A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article about a study released by Cambridge algae researchers.
Here is a video to follow up on that showing the many different aspects of algae that researchers there are studying:
Algae Industry Magazine announced last week that they had created a Science and Industry Advisory Board with some of the Algae Field’s heavy hitters. Take a look at their release:
Santa Fe, New Mexico – July 16, 2010 – Algae Industry Magazine (A.I.M.) has selected their Science and Industry Advisory Board. This panel of top industry professionals has been assembled to analyze and advise A.I.M. publishers regarding technology and controversial issues in the algae biofuels and co-products industry.
“In this rapidly developing industry it is extremely beneficial to have the diverse talents and deep experience of this panel to assist us in bringing the most relevant and accurate information to our readers and the industry,” said A.I.M. publisher David Schwartz.
Chairing the panel is Arizona State University professor and award winning author, (Green Algae Strategies) Dr. Mark Edwards. According to Dr. Edwards, “As in many new industries, performance claims and growth projections vary widely and sometimes do not serve the industry at large. With this panel, we intend to bring a reality filter to the information being passed along to the readers, in order to better advance the algae production industry with reliable data and credible achievements.”
The A.I.M. Science and Industry Advisory Board:
· Mark Edwards – Board Chair, Professor, Arizona State U.
· Charles Bensinger – SFCC Biofuels Program Director
· Russell Chapman – Executive Director CMBC, Scripps Institution
· Ben Cloud – CEO, Phyco BioSciences
· Brian Goodall – CTO, OriginOil
· Robert Henrikson – Ex-CEO Earthrise
· Alina Kulikowski-Tan – VP, Carbon Capture Corporation
· Ira Levine – Associate Professor, U. of S. Maine
· Jim Sears – CTO, Algae@WorkIn welcoming the new board, A.I.M. publisher William Laski added, “We are extremely grateful that this esteemed panel has volunteered to oversee critical information being circulated to the industry through our algae industry publication.”
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com, with offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and San Diego California, is the online trade publication addressing the growth and development of the algae biofuels and co-products industry.
Hydrogen is often hailed as the ultimate alternative fuel but many problems from high production costs to inefficient storage methods need to be resolved first. However, even if all the problems involving the development of a hydrogen economy were fixed today, it would still be several decades before a hydrogen infrastructure would be in place that compared to our current petroleum infrastructure.
That is why alternatives like algae biofuels that can run in our current engines and can be used in the current infrastructure are being looked at in the near-long term future.
As mentioned before, one of the major roadblocks on the road to a hydrogen economy is the cost to produce hydrogen. If hydrogen is to become a viable fuel source, it will need to be produced cheaply. This is where an announcement by an algae technology company last week may bring the production problem one-step closer to a solution.
OriginOil, a Los Angeles based algae oil technology company, issued a press release stating that they had developed a “Hydrogen Harvester” that cheaply collects hydrogen molecules given off by algae.
This announcement could prove significant for both the hydrogen and algae fuel sectors. First off, the idea of using algae to produce hydrogen has been around for a while. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been looking at various techniques to stimulate hydrogen production in algae. However, up until this point, most of these methods were in some way detrimental to the health of algal cell.
OriginOil’s process, on the other hand, does not seem to harm the algae. In fact, their process allows the algae to produce oil, biomass, AND hydrogen simultaneously. In a 2005 NREL document titled “New Horizons for Hydrogen – Producing Hydrogen from Renewable Resources”, researchers said that if photosynthetic microorganism production of hydrogen became feasible, it would truly be “the ‘Holy Grail’ of the hydrogen economy.”
With this announcement, it’s possible that this could be the “Holy Grail” many hydrogen researchers have been looking for, a discovery that has many at OriginOil excited.
“I honestly do feel that we have a landmark discovery here,” said Brain Goodall, Chief Technology Officer of OriginOil. “[Our method] is something that as far as I can tell, no one has looked at before and the reason that we did is because we have some very creative, hands-on people.”
While expectedly guarded on details, the basic process would take any species of algae growing in either a bioreactor or open ponds and run the still living algae through the “Hydrogen Harvester”. There, in a process that OriginOil is currently working on patenting, the algae would release hydrogen to be collected.
“We’re using the same algae and the same sunlight [to] produce biomass, oil, and hydrogen,” Goodall explained. “We think that with this breakthrough discovery, further development and scale ups could lead to a situation where you are using completely ‘green’ hydrogen… [all] coming from sunlight.”
