Some Random Notes of Algal Fuels
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The first draft of my book chapter on jatropha and algae as fuel sources has been submitted. My posting frequency here will now go back to normal. Those book chapters are a lot of work, but I enjoy writing them because I always learn a lot as I am doing the research. Here are five issues that I covered in the chapter, with references in case you want to read up on some of the issues.
1. The present cost of algae production from open ponds is too high to make fuel production economically viable.
There are a number of commercial algae operations around the world today, and costs per ton are well known in the U.S. It costs at least $5,000 to produce 1 ton of algae. If you optimistically presume that there is 30% oil embedded in that ton, then that translates into around $50 per gallon of oil, before it has been extracted and converted to diesel. Therefore, commercial operations based on open ponds will have that problem to contend with (Benemann 2009).
2. Photobioreactors (PBRs) are too expensive.
The capital cost for photobioreactors is at least $150 per square meter, approximately ten times the cost of open pond systems (Abayomi et al. 2009). Optimistically, the best possible yield you are ever going to get from that square meter, based on the amount of sunlight that algae can convert into biomass, amounts to less than 2 gallons. The actual current best yields as reported in the literature are under 0.5 gallons per square meter. So the problem there becomes a capital cost of $150 to produce at best 2 gallons of fuel a year. And we haven’t even gotten into operating costs.
3. The energy inputs into the algae production process are very high.
There were numerous reports in the literature that cited the high energy inputs required to produce algae and convert it into fuel. At least one comprehensive life cycle assessment done by the University of Virginia concluded that algae yields less energy than it takes to produce it (Clarens et al. 2010). This LCA was cradle to gate, and did not consider the energy cost of converting the algal oil into fuel.
4. Some algae don’t need sunlight, and can produce oil in a fermentor.
The fermentation approach appears to hold some promise. Cited costs in the literature were roughly an order of magnitude lower than either the open pond or PBR approaches. The caveat here is that the algae must be fed a sugar source, but the ultimate goal is to produce that sugar from cellulose. This is the approach that Solazyme is taking, and I am not betting against their eventual success.
5. Don’t believe the cited per acre yields that some proponents claim.
The very high algal oil yields that you see some proponents suggest are all fictional. Nobody, anywhere, is making thousands of gallons of algal oil per acre. What people do is extrapolate best case lab results to thousands of acres, and then report those numbers – often as if they are actually achieving them. Or, they calculate best cases based on theoretical solar insolation. So it is best to treat those claims of high algal yields skeptically. As my friend John Benemann says, when you hear someone talk about yields like that, ask them how much oil they have for sale.
My conclusion is that with the possible exception of the fermentation approaches, the issues that caused NREL to abandon algae in the mid 1990’s are still pressing issues today. I see very little likelihood that companies basing their plans on either open pond systems or photobioreactors can be successful without heavy, perpetual doses of government funding.
Algae is still a lab project for the most part, and companies that have moved to commercialize it presently have little chance of economic viability. However, having said that, I think there are some niches in which it might eventually work, and I do favor spending research money in the hopes that in 10 or 15 years, commercialization is a realistic goal.
References
Abayomi, A., Tampier, M., Bibeau, E. (2009). Microalgae Technologies and Processes for Biofuels/Bioenergy Production in British Columbia. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.bcic.ca/images/stor…..report.pdf.
Benemann, J. (2009). Microalgae biofuels: a brief introduction. Retrieved April 24, 2010 from http://www.adelaide.edu.au/bio…..uction.pdf
Clarens, A., Resurreccion, E., White, M., Colosi, L. (2010). Environmental Life Cycle Comparison of Algae to Other Bioenergy Feedstocks, Environmental Science & Technology, 44 (5), 1813-1819
Footnote
For anyone interested, below is the Table of Contents in the draft I just submitted:
The Potential of Algae and Jatropha as Biofuel Sources
1 Introduction
2 Sustainability
3 Renewable Diesel
3.1 Biodiesel
3.2 Green Diesel
4 Jatropha Curcas as a Source of Biofuel
4.1 Jatropha Description
4.2 Cultivation
4.3 Harvesting and Processing
4.4 Jatropha Oil
4.5 Jatropha Biofuel Feasibility Calculations
4.6 Conclusions on the Near Term Viability of Jatropha-Based Biofuel
5 Algae as a Source of Biofuel
5.1 Algae Description
5.2 Algal Oil
5.3 Algae Production Systems
5.4 Algae Life Cycle Assessment
5.5 Algal Biofuel Feasibility Calculations
5.6 Conclusions on the Near Term Viability of Algal Biofuel
6 Conclusions
7 Conversion Factors
7.1 Lower Heating Values
8 References
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I stopped reading these Algae articles closely. During the past years, the articles and conclusions appear to be pretty much the same.
