Algae

Skepticism On Algae Biodiesel Yields

General Algae News , , , ,

Kansas State University researchers claim that optimistic projections of algae biodiesel production are not realistic.

“We found that phycologists — algae scientists — maintain that some popular estimates of producing 200 to 500 grams of algae per square meter of open pond per day weren’t feasible because there’s simply not enough sunlight coming through the atmosphere to do so,” Pfromm said. “Unless we can change the sun, such production is physically impossible — and the hard numbers prove that. Most economists wouldn’t necessarily recognize this as an issue in a business plan because it’s dictated by physics, not finances.”

The team used a more realistic, yet still optimistic, production number — 50 grams per square meter per day. They determined it would take 11 square miles of open ponds making 14,000 tons of algae a day to replace 50 million gallons of petroleum diesel per year — about 0.1 percent of the U.S. annual diesel consumption — with an eco-friendly algae alternative.

The cheaper open pond approaches face problems with water evaporation rates (big underground water reservoirs are already getting depleted), invasion by organisms that eat algae, and invasion by algae species that can out-compete any species ideal for oil production, whether natural or genetically engineered.

Natural algae produce oil best when they are nitrogen-starved.

“Algae don’t make oil out of the kindness of their hearts. They store energy as oil when they are starved for nitrogen so they can make more algae in the future,” Pfromm said. “The end result is the yield isn’t that high because we can either stress the algae to produce more oil or let them reproduce very efficiently — not both.”

Lots of selection for higher production crops amounts to selecting away overhead aimed at protection against predators and competitors. The same will apply to genetically engineering algae for higher oil production. So methods to keep out other species will need to be developed for that are open. I think this is a very hard set of problems to solve.

Source: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008008.html

Algae 2020 Vol 2: Biofuels, Drop-In Fuels, Biochems & Market Forecasts

Algae Books , , , , ,

Now Available! Global Algae Producers, Projects, Ventures, Technologies, Investors, and Market Forecasts

The Algae 2020 study is a fact-filled guide designed for investors, producers, researchers, consultants and entrepreneurs. Algae 2020 provides a comprehensive roadmap for the commercialization of biofuels, drop-in fuels, biochems and biomass markets.

The Algae 2020 study offers detailed insight for algae production systems, markets and strategies based on site visits with more than 40 organizations. Algae 2020 provides detailed case studies of leading companies, projects, ventures, public-private partnerships, research labs, and provides a set of scenarios, business strategies, market forecasts and an outlook for algal biofuels commercialization to the year 2020.

Excerpt from Algae 2020 Study: Top 11 Algae Investment & Market Trends for 2011 (pdf)

2020 Roadmap for The Commercialization of Algal Biofuels, Drop-In Fuels, BioChems
Algae 2020 provides a roadmap for scaling up algae production, and market strategies for attracting investment, partnership, and production towards commercialization. The study highlights leading projects and algae producers headed toward commercialization via the production of algal-based drop in fuels – renewable diesel, drop-in fuels, aviation fuels, and a biomass focus on high-value products including: green plastics and chemicals from algal biopolymers, livestock and fish meal, omega 3s, and pharmaceutical applications.

Algae for Biocrude, Drop-In Fuels, Aviation Markets, Biochems and Co-Products
For the Algae 2020 study, Emerging Markets Online examines multiple applications for algae to supply growing first generation biodiesel and ethanol markets. For 2nd generation and advanced biofuels markets, algae is attracting increased investment to create green bio-crude as a feedstock for petroleum and aviation companies.

For example, the US has invested more than 7 trillion dollars in its existing petroleum refining, storage, pipeline and distribution infrastructure. Algae oil or biocrude is a preferred alternative for petrol and aviation organizations. For these emerging markets for biomass-based fuels, Algae 2020 also measures market size and potential for algae to serve biodiesel, biofuels, drop-in fuels, biocrude, renewable chemicals, aviation, defense, CO2 capture, and early-stage consumer markets.

Commercialization Outlook: From R&D to Pilot to Demonstration Phases
A key finding from the Algae 2020 study: algal biofuels have matured significantly in the last few years, moving from small research labs, to pilot projects, to small scale demonstration projects, and now to first-stage pre-commercial trials for CO2 capture in a handful of projects.

Algae 2020 provides detailed case studies of leading companies, projects, ventures, public-private partnerships, research labs, and provides a set of scenarios, business strategies, market forecasts and an outlook for algal biofuels commercialization to the year 2020.