As hinted at before, the species of algae also does not seem to be a factor in whether or not hydrogen can be produced using OriginOil’s process.
“As far as we have seen to date, it should work with any algae,” Goodall explained.
With this technology not being reliant on specific species of algae, OriginOil is looking to make sure that their harvester system will have “plug & play” capabilities where it can be incorporated into almost any algae production process, be it open ponds, bioreactors, or otherwise.
As for the quantity of hydrogen that can be produce, the exact amount has yet to be seen and will most likely depend on the species of algae as well as growth factors like exposure to sunlight. However, Goodall is very optimistic that the amounts will be significant and that the process should be scalable without too many problems.
“Right now, it looks like a lot of hydrogen is coming out [of the algae] and the rate of production seems to be pretty constant over several hours. The algae aren’t dying and are remaining viable and robust [plus] we are not putting any energy in and hydrogen is coming out.”
Goodall clarified that additional energy is involved in the process since the algae still needs to be moved throughout the Hydrogen Harvester system. However, all the energy needed for the algae to actually produce the hydrogen can be obtained freely from the sun.
While using hydrogen produced from this method for transportation would still be a long way off, it can actually help in the immediate future with the production of algae biofuels. To produce algae biodiesel or biofuel, the oil needs to be hydrotreated using hydrogen. Currently, hydrogen would either have to be shipped to algae production facilities or the raw algae oils would have to be taken to where the hydrogen is (most likely at other refineries). The production of hydrogen onsite will allow for some flexibility in where the refining of algal oils take place as well as offer some cost-cutting abilities.
Overall, this breakthrough offers the potential to leapfrog both the hydrogen and algae industries forward. With OriginOil being an algae technology company and not an actual algae producer, whatever technology they create will be available to market to the industry as a whole. Therefore, a discovery like this has the potential to be benefit not just one company, but the entire algae biofuel industry.
Originally posted at Celsias.com
By now, most people paying attention to energy issues have heard about algae biofuels. These fuels have the potential to not only allow the United States to produce significant percentages of fuel domestically, but do so without having to change the transportation infrastructure currently in place.
It is for these reasons that the United States’ government has taken interest in algal fuels and has made several large investments for their continued research and development, several of which originating from the U.S. Department of Energy.
In addition to the numerous research grants over the past couple years, the DOE also hosted a workshop in December 2008 titled the “Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap Workshop.” This workshop hosted over 200 researchers, government representatives, and industry leaders in the algae fuel sector to discuss the obstacles that algae will need to overcome in order to become a viable commercial fuel.
Following this workshop, the DOE helped compile all the ideas from the participants into a report they titled the “National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap.” The rough draft was released last summer with revisions and suggestions taking place since then.
After taking almost a year to edit the draft, the DOE released the finalized version of the roadmap in the last week of June 2010. This 125 plus page document outlines what will need to be done in order for algae to become a commercially available fuel.
The goal of the final version of this “roadmap” is “to lay down the first comprehensive state of technology for fuels and co-products from algae feedstock and to document the feasibility and techno-economic challenges associated with commercial scaling up processes” (Page 5 in the “Overview” Chapter).
This document does an extremely good job at succinctly acknowledging the many technological “roadblocks” that the algae industry will need to get around while suggestion the industry focus on specific areas of research that will ultimately lead to successful commercialization of algal products. From basic algal cell biology to commercialized algal product economics, this roadmap ensures that no aspect of the algae industry remains unaddressed.
The New York Times had an article announcing the release of the final version of the technology roadmap in which Al Darzins of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory summarized the message of the report:
“One thing that comes across loud and clear [in the report] … is that the path to algal biofuels commercialization will not be totally dependent on any one unit operation or technology but rather on the industry’s ability to string together or ‘integrate’ robust and scalable technology solutions into an entire process (i.e., soup to nuts) that makes sense from a sustainability, policy and cost perspective,” he said.
The great news is that the entire document has been made available to the public for FREE!
I would highly recommend anyone interested in algae fuels to check this document out since it does a great job compiling all the major obstacles and listing them in one place:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/algal_biofuels_roadmap.pdf
***
Article originally posted on Celsias.com
It will be interesting to hear some more details on how this whole process works. Even for a company press release, OriginOil is pretty vague on how the process will work and where exactly the hydrogen is coming from. For example, is the algae actively producing it during growth or is the hydrogen a bi-product of oil extraction process? Can this process work on all algae strains or just a specific few? Does the algae have to be grown within a bioreactor (one specifically of OriginOil design) or can if be grown in ponds as well?
