It’s quite astounding how algae can aimlessly exist on earth for about 1.7 billion years before people realize how very important they are for green solutions today. Research exploits algae and how they can be used to reduce greenhouse emissions and produce biofuels. Algae are the world’s fastest growing plants and are one of its best photosynthesizers.

They literally ‘eat’ carbon dioxide and Isaac Berzin of Greenfuel Technology decided to treat the organisms to a buffet. MIT’s Cogeneration plant bubbles exhaust gasses through tubes of algae. Berzin says “in the ten seconds or so that the bubbles are spending in the bioreactor 80 percent of the CO2 is moved and 85 percent of the NOX.” Greenfuel, self-labelled victims of the economy are shutting down but the important thing is that their technology still exists.
Carbon sequestration is also used to clean up the atmosphere. The process involves pumping emissions underground into basalt beds or coal seams. Emissions will be cut down by about 90% but algae still rule the roost. This is because they actually get rid of the CO2 instead of storing it somewhere. Sequestration uses about 40% of a plant’s power and it runs the risk of leaks. In 1986 a natural CO2 leak in Cameroon 1700 people and 3500 livestock. Hiding our problems away in the rock bed will not do, we need to terminate them. The second advantage of algae is how highly harvestable they are and how many useful products we can obtain from them. What captures imagination now though, is their use as a substrate for biofuel.

Algae can produce up to 300 more times than your common biofuel crops such as rapeseed and palms. They don’t take up arable land and can be harvested weekly since algae grow up to 30 times faster than other biofuel crops. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory conducted research that showed that potentially 780 square miles of algae-filled desert land could produce 7.5 billion gallons of biofuel. Some algae produce a mixture of hydrocarbons pretty similar to crude petroleum while others just leak out a variety of oils. Solazyme maximised oil production by scrapping photobioreactors and growing algae in the dark on a cheap sugar diet.
The only reason that your car isn’t being powered by pond scum right now is that the system is not economically viable. Algal biofuel ends up priced at about $30 a gallon. Circulating material inside the bioreactors, drying out the mass of green muck and chemically converting it all into fuel simply requires too much energy.
With Greenfuel Technology, the pioneer of the field gone, many are asking who out there is left to continue the research. While many of the algae-biofuel companies out there are pale ghosts of Greenfuel, a few are making headway into cheapening the whole process of growing algae. Solix in particular, is one to watch as well as Solazyme, a company that focuses a lot on economic viability.
So what do we do right now? Since growing algae just for biofuel is only good for research and not implementable results, companies need to use the plants to eliminate carbon dioxide at its source and consider the by-products a bonus.
The future certainly has a lot in store. If you remember the TR10 liquid battery, it only takes some imagination to see what combining various technologies can do. The sun could power photobioreactors completely, feeding its algae and running its machinery.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 9:34 am and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.