The scientists at Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia have collected the draft genome of a marine algae sequence to support the researchers all over the United States in a project which aspires to find out the best algae species for creating biodiesel fuel. The need to develop an alternative and renewable fuel sources is to avert any energy crisis in the future along with reducing the greenhouse gas production. Researchers want to produce large quality of bio fuel in some small amount of space employing minimal resources. This will therefore to address the world’s fuel requirements.

Algae bio fuels is both promising and unique

Algae are simple microscopic organism which is generally seen in water and grows hydroponically. These micro algae do not require land or soil to grow as majority of them survive easily in any kind of water including brackish, salty and plain dirty or any other kind of wastewater. They do not need fresh water to sustain and are proved to be more productive than the crops based on terrestrial fuel. If you choose to render a good amount of sunlight to these organisms, the photosynthesis taking place within them would be substantial. With the presence of organic nutrients and carbon dioxide in water in suspended form, these helps them to double their mass in just couple of days.

In certain species half the mass comprises of lipids which are natural oils, which can be extracted and then used as algal crude or can be refined to a high grade hydrocarbon products including the bio-jet fuel for aircrafts and biodiesel. The algae strains have the potentials of producing more carbohydrate than the oil which can be easily fermented in order to make bio-butanol and bio-ethanol. The algae bio fuels do not have sulphur and are non toxic and biodegradable. A wide range of strains can produce good amount of fuel with different energy densities as compared to the other conventional fossil fuels. These are made up from renewable resource which is carbon neutral.

The other features of Algae

The reasons why Algae has emerged out as a promising feedstock for the future bio fuels is owing to the fact that it has high energy content, good energy yield per acre along with fast growth and capacity to grow in water of different quality. At least on theoretical terms, the potential for energy is remarkable. As per the US Department of Energy (DOE), the algae have the potentials to create more than hundred times oil per acre than the soybeans. This therefore makes algae a leading source of US biodiesel or any other kind of terrestrial oil producing crop. A number of research and studies have supported the use of algae bio fuels in various automobiles and different jet airplanes. These all features give algae bio fuels a good reason to become a renewable energy source of the future.

Using it on the commercial scale

The algae bio fuels are certainly a promising thing; however, cultivating algae on a commercial scale is hard nut to crack. The power sector is still testing a wide range of methods for cultivating algae including trying with the options of closed bioreactors open ponds and other procedures. The Bioreactors are proved out to be the most effective deal in producing superior quality algae in a small amount of time frame, but the only problem is these procedures are pretty expensive. Hence experts of this field are questioning about the economical feasibility especially in terms of commercial scale production. John Benemann, who has invested his thirty years in the area of microalgae bio fuels claims that 98% of commercial algae biomass productions are produced with some cheap method; however, it comes with a risk of contamination by evaporation, algae species etc. Hence what you get to see at the end of the day is low energy density algal oil.

Different cultivation initiatives

The various non agriculture lands are proved out to be an effective place for cultivation of algae bio fuels. Thus you simply negate the idea of using fertile and productive land which is meant for growing food crops. The growth rate of algae is pretty fast as compared to the conventional food crops which are around 20 to 30 percent. To produce large quality of algae bio fuels, the method of closed loop system along with the photo bioreactors have proved out to be the most effective methods. However, as discussed above these methods are not considered as economically viable option.

Governments of developed nations along with several companies have started putting their efforts in making this option as economically more viable. A leading California based Algal Bio fuel Company called Sapphire Energy is about to invest around 100 million dollars in developing systems of open pond methods. The company aims to manufacture green crude oil which can be refined into fuels which are chemically identical from diesel, gasoline and petroleum based jet fuel. Thus, it will need some special kind of distribution system or engine modifications. The company claimed to produce one million gallons per year of jet fuel and diesel by the current year. Also, by the year 2025, the company has the vision of producing one billion gallons per year, which could be 3 percent of the total RFS mandate.

Another bio fuel company- Solazyme plans to tread an economically viable solution for cultivating algae bio fuels. They claim to have a different system for closed pond method where sugar would be used as the algae feed. Another bio fuel company Origin Oil has claimed to devise a new system to extract oil from the algae in just one step. According to the video available on the company’s website, Origin Oil intends is likely to embark with this system to yield greater benefits in the fast moving algae sector.

The challenges

Despite all claims and optimism numerous challenges still remain in this path. According to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), there are several technical challenges which include hunting and indentifying potential oil algae varieties, devising practical oil extraction methods from algae along with finding out ways to make it commercially viable co-products. Also, the impact on environment is to be considered while harnessing this form of energy as they are a big concern over the wildlife. Above all the exorbitant costs involved in these procedures is a big issue among the list of challenges.

Considering the high potentials of algae, the scientists and researchers are optimistic about making algae a renewable energy source for the coming future. However, if you listen to the experts and thinkers of this field, you still need another 5 to 10 years to make this dream a reality.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and autos. Beside this she is fond of cars and fancy accessories. Recently an article on Algae Biofuel attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Algae inspired lamps.