These are some questions that I will probably be asking in the next couple of days. In the meantime, check out the entire OriginOil press release:
OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Hydrogen Harvester Invention
New technology taps hydrogen generated by living algaeLos Angeles, CA July 8, 2010 – 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 a new invention that generates hydrogen from living algae, providing an additional energy source from bioreactors. In contrast to previously reported developments in the area, the new Hydrogen Harvester™ uses little or no external energy inputs, requires no sulfur deprivation or other “stressing” of the algae, and no genetic modification. The process employs viable, high growth rate, high oil content algae strains.
“One of the primary challenges for algae production is to achieve the best-possible energy balance,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “By harvesting hydrogen from algae we are able to increase the energy output of virtually any algae production system. The result is a photosynthetic technology platform that yields energy in the form of oil, biomass, and hydrogen.”
Algae already create oxygen through photosynthesis. Recovering hydrogen provides the necessary ingredients for electricity generation using fuel cells. The energy can be used to offset the electricity requirements of algae cultivation, harvesting and downstream processing.
Dr. Brian Goodall, OriginOil’s new CTO, commented: “The co-generation of hydrogen at the algae production site is a critical development for the realization of a completely integrated algal biorefinery. All routes from algae to ‘drop-in’ fuels such as renewable diesel and jet fuel require hydrogen and hydrotreating. The Hydrogen Harvester technology would eliminate the need for hydrogen pipelines and dependence on existing refineries which are typically far removed from ideal sites for algae growth.”
The Hydrogen Harvester will be integrated into OriginOil’s existing portfolio of algae growth technologies, including the recently announced MultiReactor™. It will also be available as an add-on to other industry growth systems.
The company recently filed for patent protection of the new hydrogen harvesting technology, its tenth patent application, entitled “Bio Energy Reactor”. While the invention is applicable to any photosynthetic organism, algae is thought to be most productive.
Hydrogen has often been called the perfect fuel. Its major reserve on earth (water) is inexhaustible, meaning that we will never run out of hydrogen. Hydrogen, if produced cleanly, efficiently and affordably from renewable resources, is the ultimate green energy solution: It produces no air pollutants or greenhouse gases when used in fuel cells and the only pollutants generated when burned in internal combustion engines are nitrogen oxides (NOx).
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has stated that producing hydrogen by direct water-splitting technologies — using photosynthetic microorganisms — is the “Holy Grail” of the hydrogen economy, the ultimate clean and sustainable hydrogen production method, and is the focus of long-term R&D efforts at NREL. OriginOil believes that the new Hydrogen Harvester could represent the breakthrough needed to power the hydrogen economy.
Earlier this year, the United States’ government announced several grants going towards algae research, one of the largest going towards the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts. This consortium received $44 million and is headed by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. In addition to this investment, other areas of the government have financially vested themselves in algae biofuels as well.
However, it seems that the U.S. government isn’t done investing in the future of algae fuels. Just last month, the government announced that it will be investing even more into the algae research field, $24 million more to be precise. This grant will be split between three different consortiums, each focusing on a different area of research.
Here are the details from the U.S. Department of Energy’s press release:
Sustainable Algal Biofuels Consortium (Mesa, Arizona): Led by Arizona State University, this consortium will focus on testing the acceptability of algal biofuels as replacements for petroleum-based fuels. Tasks include investigating biochemical conversion of algae to fuels and products, and analyzing physical chemistry properties of algal fuels and fuel intermediates. (DOE share: up to $6 million)
Consortium for Algal Biofuels Commercialization (San Diego, California): Led by the University of California, San Diego, this consortium will concentrate on developing algae as a robust biofuels feedstock. Tasks include investigating new approaches for algal crop protection, algal nutrient utilization and recycling, and developing genetic tools. (DOE funding: up to $9 million)
Cellana, LLC Consortium (Kailua-Kona, Hawaii): Led by Cellana, LLC, this consortium will examine large-scale production of fuels and feed from microalgae grown in seawater. Tasks include integrating new algal harvesting technologies with pilot-scale cultivation test beds, and developing marine microalgae as animal feed for the aquaculture industry. (DOE funding: up to $9 million)
I have seen some hint that these sorts of investments just lead to more research, which they seem to imply isn’t needed for successful commercialization efforts. However, this isn’t the case and more research is exactly what is needed. In fact, the DOE’s recent release of the finalized “National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap” states that much.
