Blatant Reality

A Scottish wave power company has announced that it has received an additional $14.7 million in funding for continued development of their “Oyster” wave technology.

Aquamarine’s Oyster wave power device has a large hinged flap that moves with the waves and drives hydraulic pistons that push high pressure water onto shore to a hydro-electric turbine. The company’s first Oyster wave converter was deployed off the coast of Scotland in 2009 and has been providing power to the country’s grid. Now Aquamarine is working on the next generation of this technology, which it plans to commercialize.

SSE Venture Capital, the VC arm of Scottish clean power company SSE Renewables, also participated in Aquamarine’s recent round, and SSE Renewables has been working with the company to co-develop up to 1 GW of Oyster sites. Aquamarine says the joint venture is building a 2 MW demonstration site planned for 2011, which will be expanded to 10 MW in 2012, and eventually 200 MW.

As the article states shortly afterward, wave and tidal power is in its very beginning stages of development with many hurdles. However, the potential for wave and tidal energy sources is vast. Compared to wind or solar, wave power has the potential to be constant, no matter if rain or shine or calm air. But it is this constant power that developers have to take into account to build sturdy enough equipment.

Nevertheless, just as with algae biofuels, wave and tidal power sources have a lot of potential once the technology has been successfully developed.

LanzaTech, a company looking to use industrial waste gases to produce fuels and recently announced that they have made important chemical components from these wastes, has announced that they will be teaming up with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to use their process to create a jet fuel that be used in current jet engines.

Check out their new press release:

LanzaTech and PNNL to convert syngas to drop in jet fuel

Auckland, November 17, 2010: LanzaTech is to work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on converting some of LanzaTech’s products to drop in jet fuel.

Lanzatech’s clean energy technology can produce 2,3-Butanediol (2,3-BD), an oxygenate which can be used to make hydrocarbon fuels – true drop in fuels that can replace diesel, jet fuel and gasoline – and high value chemicals.

Drop in fuel is a key enabler in the biofuel industry says Dr Jennifer Holmgren, LanzaTech’s chief executive.

“The US has spent billions on its existing petroleum infrastructure and to redesign airline jet engines costs in the realm of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Dr Holmgren says. “The biofuels that will succeed must be compatible with existing engines, pipelines and refineries. LanzaTech’s integration of the fuels and chemicals value chain enables economic viability, as well as being environmentally sound.”

The cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) between LanzaTech and PNNL has been given final approval by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The first phase of the CRDA work will be done over one year, with the DOE funding PNNL and LanzaTech making an “in-kind” contribution.

Existing LanzaTech and PNNL collaborations with teams at Tsinghua University and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which are performing techno-economic and life cycle evaluations, will also contribute to the work.

BlueFire Renewables, formerly BlueFire Ethanol, a renewable fuel company looking at using organic wastes including garbage. Currently, the company has been trying to get an ethanol production plant in Mississippi, and this past week announced that they received the final environmental permits from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

Initial site work has begun in Fulton, Miss., at the site of a 19 MMgy BlueFire Renewables Inc. cellulosic ethanol plant. The company announced Nov. 10 that it had received its final air, wastewater, and storm water permits from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which were required to proceed with construction. “We are excited to see jobs being created and economic development contribution starting to accrue to the State of Mississippi,” said Arnold Klann, CEO of BlueFire Renewables. “Once erection of plant and equipment commences, the jobs employed at the site will peak at about 700 under the engineering, procurement and construction contract with MasTec Inc.”

BlueFire Renewables’ plant will use green and wood waste from the region as a feedstock. A date for start of construction has not been set, said a company spokesperson, and it’s unknown at this time when the plant will be operational.

Over the summer, LA based algae biofuel technology company OriginOil announced that it had developed a system to produce hydrogen from seemingly any species algae. Their method was different from any others up until this point in the effect that the algae could produce “biomass, oil, and hydrogen” at the same time using sunlight as its sole energy input.

Yesterday, OriginOil announced that their Hydrogen Harvester can produce “hydrogen energy corresponding to a solar energy conversion efficiency of about 12 percent continuously for several hours on a partially clouded day.” By comparison, photovoltaic cells have solar energy conversion rates anywhere between 6 and 20 percent.

This means that currently, their system that has only been around for a couple months can produce energy from a solar source at rates that are comparable to current solar cell technologies, a field that has been around for several decades. If efficiencies like these have been reached in a couple months, the potential for continued improvements to the energy conversion efficiencies in their system is definitely there.