* We would all like algae to work
* Algae to Oil ratio’s are not very high
* It’s difficult to grow consistently
* It takes a lot of energy to move water
* it takes a lot of energy to separate algae from oil (this may be improving)
* equipment is expensive
* Most articles that argue these points can not back them up with concrete examples.
Here’s the thing to remember about algal fuels:
The oil we are burning now came from algae and plankton ~ algae that lived millions of years of ago and that was transformed into oil by millions of years of high heat and pressure.
Clearly, oil can come from algae. The kicker is finding something to replace those millions of years of free heat and pressure. There will always be a high cost to replacing all that free heat and pressure Mother Nature provided for the original algae to oil conversion.
No one expects algal fuels to be competitive within the next 10 years. Take that as a given. One cannot predict the technology of algae-to-fuels as it will exist 10 years from now — particularly based upon the technology of 1 to 5 years ago.
Algae companies can produce high value products — much more valuable than bulk fuels — then leverage success in such products to more efficient processes for bulk fuel production.
Growing algae as rapidly growing biomass, then converting the biomass to fuels via pyrolysis, gasification, fermentation etc. does not rely upon pure algal strains, or oil production and extraction.
The long-term key is in production of oil in sustaining colonies of microbes, which excrete the oil for easy separation from the microbes — which go on living, reproducing, and excreting oil. The exact nature of the oil will be variable depending upon what is needed (and what the microbe can survive).
Ten years to early competitiveness. Another ten years for rapid scale up.
Takchess,
I would agree with all your points there about algae oil – it sounds eerily like the promises of fusion power – always a possibility, but never a reality.
RR, the reason I bring up the blue-green algae is that it can be grown, easily, at large scale. Everyone is concentrating on the oil types you describe; very difficult to grow, controlled conditions, monoculture strains etc.
I think a better approach is to start with what grows really, really well, and see what useful biofuel you can make from it, which may or may not be oil. Algae can be dewatered using conventional systems used for sewage sludge, right down top 10% moisture content. At this point you can pelletize it and you have a solid combsution fuel. Of course, you gasify it to make methanol or F-T oil too, but you will only get 30% of the energy out as the finished product. But then again, when the algae is used for oil production, that’s all the yield you get.
I like the approach of this company in NZ;
http://www.aquaflowgroup.com/p…..wastewater
They are growing wild strains, in open ponds of sewage effluent, several acres of them,and harvesting an dewatering the algae. They are still working out what to do with the algae, and have done oil production tests (Honeywell has partnered with them on this), though I am not convinced this is the best route to go.
But the fact is, they have (by algae standards) a large operation, and a growing wild algae with minimal inputs, analagous to ordinary farming, where as the PBR approach is the equivalent of greenhouse farming – intensive and high yield, but not very scalable.
Oh, I know a lot of people who do. In fact, a number have contacted me as a result of this article suggesting they are already competitive. My feeling is that most of these people confuse the ease of growing algae – which is trivial – to the difficultly of growing, harvesting, extracting, and converting a specific high oil-yielding strain.
By the way, I am reviewing a paper on algae right now. Interestingly, it uses you as a source that says algae can be produced for $0.05 per liter. The reference they used is:
Algae biofuels for $0.20 a gallon? Message posted to:
http://2100.blogspot.com/2009/…..k-oil.html. (2/23/10). The link is dead, though.
RR
A gentleman who sent me a video asked me to put a message here if I wanted to talk to him again. So feel free to contact me, because I have a number of questions/comments after seeing the video.
Thanks, RR
I should re-phrase: No one in the business who is honest and responsible, expects algal bio-oils to be competitive with fossil fuels before 2020.
Algae is very easy to grow. “Trivially” easy, as you say. So if you can efficiently use the quick-growing biomass to make substitutes for petroleum — as in plastics, fuels, chemicals — you can make an impact via algal biomass more quickly than via algal oils.
Let me help you with that link: http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/…..k-oil.html . It reports on an invention that claimed to reduce the cost of separation, harvesting, and dewatering of algae from $875 per ton to $1.92 per ton! I mis-read the report, and hit “publish” a few minutes too soon. Wishful thinking. But that is not to say that such inventions are not important.
Small improvements in the production of algal oils will eventually add up to big improvements over the margins you are quoting.
I have been guilty of wishful thinking more than once. For a long time, I thought that big wind energy could be an important way to get society off of coal. Now I know better.