I’m going to be helping my new-found friend, Robert Orr of Manchester, England in his quest to build a facility to turn buffalo dung in Southern Pakistan into fertilizer and energy. How much dung are we talking about? It’s hard to imagine. First, try to picture 400,000 dairy buffaloes in an area of a few square miles – several hundred per acre. Now, figure that, between solids and liquids, you’re getting 25 pounds per day per head, or about 8,000 tons per day.

Then realize what’s happening to it currently:

• Some of the solids are separated and dried, then burned to make room for more. Of course, incinerating feces projects toxins into the air, causing ridiculous rates of disease, infant mortality, etc.

• Most of it forms a river and flows south into the Arabian Sea, a body of water that is now so polluted that fishermen row their boats through five miles of sewage every morning before they encounter anything still alive.

Robert has a refined and gentlemanly demeanor, yet carries with him a raw passion for the project, as well as perhaps a thinly disguised level of disgust and contempt that mankind has been brought to this horrific place. It will be a pleasure and an honor to work with him.

Here’s a report from the BBC on the program.

I’m one of these people who essentially runs his life off his “to-do” list — a list of incomplete actions in a Word file that is always open, to which I’m constantly adding, deleting, and reprioritizing.

Here’s something I’ve looked at every day for the last few weeks:

Identify and support a few of the top players in biofuels. Short list: Enerkem, LanzaTech, ZeaChem, Virent Energy Systems, Sapphire Energy, Coskata, Terrabon, Mascoma, Cobalt Technologies, Joule Unlimited, Genomatica, Algenol, SG Biofuels.

I suppose I really DO need to do this, but I’m dreading the task. Sure, biofuels are an appealing replacement for crude oil and its derivatives in the form of gasoline and diesel, which comprise 98% of our transportation fuel.  Liquid fossil fuels are convenient and extremely dense forms of chemical energy that have accumulated from the sun over the last four billion years — energy that we’ve been consuming at an alarming rate over the last 100 years – the very blink of an eye. But there are two main problems associated with the concept that biofuels can represent a meaningful replacement:

Life forms are built to be efficient. They tend to take in energy from external sources around them, but, generally, very little more than nature tells them that they need to live, grow, and reproduce before dying. They don’t tend to get heavy and fat – only to be killed by us humans who want to harvest their excess energy.  That’s why it took four billion years for all this build up.  Think about that for a second: we made a huge dent in the stockpile in 100 years, one forty-millionth (0.0000004) of the time it took to accumulate.   

As we have seen, there are huge unintended consequences of growing plants for the purpose of providing clean energy. Perhaps the poster child for this is corn ethanol, which everyone and his dog has been second-guessing since we figured out how utterly fallacious the whole idea was.  Couldn’t we have done the math here?  Shouldn’t we have known that changing the basic economics of corn growing would result in higher food prices, more contaminants in our rivers — and for an extremely dubious benefit in terms of energy when all factors were taken into consideration? 

With all the interest in the subject of biofuels, I’m sure there must be something I’m missing here, and I hope you’ll comment here to straighten me out.  My short list above contains 13 companies, and I believe they’re the best of the best. (The list began several times that size.) If I can be convinced that biofuels represent a genuine promise to make a difference in the world energy picture, I’ll hit the road, and interview these 13 – and any number of others that I add to the list in the process.

I’ll be happy to promote the living hell out of these companies and their business concepts — if it all makes sense.  But if you feel, as I’m claiming here, that the basic concept is flawed, I may just stay home with my wife and kids, take a few extra hikes, and read a few good books.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

I’m happy to report that Jack, a man of great accomplishment and integrity, will be playing a leading role in one of the huge waste-to-energy projects that I’m so excited about — a project in which 3000 tons of municipal solid waste a day will be converted to 130 megawatts of electricity; this is summarized in the video below.  

Please drop me a line if you know of anyone who may also like to play an investment role in cleantech here.

Farming energy is a global reality. While biomass fuel wood is still the energy of peasants, used by nearly 2 billion people living on the planet earth, biological fuel is rapidly becoming popular in the developed countries. Modern agriculture is for food, industrial raw materials for manufacturing consumer goods, biological fuel feed stock and biomass for cogeneration.

Biofuels has been produced commercially in USA and Brazil for several decades, currently all developed countries and countries in transition have a biofuel plant. Globally, biofuel sector has been growing in the last 10 years , biofuel production grew from 16 billion litters in the year 2000 to more than 100 billion litters in 2010. Currently biofuels provides global average 2.7 percent of global road transport fuel. Some countries are pretty farming fuel, Brazil has reached 21 percent of transport fuel being biofuel, USA has achieved 4 percent and European Union average is 3 percent. The biofuels includes cellulosic-ethanal, biomass to liduids diesel, biosynthetic gas and other innovations.

Installed advanced biofuel capacity such as ligno‐cellulosic ethanol, biomass‐to‐liquids and other types, today is roughly 175 million liters gasoline equivalent (lge)/year. Additional 1.9 billion lge/year production capacity are currently under construction.

There trends have been as a result of global energy market investors strategies and sound government policy. The most important policies to encourage biofuels include mandatory sustainability requirements, blending targets or mandates for biofuels with traditional fuels and loan guarantees and other financing mechanism that address the investment risk of developing commercial‐scale advanced biofuel production units. Sustainability criteria ensure that biofuels develop with a positive social impact and without competing with food or causing negative impacts for biodiversity.