The additional benefit of this system is that the energy comes in the form of a potential fuel (hydrogen) and the system could potentially hold the key to the future of a renewable hydrogen market.

From their press release, OriginOil’s Chief Technology Officer gives some added insight on what this announcement means:

Brian Goodall, OriginOil’s CTO, said: “Our experiments clearly demonstrate that this technology can generate renewable hydrogen at rates that matter to the global economy. These early rates compare well with those of the more mature solar cell industry, with the added benefit that the fuel, hydrogen, is readily storable. This is the first renewable source for today’s $39 billion hydrogen market.”

OriginOil has had several exciting announcements over the years, including selling some of products to the energy company MBD in Australia. However, the Hydrogen Harvester is by far the most exciting news out of this company yet for it has the potential not only to change the algae industry, but the hydrogen industry as well.

To read the details in what work NREL is doing, check out the full article here.

Are algae-based fuels “wishful thinking at best”? This is the statement made in a letter to the editor on the Berksmont News website. The author writes that State Representative David Kessler is wasting time and taxpayer money supporting algae biofuels, essentially stating that algae fuels are mainly hype with no substance.

I would tend to agree with the author that some in algae industry have made claims that have led no where, but on the whole, algae fuels are not wishful thinking at all.

First off, contrary to what the author hints at, algae fuels are not currently subsidized. Subsidies, in the way he is using the word, would mean direct payment from the government to producers of these fuels. Ethanol currently receives these subsidies, algae does not. Algae currently receive no per unit, recurring subsidies like ethanol. The only kind of governmental money that could be considered a subsidy that algae receives are set amounts of money to be used for things like research and development.

This kind of spending on algae research is something that Robert Rapier of Consumer Energy Report (the link that the author includes in his letter) actually supports.

The author also seems to have unrealistic ideas of where the algae industry currently is with regards to commercialization. He questions whether any support of algae is needed since if its potential is as good as Rep. Kessler says it is, “algae to fuel would sell itself”. Currently, many in the algae industry believe we are still in the research, development, and deployment phase. This phase is highly reliant on investments since revenue from commercial products typically does not exist. Therefore, one cannot expect widespread, revenue-supported algae biofuel enterprises to start appearing without continued support from private and public sources in the interim.

It is also unfair to try to compare algae based fuels to crop based ethanol. For example, whereas growing large terrestrial crops has been fine-tuned and perfected over millennia, growing algae has been around for a much shorter time and has only been used for specialty products whose prices far exceed the going rate for transportation fuels. Once again, time and money will need to be invested in research to reduce the cost of growing algae for fuel at commercial levels. Serious research into this issue only really resurfaced after 2000 with serious investments only really starting to pour in after 2007.

Luckily, algae fuel basics have been proven feasible (ie, we know we can take oil from algae and use it to produce fuel for cars, trucks, planes, etc.) and the main thing companies and research institutions are working now are ways to scale up production to commercial levels.

As with algae companies going under, yes, Greenfuel Technologies did close down. However, many other companies have seen huge successes. For example, Solazyme has already produced and sold 20,000 gallons of algal fuel to the US Navy, with a contract for another 150,000 more gallons in the works. OriginOil, another algae technology company, has successfully sold their products to another company for use. These actions, plus many more, would hint that algae fuels are not just “wishful thinking”.

Overall, algae biofuels are viable in the long term and both the algae industry and general public need to be wary of statements that could be chalked up as “hype”. However, to dismiss an entire industry that has been advancing by leaps and bounds over the past several years would be irresponsible, especially if you believe in benefits that alternative fuels can offer.

UPDATE (4:30pm): It seems that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday to give algae tax parity with cellulosic fuels. That would be considered a certain kind of subsidy to most. It still has to be passed by the Senate and signed by the president before it comes into affect.

Also, the 6th paragraph from the top was edited to make it clearer.

Last week, ASU professor Mark Edwards was highlighted on the news website AZCentral.com. Edwards is the author of the several books, including “Green Algae Strategy” which he self-published in 2008. The article gives a great mini-bio that helps to explain just how he became interested in energy and sustainability issues, which ultimately led to his fascination with algae.

He grew up on a farm in central California and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, oceanography and meteorology.

While Edwards was at the Naval Academy, Jacques Cousteau was a frequent lecturer, and Edwards said Cousteau helped instill in him a sense of stewardship for the planet.

When Edwards left the Navy he received his MBA and Ph.D. in marketing and consumer psychology from ASU and he entered the business world. He and colleague Ann Ewen pioneered the concept of 360-degree feedback, which is widely used in performance evaluations.