The Algae 2020 study Vol 2 (385 pages, 2011 update) presents a comprehensive perspective of the algal biofuels and biomass industry by directly visiting and surveying many of these endeavors and presents a composite of emerging solutions and outstanding challenges from wide sample of data sources, enterprises, and expert opinions. Algae 2020 provides detailed case studies of leading companies, public-private partnerships, research labs, and provides a set of scenarios, business strategies and an outlook for algal biofuels and biomass market commercialization to the year 2020.

For more information, or to order the Algae 2020 study, download the following prospectus, table of contents and order form

For more information, download the following prospectus, table of contents and order form

Algae 2020 Vol 2: Biofuels, Drop-In Fuels, Biochems & Market Forecasts

Now Available!
Algae 2020, 2nd Edition (update) was published February 2011, updating the original study, and including details on biofuels markets and an introduction to biochems, bioplastics, livestock feed, and high value co-product markets.

To order this study

download a table of contents and order form in pdf
email info(at)emerging-markets.com
call telephone at +1 713 429 4905 (Houston, TX).

Media Coverage of the Algae 2020 Survey

Excerpts of initial findings from the Algae 2020 study have been featured in Forbes Magazine, Biofuels International, the Biofuels Digest, Renewable Energy World, The Houston Chronicle, and the Daily Telegraph UK.

About Emerging Markets Online

Emerging Markets Online (EMO) is a global biofuels and energy intelligence firm. EMO provides strategic business development advisory services, market research studies, management reports, and expert industry databases. Emerging Markets Online has been the recipient of Forbes Magazine’s prestigious “Best of The Web” award seven times consecutively.

For more information, or to receive a price list for EMO products and services, visit http://www.emerging-markets.com or call +1 713 429 4905 (Houston, TX)

Source: http://www.emerging-markets.com/algae/

Teaching algae to make fuel

General Algae News , , , , ,

New process could lead to production of hydrogen using bioengineered microorganisms. Many kinds of algae and cyanobacteria, common water-dwelling microorganisms, are capable of using energy from sunlight to split water molecules and release hydrogen, which holds promise as a clean and carbon-free fuel for the future.
One reason this approach hasn’t yet been harnessed for fuel production is that under ordinary circumstances, hydrogen production takes a back seat to the production of compounds that the organisms use to support their own growth.

But Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering, and postdocs Iftach Yacoby and Sergii Pochekailov, together with colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, have found a way to use bioengineered proteins to flip this preference, allowing more hydrogen to be produced.

“The algae are really not interested in producing hydrogen, they want to produce sugar,” Yacoby says — the sugar is what they need for their own survival, and the hydrogen is just a byproduct. But a multitasking enzyme, introduced into the liquid where the algae are at work, both suppresses the sugar production and redirects the organisms’ energies into hydrogen production. The work is described in a paper being published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was supported in part by a European Molecular Biology Organization postdoctoral fellowship, the Yang Trust Fund and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Adding the bioengineered enzyme increases the rate of algal hydrogen production by about 400 percent, Yacoby says. The sugar production is suppressed but not eliminated, he explains, because “if it went to zero, it would kill the organism.”

The research demonstrates for the first time how the two processes carried out by algae compete with each other; it also shows how that competition could be modified to favor hydrogen production in a laboratory environment. Zhang and Yacoby plan to continue developing the system to increase its efficiency of hydrogen production.

“It’s one step closer to an industrial process,” Zhang says. “First, you have to understand the science” — which has been achieved through this experimental work. Now, developing it further — through refinements to produce a viable commercial system for hydrogen-fuel manufacturing — is “a matter of time and money,” Zhang says.

Ultimately, such a system could be used to produce hydrogen on a large scale using water and sunlight. The hydrogen could be used directly to generate electricity in a fuel cell or to power a vehicle, or could be combined with carbon dioxide to make methane or other fuels in a renewable, carbon-neutral way, the researchers say.

In the long run, “the only viable way to produce renewable energy is to use the sun, [either] to make electricity or in a biochemical reaction to produce hydrogen,” Yacoby says. “I believe there is no one solution,” he adds, but rather many different approaches depending on the location and the end uses.

This particular approach, he says, is simple enough that it has promise “not just in industrialized countries, but in developing countries as well” as a source of inexpensive fuel. The algae needed for the process exist everywhere on Earth, and there are no toxic materials involved in any part of the process, he says.

“The beauty is in its simplicity,” he says.

Source: http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/teaching_algae_make_fuel_175880.html