae could grow under those specific conditions, the weather data allowed Wigmosta and team to calculate the amount of algae that could realistically be produced hourly at each specific site.

Water for Oil

The researchers found that 21 billion gallons of algal oil, equal to the 2022 advanced biofuels goal set out by the Energy Independence and Security Act, can be produced with American-grown algae. That’s 17 percent of the petroleum that the U.S. imported in 2008 for transportation fuels, and it could be grown on land roughly the size of South Carolina. But the authors also found that 350 gallons of water per gallon of oil — or a quarter of what the country currently uses for irrigated agriculture — would be needed to produce that much algal biofuel.

The study also showed that up to 48 percent of the current transportation oil imports could be replaced with algae, though that higher production level would require significantly more water and land. So the authors focused their research on the U.S. regions that would use less water to grow algae, those with the nation’s sunniest and most humid climates.

But the authors also found that algae’s water use isn’t that different from most other biofuel sources. While considering the gas efficiency of a standard light-utility vehicle, they estimated growing algae uses anywhere between 8.6 and 50.2 gallons of water per mile driven on algal biofuel. In comparison, data from previously published research indicated that corn ethanol can be made with less water, but showed a larger usage range: between 0.6 and 61.9 gallons of water per mile driven. Several factors — including the differing water needs of specific growing regions and the different assumptions and methods used by various researchers — cause the estimates to range greatly, they found.

Because conventional petroleum gas doesn’t need to be grown like algae or corn, it doesn’t need as much water. Previously published data indicated conventional gas uses between about 0.09 and 0.3 gallons of water per mile.

More to Consider

Looking beyond freshwater, the authors noted algae has several advantages over other biofuel sources. For example, algae can produce more than 80 times more oil than corn per hectare a year. And unlike corn and soybeans, algae aren’t a widespread food source that many people depend on for nutrition. As carbon dioxide-consuming organisms, algae are considered a carbon-neutral energy source. Algae can feed off carbon emissions from power plants, delaying the emissions’ entry into the atmosphere. Algae also digest nitrogen and phosphorous, which are common water pollutants. That means algae can also grow in — and clean — municipal waste water.

“Water is an important consideration when choosing a biofuel source,” Wigmosta said. “And so are many other factors. Algae could be part of the solution to the nation’s energy puzzle — if we’re smart about where we place growth ponds and the technical challenges to achieving commercial-scale algal biofuel production are met.”

Next up for Wigmosta and his colleagues is to examine non-freshwater sources like salt water and waste water. They are also researching greenhouse ponds for use in colder climates, as well as economic considerations for algal biofuel production.

 

Source: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/04/study-algae-could-replace-17-of-u-s-oil-imports

Algae that turned toxic stumps scientists

General Algae News , , , ,

For years, when Washington state health officials tested shellfish for toxins produced by microscopic algae, they zeroed in on two types of poisons.

Now there are three.

The state Department of Health reported this month that a family on the Olympic Peninsula was the first ever in the United States to contract diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DHS). A man and two children became sick from eating mussels contaminated by a naturally occurring biotoxin in Sequim Bay.

The toxin is produced by a family of marine phytoplankton, Dinophysis, that has been tracked in Washington waters for decades, but has never sickened anyone. The same family of organisms has caused illnesses in Europe and Japan for decades.

Marine-algae experts are struggling to figure out why it suddenly became poisonous here.

“What’s making this happen now? That’s the $100 million question,” said Vera Trainer, a harmful-algal-bloom expert with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “You might as well ask why did the dandelions bloom in your yard last year and not this year. It’s probably a variety of factors.”

The arrival of this strain of biotoxin comes with more questions than answers and is likely to complicate the lives of shellfish gatherers and health officials.

Unlike Washington’s more common shellfish illnesses , the potentially deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning and amnesiac shellfish poisoning , the harmful strain of Dinophysis changes sodium levels in the stomach and causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps and chills. Symptoms usually are gone within days.

But the state does not yet have an efficient way to regularly test waterways or shellfish for DHS. Detailed analysis requires sophisticated and expensive machinery the state hasn’t needed.

“We’re going to have to do some kind of additional monitoring,” said Jerry Borchert, shellfish expert with the state Department of Health. “But currently our state doesn’t even have the right equipment.”

For now, state and federal agencies have closed Sequim Bay to harvests of manila clams, Pacific oysters, mussels and littlenecks. They’ve sampled shellfish areas in Puget Sound and along the coast , particularly areas where commercial companies produce mussels, which seem to concentrate the toxins faster.

Those samples have been sent to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration laboratory in Alabama, which is expected to provide results this week. That could result in more shellfish closures. Or not.

In the meantime, scientists are scrambling to understand what Dinophysis is doing here.

The study of harmful algal blooms is complex. Dinophysis, in particular, are difficult organisms. Experts around the globe hadn’t been able even to grow them in laboratories until South Korean researchers figured that out in 2006.

Plus, they are weird little critters. Some, but not all, individual species create toxins. Some are only poisonous sometimes. And it’s not at all clear what determines when they change.

“I have books from back in the 1930s that show pictures of this same organism,” said Rita Horner, a research scientist and algae specialist at the University of Washington.

“I personally have knowledge of it being here since the 1960s. The algae isn’t new. Just the toxin is new. But we don’t know enough about the biology of the organism itself to know what caused it to change.”

Said Bill Cochlan, an oceanographer and phytoplankton expert at San Francisco State University: “You can have blooms and it’s not a problem, or you can have blooms that are a real problem. The Number One question is when and why are they toxic?”

While no one in the United States had gotten sick before this summer, Dinophysis actually had produced toxins in U.S. waters in recent years. A bloom off Texas in the Gulf of Mexico shut down a shellfish festival. And researchers doing pilot studies in Puget Sound found the toxin here the past two years.

Cochlan and Trainer suspect the change may have something to do with back-to-back cold, wet springs. Dinophysis typically appear after spring blooms and can travel up and down the water column , heading toward sunlight at the surface for photosynthesis and diving deep to suck up nutrients.

The crazy abundance of fresh water powering into Northwest marine waters the past two years has helped stabilize the water column, perhaps making it more attractive for Dinophysis.

No one really knows. But all three scientists suspect it’s unlikely we’ve seen the last of this biotoxin.

“Whether this is one bad year and next year we’ll go back to something else … your guess is as good as mine,” Trainer said. “But my guess is something out there has changed and we’ll see this again.”

Source:  http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/SCI-ALGAEBLOOM_5886286/SCI-ALGAEBLOOM_5886286/