Edwards and Ewen married, and he has been a professor at ASU since 1978. Since he began teaching, his research and writing have focused increasingly on environmental issues associated with sustainable food, water and energy.

I have read Edwards’ book “Green Algae Strategy” as well as “Crash“, which focuses more on using algae to overcome hunger in the world. Both of these books offer excellent insight into the many benefits of using algae for energy, food, and other sustainable products.

If you are interested in algae biofuels, I would definitely recommend reading one or both of these book since they are a great introduction to the subject. At one point, Edwards offered PDF files of these books for free on his website but that doesn’t seem to be the case now. Nevertheless, you can visit his site which has more information on his books at GreenIndependence.org.

Even if the books aren’t available for free, they are well worth buying so definitely check them out.

Solix Biofuels has announced that it will be collaborating with BASF to produce specialty chemicals from algae in conjunction with biofuels. The idea of using algae to produce chemicals has been around for a while, with some proposing using algae to produce a chemical that can sell for $800/gallon.

Here is an excerpt from their press release:

“We are excited to begin this important development with BASF,” said Doug Henston, Solix Biofuels’ CEO. “Algae offer the potential to produce a diversity of chemical products in addition to their fuel potential. We believe our AGS offers a high unique level of flexibility in its production capability, ideally suited for the ultimate large-scale cultivation of a broad range of algae species with multiple commercial applications. This partnership affords us the opportunity to work with a leader in the chemical industry to produce some unique chemical products from algae while continuing to pursue the production of fuel from algae.”

One thing to note is that is that markets for chemicals, especially specialty chemicals, will most likely be fairly small. Therefore, while the initial price for the chemicals may be high, simple economics would dictate that the more product on the market, the lower the price will become. Therefore, companies like Solix who hope to use algae to produce co-products like chemicals will have to keep this in mind and work a potentially decreasing return into their profit forecasts.

However, in the short term, this could help the Solix and other algae companies looking to do the same thing raise needed revenue. Since algae oils will have to compete with comparatively low petroleum prices, co-products will likely help keep companies afloat while they optimize their production systems.

Overall, this is good news and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more algae companies making the same kind of announcements.

This coming week, those involved or interested in the algae industry will converge on Phoenix, AZ to attend a three day conference that will cover topics from Science and Technology, Commercialization and Policy, Government and Finance. Prior to this conference on September 27, ASU and the Algal Biomass Organization (ABO) are hosting a workshop titled “Priming the Green Engine – an Introduction to Algae”.

“Priming the Green Engine” is geared toward non-scientists, particularly individuals in business, government and the media, as well as anyone else looking to understand how algae can contribute to a sustainable economy.

Leaders in algal research from the Laboratory for Algae Research and Biotechnology (LARB) at ASU’s College of Technology and Innovation, as well as algae experts from the University of Texas, the University of Washington and from industry, such as Earthrise Nutritionals, will discuss algae strains, cultivation of algae in the lab and outdoors, production and processing of algal biomass, and biomass conversion into biofuels and high-value bioproducts from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Sept. 27, at ASU’s Tempe campus.

Following the morning session, attendees will tour the algae research and production facilities at ASU’s Polytechnic campus in Mesa. The facilities are jointly operated by researchers with ASU’s College of Technology and Innovation and Heliae Development, LLC.

If you are attending the conference or happen to be in Phoenix on September 27, you should try to attend this workshop to get an up close look at the algae research currently being studied.

Solazyme is expected to announce that the Navy has asked them to provide an additional 150,000 gallons of fuel from algae. This is more than seven times larger than the initial order of 20,000 gallons.

In a big boost for biofuels, Solazyme is expected to announce today that the U.S. Navy has ordered an additional 150,000 gallons of its algae-based fuel.

Based in South San Francisco, Solazyme grows algae in large vats and then extracts the oils for a variety of applications, from fuel to foods and the cosmetics industry.

The new contract with the Navy is more than seven times the size of an initial 20,000-gallon contract awarded last year and completed this week. The Navy is eager to find alternatives to its HRF-76 Naval Distillate, the shipboard diesel that it uses to power gas turbines and boilers.

Even better yet, this article states that Solazyme will produce 100,000 gallons of its algae based oil by the end of this year.

Solazyme says it is likely to produce about 100,000 gallons of its algae-based oil by the end of the year.

To my knowledge, this is the largest amount of fuel any algae biofuel company has said they expect to produce within a year.

In case you were wondering, the government has been working with algae companies in a variety of venture, something you can read more about in this article.