See, with algae, we seem to be somewhere in the middle of the entire development and commercialization process. What I mean by this is that we have scientifically proven that we can produce algae oil, which can be refined into the various products we need. That is the “first” stage that needed to be accomplished and, essentially, has been since algae biofuel research first started.
The “last” stage required before algae biofuels can be successfully commercialized has also already been completed. This stage refers to the infrastructure needed to refine, transport, and run the fuels. Since algal fuels can essentially be used the exact same way as petroleum fuels, no vast overhaul of our transportation infrastructure will be required. This means that the vast majority infrastructure is already in place and fuel produced from algae can be run in your car’s current engine.
What is missing is the whole “middle” stage, which consists of research to develop methods that takes the algae oil we know we can produce and cut down the costs to levels that are cost competitive with traditional petroleum.
That is what grants like these are trying to do. Just like the DOE’s $44 million grant to set up NAABB, each research consortium will focus on a specific aspect of the algae production model (growth, harvesting, extraction, contamination control, etc.) and try to develop a cost effective way to do it.
The great news is that once we have this “middle research” completed, the time to widespread commercialization will be reduced since the infrastructure is already in place.
One of the lead authors on the DOE’s roadmap stated this optimistic view about what grants like these can accomplish.
“Biotechnology has come a long way” since the earlier project, says Valerie Sarisky-Reed of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, one of the lead authors of the roadmap. “With a dedicated research and development program, we can bring the economics to a suitable place within a 10-year time frame,” she says. “We chose to invest in it again because we felt we were within striking distance.”
While grants like these won’t be the magic bullet to answering all the algae barriers, when they are combined with the research and development from private companies’, the future of algae biofuels certainly looks bright.
***
This article was originally posted on Celsias.com
Presentation on July 7 at University of Minnesota Available Online
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Dr. Philip Pienkos, Principal Research Supervisor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), will discuss NREL’s efforts to rebuild the Aquatic Species Program for algal biofuels research on July 7, from 3-5 p.m., at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. The presentation is free, open to the public, and will also be broadcast online at http://umconnect.umn.edu/IonE.
NREL has revitalized its algal biofuels research program to investigate microalgae as a cost-effective feedstock for transportation fuel production. NREL researchers pioneered microalgal biofuels development by leading the DOE Aquatic Species Program from 1979 until DOE discontinued funding for the research in 1996, when it appeared that algae-based fuels would be too expensive to compete against petroleum-derived fuels. Today, in response to volatile petroleum prices and an increased national interest in energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, algae has reemerged as a promising biofuels feedstock.
In his presentation, Dr. Pienkos will give an overview of NREL’s integrated algal biofuels program and will highlight results and accomplishments from recent NREL projects, including algal compositional analysis, transcriptomics, proteomics, cell wall deconstruction, and cyanobacteria engineering.
The presentation is sponsored by the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment. The session will take place Wednesday, July 7, from 3 -5 p.m. in room R380 IonE Seminar Room Vocational-Technical Education at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus. The presentation will be broadcast live at http://umconnect.umn.edu/IonE. A networking reception will follow the meeting.
Microalgae (microscopic algae) are small, photosynthetic organisms that grow in aquatic environments and use solar energy and carbon dioxide to create biomass more efficiently and rapidly than terrestrial plants. Microalgal biomass is made up of sugars and lipids that can be converted into a variety of advanced transportation fuels, such as biodiesel, gasoline, and jet fuel.
NREL is DOE’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by The Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
###
Visit NREL online at www.nrel.gov
In a recent Cambridge study, researchers have found that algae holds some promise in UK, espcially when grown in raceway ponds.
Elena Kazamia, a PhD researcher at Cambridge University is the co-author of a study that assessed the potential for algal biodiesel to be grown in the UK, using flue gas from a gas-fired power station as a source of the carbon needed for the plant’s growth. Two methods of growing were considered — one in a closed “bioreactor” where there was no interaction with the outside world, and one using more traditional methods — in a shallow pool of water, known as a “raceway pond” due to its distinctive shape, out in the open air.
“Algae is very understudied compared to other plants for use in biofuels,” Kazamia told me. “We don’t have thousands of years of agricultural history to draw knowledge from.” However, that hasn’t stopped her team from determining that traditional raceway cultivation is significantly more environmentally sustainable than cultivation within the more modern tubular bioreactors.
In fact, it turns out that while growing algae in tubes for biodiesel might seem like a sustainable way of extracting energy, if grown in Britain then it actually has a significantly greater impact on the earth’s climate than an equivalent amount of traditional diesel pumped out of the ground, thanks to the need to build specialist facilities to grow the algae.
