What Alternative Food for Energy?!

Want alternative energy? Try pond scum
To the growing industry of biodiesel and ethanol refiners with their eyes on biomass, algae looks like green gold.

By Clifford Carlsen TheDeal.com -->
Published: December 27, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
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Mounting concern about U.S. dependence on foreign oil and about global warming is causing a surge of interest and investment in biomass, hydrogen, solar power and other alternative energy sources.
But bubbling beneath the surface of this wave--in more ways than one--is a technology that, while lacking an existing market or powerful lobby to advance its profile, may soon emerge as the most promising source of portable liquid fuels and that can offer unique environmental benefits to the electrical generation industry.
Refiners are not committed to any feedstock source, and the market will determine what is successful, but 10 to 15 years from now it is hard to imagine that algae won't be a dominant source of oil for biodiesel.
--Bill Dommermuth, plant manager, Seattle Biodiesel
We are talking pond scum, or algae, a plant that for decades has been prized as a possible commodity crop based on its unparalleled ability to photosynthesize solar energy into plant biomass for food. Unlike most plants, algae shares characteristics of bacteria, and its photosynthetic machinery operates much faster in converting inorganic substances into organic matter. And while plants require a lot of fuel to sow and harvest and additional fertilizer and fresh water to nourish, algae can be continuously harvested from closed water-based bioreactors that require little additional replenishment other than inorganic fuel supplied in the form of waste gas.
New research suggests algae may prove even more important as a source of energy than as food. Indeed, to the growing industry of biodiesel and ethanol refiners accustomed to treating biomass and the lipids derived from it as faceless commodities, algae looks like green gold.
"Refiners are not committed to any feedstock source, and the market will determine what is successful, but 10 to 15 years from now it is hard to imagine that algae won't be a dominant source of oil for biodiesel," says Bill Dommermuth, plant manager for Seattle Biodiesel, an emerging leader in the production of biodiesel fuel whose parent, Imperium Renewables, has raised $10 million in venture capital from such investors as Nth Power, Technology Partners and Vulcan Capital.
"Right now we're using soybean oil, because canola is more expensive," Dommermuth adds. "Soybeans can give you 50 to 60 gallons of oil an acre compared to 75 to 125 gallons for canola, but algae is almost limitless because it grows so fast, so potentially you could get 10,000 gallons per acre."
But while corn, soybeans, canola and other common food crops have drawn the greatest public interest in biomass as a source of fuel, those commodities have been championed by a nexus of growers, processors, brokers and powerful lobbying groups looking to boost the value of existing crops by developing alternative uses for excess capacity and waste byproducts. Algae has few such advocates, and market demand has yet to materialize.
That's where alternative energy promoters and their ecology movement allies find common cause. It turns out the best sources of fertilizer for growing algae are the very greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone that electrical power generators are under increasing pressure to reduce and the animal wastes that are increasingly becoming a problem for industrial-scale livestock operations. A handful of start-up companies and countless academic programs are exploring ways to divert gases linked to global warming or animal wastes into systems for growing algae, which can then be processed into ethanol and biodiesel.
Michael Briggs, laboratory manager at the University of New Hampshire Physics Department, admits that for investors it is daunting to risk large amounts of capital on an emerging technology with no immediate market, noting that large bioreactors covering multiple acres of ponds closed to the open air are expensive to build. But he argues that the advantages of biodiesel as a portable fuel are so overwhelming compared with other new alternative energy technologies that algae will prevail as the chief source of feedstock. He also says that, unlike seed oils and corn, algae would never compete with food crops for agricultural land, as the best locations for algae farms would likely be in desert areas unsuitable for crops or grazing.
Science vs. commercial returnBriggs estimates that the U.S. would require roughly 141 billion gallons of biodiesel to replace the 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline now used in U.S. vehicles. The savings from not having to shift vehicles and fueling infrastructure to an entirely new type of fuel would easily favor biodiesel, which can comprise 20 percent of a mixture with petroleum diesel with no modifications to current diesel-powered vehicles whatsoever, and 100 percent with minor modifications, he says. Briggs also says that diesel engines are well suited for hybrid vehicles operating on both liquid fuel and electricity.
Briggs spent much of the past five years trying to obtain funding to design bioreactors to grow algae with either electrical power plant waste gas or animal waste. But while investors recognize the compelling science behind such technology, he says, they believe it remains several years away from commercial viability.

CONTINUED: A success story... Page 1 2

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