Likewise with some of the claims being made for different types of biofuels, including algae. People — including myself — wanted to believe the claims, so we repeated them as if they were fact. Some of us are learning as we go.
Algae is very easy to grow. “Trivially” easy, as you say.
Also trivially easy to transform into oil ~ let it sink to the bottom of the ocean and wait 300 million years. Then bore some deep holes to recover it.
The rub is the energy it takes to speed up a 300 million year process into a few weeks.
Why on earth would you use algae for that? Anaerobic bacteria would do just fine, with the added advantages of:
1. Eating anything you throw at them, as opposed to expensive sugars.
2. Producing a gaseous product that easily separates from the growth media (unlike ethanol, lipids, etc.).
It seems pretty obvious that to compete you’d have to do this in open ocean (you need that kind of scale to make a dent) and harvest the fastest growing wild type regardless of lipid content. Lipid -> biodiesel? Nice for DIY, not so much for commercial. For commercial you need to take every ounce of biomass you can get and gasify…
Gee, if people can grow algae right now and make money converting it to oil, then let’s all relax. Those people will have no problem raising kaboodles of venture capital, and soon we will have flourishing algae-to-oil businesses everywhere.
More likely, there are people who want to raise kaboodles of venture capital. That is the business model. The end result is not important–the important part is raising money, and cutting off a hunk for yours truly.
So, this means that we should turn to electric cars as soon as possible and as much as posible. We know how to generate low-carbon electricity (nuclear) and we know to make electric cars…
best,
Alex
Benny, you have summed up the business plan of almost all the alternative energy start ups right there!
Far easier to sell VC’s on a dream of a new technology than to actually develop it. The dot com crowd worked that one out and now they are many of the drivers behind these flashy start ups. If the quality of their work matched their marketing and websites, that would be a different story…
from your article
What are those niches?
I hope you have more articles on butanol soon, I love those.
Enzo said:
Hi Enzo,
I wrote about that in some detail in an earlier essay. See: http://www.consumerenergyrepor…..el-niches/
I have something new on butanol in the works.
RR
For Wendell Mercantile
You don’t have to wait 300 million years for plan to produce hydrocarbons. Some plants have the biochemistry to do this directly. Generally, they produce oligomers of isoprene (C5H8). Pine trees produce materials like turpentine. Calvin found a shrub related to the rubber tree that produces isoprene trimers which can be directly used as fuel for a diesel engine.
“The Sunny Side of the Future,” CHEMTECH, June 1977, page 352
Melvin Calvin, a Berkeley Nobel Prize winner, spent 25 years of his life studying plants that makes hydrocarbons. A summary of his work is available on the Web, but you cannot access it directly. You have to get there via a bridge site. Here is the bridge site’s URL:
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/pro…..ti_id=7286
From there, click on the “Full text PDF” icon to view Calvin’s work.
The most relevant section begins on page 15.
Calvin identified the genus Botryococcus as a remarkable source of hydrocarbons. He reports the dry weight of this algae is 86% hydrocarbon! True to his interest, he identified the structures of some of the major components in the mixture. They fall into two groups: linear isoprene oligomers and cyclized steroids. Both of these products could be burned instead of coal to produce electricity and fed to refineries in place of petroleum.
For Optimist
The winning solution will be the one that will use the least new capital investment. Growing plants in greenhouses or bioreactors is always going to be more expensive than farming them. The open ocean has no land use issues. Converting lipids to biodiesel requires two additional pieces of capital investment. You have to make the short chain alcohol ( methanol or ethanol) and then run the transesterification. Both add costs relative to having the algae produce hydrocarbons directly. Plant based hydrocarbons can be fed to existing petroleum refineries and burned in place of coal to generate electricity.
Gasification followed by the Fischer-Tropsch production of hydrocarbons also adds two investment intensive steps to the production of fuel intermediates. These two steps still only produce hydrocarbons that must be furthered processed. Why not let the plants produce them?
For Alexander Ac
The nuclear power industry keeps harping on the fact that they generate low carbon electricity. Electricity produced from biomass can be carbon neutral. Any statement about the economics of nuclear power that does not include a discussion of the Price-Anderson Act is propaganda. Without this government subsidy, the industry would be out of business in the United States tomorrow.
VCs
Venture capitalists are not the solution to our energy problem. They are part of the problem because of the perverse way they pay themselves. Like real-estate brokers, they take a piece of all the money they raise. They prefer to raise money for expensive projects. The world needs cheap projects. A solution that works for rich, guilty, environmentalists in the West, but does not work for China, India, or Sudan, … is not a solution.