In contrast, the team found that it’d be possible to generate 40 tons of Chlorella Vulgaris algae per hectare of ground every year by building raceways and only use up about 80 percent of the energy that it’d take to extract an equivalent amount of normal diesel from the earth.
Read more: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-06/30/algae-biodiesel
The DOE just released the finalized version of the algae biofuel roadmap yesterday that outlines some of the barriers that need to be overcome before algae fuels can be successfully commercialized.
The paper offers little guidance on what strategies hold the most promise to replace petroleum-derived fuels in the long term. But it paints a picture of the extensive research that will be needed to do so. “The Roadmap Workshop effort suggests that many years of both basic and applied science and engineering will likely be needed to achieve affordable, scalable, and sustainable algal-based fuels,” DOE wrote.
Al Darzins, a contributor to the report and group manager with the National Bioenergy Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, stressed in an interview that algae is far less developed, technologically, than biodiesel fuel or corn ethanol.
“We need to understand the biology much better before we have, in the future, systems that work consistently,” Darzins said.
He pointed to the need for work on robust strains of algae and genetically enhanced strains to optimize qualities useful in fuel production, as well as in devising growth systems like open ponds or closed containers that will allow for inexpensive algae “farming.”
“One thing that comes across loud and clear [in the report] … is that the path to algal biofuels commercialization will not be totally dependent on any one unit operation or technology but rather on the industry’s ability to string together or ‘integrate’ robust and scalable technology solutions into an entire process (i.e., soup to nuts) that makes sense from a sustainability, policy and cost perspective,” he said.
Read some more of this story here: nytimes.com/gwire/2010/06/29/29greenwire-doe-sees-long-road-ahead-for-algae-fuels-37036.html
UPDATE: Click Here to download the entire “National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap”
OriginOil announced today that they have appointed Brian Goodall as their Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Goodall has a long list of accomplishments and has served on many different algae ventures. Take a look at OriginOil’s press release announcing their newest addition below:
Distinguished Scientist and Global Technologist to Lead the Companys Efforts to Commercialize its Breakthrough Algae-to-Oil Technology
Los Angeles, CA June 29, 2010 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, announced today that it has appointed Brian Goodall, Ph.D. as the companys Chief Technology Officer.
Previously, Goodall served as Vice President of Downstream Technology at Sapphire Energy, Inc., where he worked with Continental Airlines in helping to achieve the first U.S. commercial demo flight using an algae-oil blend. While Vice President of Technology Development for Imperium Renewables Inc., he also led a team of engineers responsible for powering the worlds first commercial demo flight from London to Amsterdam using bio-jet fuel.
We are extremely pleased with the appointment of Brian Goodall as OriginOils new CTO, stated Timothy Kemper, President and CEO of seed oil industry leader Desmet Ballestra North America, Inc., an OriginOil strategic partner. He worked closely with us while at Sapphire Energy, and he has my personal confidence and support. This is an outstanding move by OriginOil that will do much to advance the standing of the company in the fast-growing algae biofuels industry.
Barry Cohen, Executive Director of the National Algae Association, added: Dr. Goodall is one of the most highly-respected and knowledgeable people in the algae industry and OriginOil will gain not only a great scientist but also a wide network of connections to drive the companys commercial success.
A strategic leader with international experience in the renewable fuels, petrochemicals and polymers, specialty and fine chemicals, catalysis and oil sectors, Dr. Goodall has been integrally involved in all aspects of the algae-to-fuel value chain, from algae harvesting and drying, to extraction, pre-refining and conversion to fuels and chemicals.
Dr. Goodall brings to OriginOil his unwavering professionalism and ability to create strong and valuable relationships with individuals and companies around the world, said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOils CEO. He is the right man to help us strengthen our technology, our intellectual property and our commercial activities.
With an impressive career spanning more than 30 years in both the U.S. and Europe, Dr. Goodall has held senior positions in multinational companies such as the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, B.F. Goodrich and Rohm & Haas.
A scientist credited with over 80 patents and 60 published papers in the scientific journals, Dr. Goodall invented the Super High Activity Catalyst (SHAC) while working as a Senior Staff Scientist at Royal Dutch/Shell Group. The SHAC is used to make more than one-third of the world’s polypropylene today.
Goodall holds a Ph.D. in Organometallic Chemistry and a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, U.K. He was also granted a NATO Postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Chicago.