The debate that biofuels negatively affect food production is mere propaganda, as farming modernizes to embrace income and value addition, food security becomes easier to achieve. While mere food production targeting in households has deepened food insecurity, the hybrid of production targeting and food in markets is the way to have all people food secure in nations, therefore income strategy for poor people is the fundamental challenge to have hybrid of production targeting and food in markets as the way to feed the world. Biofuels will commercialize agriculture and put money in the pockets of the poor as famers of feedstock. This will encourage food markets as the priority way to feed the world, peasantry is due to limited income targeting in livelihood strategies. Lack of income limits use of better farming technologies such as mechanization, improved breeds and fertilizers , this has made 2 billion people hungry.

The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive requires that biofuels generate GHG savings of at least 35% compared to fossil fuels started at the end of 2010; these requirements rise to 50% Savings in 2017 and 60% in 2018. The European Union will also maintain a target of 5.75% renewable fuels (by energy content) in transport by 2010 and a 10% renewable energy mandate for 2010. Further, advanced biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass counts twice against the EU targets. Funding is provided under the EU’s Research Framework Programme;
some Member States, e.g. Denmark and Germany provide specific financial support for advanced biofuels plants. These nations are out rightly farming fuel.

Globally Africa has the potential of biofuel production given the robust agriculture sector with capacity for feed stock production. Africa is bedeviled by widespread poverty, income disparity relate to opportunity various social groups have to earn money. Given the 50 percent poor population in Africa and diminishing agriculture markets caused by global competition, poverty may be increasing. Bio fuel production can put billions of dollars in the wallet of the poor as feed stock farmers. The widespread disparity in oil deposits of Africa, with most of the oil in Africa produced by a few countries while some countries don’t have any oils wells, farming fuel will be the bigger option to oil imports and surging oil prices everyday weakening economy of oil poor countries. Well developed green energy encompassing biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal and hydro is the way out of oil poverty that bedevil some African countries. It can be done.

– Joshua Okomo, Proprietor Environment Stores & Logistics

I’m delighted that Ben Thorp has become friendly with us here at 2GreenEnergy. Here’s a guy who’s forgotten more about biomass than 99% of professionals in this arena know, and who frequently sends me scholarly papers he’s penned on the subject, in a patient and thoughtful effort to bring me up to speed. Here’s one of his recent publications, An Efficient and Sustainable Use of Biomass for Heat and Power.  Hope you enjoy. 

Here’s a short video in which I discuss the future of algae and other biofuels, synthetic fuels, and cold fusion.

A reader wrote in with a question about his plans to get in the ethanol business, using a certain feedstock in which he’s an expert.  Indeed, one of the most interesting things about biofuels is the enormous diversity of feedstocks.

The plant pictured here, Arundo donax, a type of cane that is highly prized for its growth rate, and the diversity of soils and climates in which it grows.  But the energy density of all terrestrial plants is at least 30 times less than algae, which is the main reason for the interest in the latter.

Ben Thorp is one of the true gentlemen in the biofuels industry, humbly but energetically chairing the non-profit BioEnergy Deployment Consortium. Retired from business after an enviable lifetime of successful engagements, he’s dedicated himself to the proposition that biomass needs to be a) understood, and then b) implemented on a pragmatic basis. Yet this represents a considerable challenge.

“There are 11 definitions of the term ‘biomass’”, he told me. “What fits for a business plan to a VC firm might fail completely in an application for a loan guarantee or a permit application.  And how about this: is MSW (municipal solid waste) really ‘renewable energy?’ In some places it’s regarded as such, but not in others.”

These really are tough questions – one of the reasons that my hat’s off to these folks for trying to make sense of all this.

Then, of course, there are the political issues. What happens when a biomass project comes up against the most powerfully moneyed forces on the planet, e.g., the utilities?   Consolidated Edison has put asunder many potential players, large and small, who have attempted to disrupt how they buy and sell electrical power — whether that disruption was threatened by biomass or some other form of renewables.   

We all remember start-up hydrokinetics player Verdant Power, who had the temerity to want to take a few kilowatts out of the East River in NY and sell it to ConEd customers.  Due to a combination of governmental over-regulation and corruption, it took Verdant no fewer than six years to get a permit to make this happen – and in order to get the permit approved, they had to pay ConEd for the power that the utility was unable to sell.  

And what about organized crime? Isn’t it common knowledge that the mob owns the flow of garbage out of New York City?  (For the record, I don’t know.  Hell, I don’t want to know.)

Ben tactfully acknowledges all this, but doggedly goes on with his work, which seems largely based around sorting out the truth from the lies – or at best, gross exaggerations in this space. “We only list technologies that we’ve been able to validate,” he told me. “Have you noticed that there are a great many unproven claims in this arena?” he asked.

You could say!  It takes me hours to sort through this stuff, some of it obviously written to confuse or deceive, the reader.  It’s no country for old men like me.  Fortunately Ben is made of sterner stuff.  I hope you’ll check out this group’s fine work.