The Greenest Green Fuel

Looking for a clean fuel that grows anywhere, needs only sunlight and water, and could produce enough oil to free the U.S. from its petroleum addiction? Here´s one start-up´s plan for converting oil from algae-yes, algae

By Elizabeth Svoboda Posted 07.01.2007 at 1:00 am 4 Comments

Money, Power, Politics

Nowadays, no one questions the need to quickly develop viable alternatives to petroleum. The U.S. vehicle fleet pumps 1.3 billlion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and we pay foreign governments and corporations $820 million a day for the oil needed to do so. As gas prices rise and the public becomes increasingly attuned to the unpleasant realities of global warming, even once-reluctant politicians are beginning to take action. In January´s State of the Union address, President Bush announced his â€Twenty in Tenâ€ plan to reduce American gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next 10 years. The plan sets mandatory standards to raise production of renewable fuels to 35 billion gallons per year by 2017.

With the political tides changing, investors smell money in the water. No one knows for sure if the alternative-fuel economy will be led by ethanol, plug-in hybrids, biofuel or none of the above, so venture capitalists are betting on everything. It´s a good time to be in algae. Heavy hitters like biotech´s big backer Craig Venter, Bob Metcalfe of Polaris Venture Partners and Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson have distributed millions of dollars of seed money to an assortment of green-ooze-growing firms, including GreenFuel, Aurora Biofuels and Solazyme. Doug Henston, the former investment banker and real-estate manager who Sears brought on board as chief operating officer of Solix in 2006, recently secured $2 million in funding from Bohemian Investments.

One advantage algae start-ups have over other alternative-fuel companies is that, by feeding carbon dioxide from power plants to the algae, they could help utility companies manage their emissions as well. The European Union already regulates carbon dioxide emissions, and there are currently four bills being considered in the U.S. Senate that would impose similar restrictions. Another start-up, GreenFuel, which originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has used CO2 from a power plant to grow its algae. â€Our experiment was a success,â€ says Ray Hobbs, a senior consulting engineer at Arizona Public Service, one of GreenFuel´s utility partners. â€We´ve only produced a very small amount of fuel so far-we were just out to verify the concept-but we now know that this is doable.â€

Ultimately, though, the success of algae biodiesel, like every other alternative fuel, will rely on whether the market price of fossil fuels reflects their environmental costs. â€The real unknown is, what is the future of carbon going to be?â€ Sheehan says. â€Will it have a cost in the marketplace?â€ Martin Tobias, a venture capitalist at the Ignition Partners firm, is more direct about how important carbon regulation is. â€The success of this industry will depend on the price of oil,â€ he says. â€If oil drops back down to $20 a barrel, you´re going to see all the wind come out of these companies´ sails.â€

Pick a Species, Any Species

If you tossed a Ben & Jerry´s scoop shop and a Munich beer hall in a blender, you´d get a pretty close approximation of the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins. There are more cruiser bikes in the parking lot than cars, and bright colors and tie-dye are de rigueur attire for staffers and patrons alike. Our server greets us above the din and offers us tasting forms that we can use to request free samples-provided we also fill out a â€personal expressionâ€ section featuring questions like â€If you could be in any band, which one would you join, and what instrument would you play?â€ (Sears´s answers: the Beatles, lead guitar.)

New Belgium is one of Sears´s favorite places to unwind after an 80-hour workweek, so it´s fitting that he decided to bring the brewery on board as a key part of Solix´s future plans. As with a coal-fired utility, carbon dioxide is a copious by-product of the brewing process. Except, unlike a utility´s, New Belgium´s CO2 is nearly pure, perfect for injecting into the test reactor that Solix plans to build on an empty stretch of New Belgium land. If all goes as planned, within the next year New Belgium will begin to feed gas directly into the plastic baggies, nourishing the fatty algae as it multiplies. It´s a testbed, a proof of concept for the partnerships that Solix is negotiating with power plants.

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4 Comments

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Gary Perkin

06/24/08 at 10:00 am

Hi,

This is quite interesting, but like most of these alternative fuels, there's just no take-up yet by the major players. How long will it be before we can use this? And it says in the article that it will be the same price as gasoline! Maybe when this was written, gas prices hadn't rocketed.

For an alternative solution, look at these articles:

How Does a Water Powered Car Work?

Run Your Car On Water

Gary.

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commandersprocket

from Felton, CA

07/14/08 at 11:18 pm

I applaud Shell and Chevron for their foresight in making investments in algae oil companies (they both have). While it's possible that there is a mindset in existing oil companies that they should concentrate on what they already do (delivering petroleum products) rather than exploring alternate fuel production methods (much like Kodak moved slowly into digital cameras). I think that they will (eventually) figure out how to make a cost effective oil substitute (algae oil, thermal depolymerization, enzyme hydrolysys etc.)
What concerns me here, is that the "invisible hand" of the market may lag in it's path to the most efficient system (and damage our country and economy in the process); high oil prices are beneficial to oil companies (they make their profits as a percentage of oil prices, supply and demand benefits markets with low supply) so they might drag their feet in implementing a cheaper form of oil.
However, after some (more) quick research, it looks like algae oil isn't quite ready to go to your neighborhood station, as of November 2007, algae oil still cost about $20 a gallon.

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LGem

11/13/08 at 3:26 am

Hi everyone,

My name is Sander Hazewinkel and currently my company is one of the largest "real" producers of marine algae in the world. We use state of the art closed systems that will outperform all the installations that I have seen on this website and that belong to the so called frontrunners. One of the things that really disturbs me,when I hear all these "pseudo" scientists claim enormous projected yields, is the energy cost that is involved in growing algae. I dare to state that it is impossible to gain a posititive energy balance with the production of algae. It's not the apparatus (toy) that you use to grow the algae that holds the solution to a positive energy balance. The problem is that the algae itself is not so efficient as some people want us to believe. I know from hands-on experience on a commercial production scale! But I also know and understand the math behind the problem. One of the people that describes a part of the math very much spot on is Krassen Dimitrov (google will find his article). If you are able to read some Dutch (google translate might be helpfull) you can read a presentation that I gave a couple of months ago for an organisation that is doing research on energy options for Afrika. www.fact-fuels.org/media_en/Presentation_Sander_Hazewinkel

It's not that i want to temper the enthusiasm for Algae, on the contrary! Algae are super as a nutrition (omega-3-fatty-acids, over 50% proteins, anti-oxidants and so on and on) all very important components for life and costing much more energy to produce otherwise than with algae.

So algae still hold a strong key to a more sustainable futere, but unfortunately not to a primairy source for energy!

I dare anyone to come-up with a complete lifecycle-anlysis on the production of algae that proves my point to be wrong and I dare to bet that nobody will come up with the whole (energy)cost figure because it is more sexy to talk about energyyields in stead of energy costs!

With kind regards,

Sander Hazewinkel

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Growler30

from Lewisville, Texas

03/13/09 at 3:36 pm

LGem, I think you are wrong, and just do not want them to find the answer here. If it were not possiable the testing process would not have come this far. And please do not try and say I do not know what I am talking about as I am former Sr. Site Manager for a biodiesel refinery, a 10 million gallon a year facility, that made the highest quality Biodiesel produced in North America. Weekly ASTM testing of our fuel proved that. And just because the technology is not quite there, does not mean it will not be someday soon. If they find a way to do this, it will very much negativly impact you company, and that is what you are afraid of. If the cost and balance of this goes down that will force the cost of your product to drop reducing your profit. I know your rebuttle will be, if the production cost drops you will make more money, but I do not believe that you want to lower the cost of your product or deal with the competition you will have if this happens.