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  • Algae Biofuels: From Pond Scum to Jet Fuel

    Microscopic algae yield up to 100 times more oil per acre than soybeans and other common biodiesel feedstocks, according to Mary Rosenthal, Executive Director of the Algal Biomass Organization. Microalgae can be up to 80% oil by dry weight, although that number is for wild strains that are slow growers, according to Dr. Margaret McCormick of the technology company Targeted Growth. Genetically engineered microalgae, such as those created by Targeted Growth, approach 35%-45% oil by dry weight, but achieve dense cultures in one day. Through genetic manipulation, scientists can also control the oil composition, and generate strains specialized for particular growth conditions, such as high salinity or temperature extremes.

    When grown photosynthetically, microalgae are a two-for-one environmental benefit — CO2 mitigation plus a renewable energy source. Microalgae can capture sunlight 20-40 times more efficiently than plants, and unlike corn- or soy-based feedstocks, they do not create a “food or fuel” dilemma. Some can be cultured using seawater. Finally, much of the groundwork for algal biofuels was done by the United States Department of Energy Aquatic Species Program, which developed strains, techniques and pilot programs from 1978-1996.

    From Cells to Oil: Many Paths

    The versatility of microalgae means it’s hard to predict the most promising avenue for harvest, processing and finally commercialization.  While more than 40,000 wild algal species exist, algal biofuel leaders like Solazyme and Sapphire Energy use genetically selected or engineered strains for oil production, according to company representatives.

    In addition to growing photosynthetically, with sunlight as an energy source and CO2 as a carbon source, microalgae can be grown heterotrophically, using sugar, glycerol or cellulosic biomass for energy and carbon. Solazyme uses the latter technique, which gives up the solar advantage in exchange for faster growth, a higher culture density for easier harvesting and a process that fits the existing industrial fermentation infrastructure. Solazyme’s heterotrophic cultivation requires growth in a closed tank system, or bioreactor. Other companies like Sapphire Energy and Solix Biofuels grow microalgae photosynthetically, Solix in photobioreactors and Sapphire Energy in ponds on non-arable land.

    Once the microalgae are cultivated, biofuel manufacturers are faced with two major technical hurdles: harvesting and dewatering. Microalgae cultures can be 80%-90% water, so cells must be collected by settling, which is time-consuming, although this can be hastened with flocculating agents that cause cells to clump and precipitate. More high-tech methods like centrifugation and filtering are faster, but are more costly in both dollars and energy.

    Once harvested, cells may be air- or sun-dried, requiring a large surface area and significant time, or they can be dried using heat or a vacuum, again increasing the cost and reducing energy efficiency.

    Finally, extracting the oils is another challenge. Options include extraction with solvents like hexane, enzymatic digestion of cell walls, or physical disruption with ultrasonic sound waves or microwaves.

    (Image left, shows Solazyme’s fermentation process. Credit: Solazyme)

    The Exxon-Synthetic Genomics partnership genetically engineers strains to continuously secrete oil. Professor Chisti explains that in the future, microalgae might be engineered to “rupture at a certain age and release their oil content.” In either method, the complexities of collecting, drying and breaking open the algal cells would be bypassed since the oil could be harvested by simply skimming the culture.

    Powering Trucks and Jets

    Oil obtained from microalgae can be used as a straight vegetable oil fuel, but this requires a modified engine. Dr. Eric Jarvis, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), said that while the home hobbyist might enjoy modifying engines to use algae biofuel, “no one wants to do it at the commercial level.”

    Biodiesel can be used in existing diesel engines and is produced by straightforward and established transesterification technology. This chemical reaction starts with simple triglyceride lipids, which are fats and oils from plants, waste foods or algae. The triacylglycerols are chemically reacted with alcohol, with the help of enzymatic or chemical catalysts. The resulting biodiesel has the characteristics of petroleum diesel and can be used alone or in a blend.

    The big pay-off in algae biofuels will be as drop-in replacements for gasoline or jet fuel. Successful test flights have already been run on mixtures of petroleum and algal-based jet fuels. Chisti says, “generally, only a portion of the crude algal oil is suitable for making biodiesel, but all of it can be used to make gasoline and jet fuel.” For this, the fatty acids in the algal oils are refined by hydrogenation and hydrocracking.

    NREL’s Jarvis believes the refinery pathway has the most flexibility, in part because the techniques are already established for petroleum. He says that “oil chemists know how to do the cracking and hydrogenation, so they can change the fatty acids into what they need.” Also, refining is necessary “to get the energy-dense targets like jet fuels. You can’t use ethanol on airplanes.” In addition, less refined products have problems with gelling, which Jarvis cautions, “you don’t want happening at 30,000 feet.”

    Even with the proven potential of algal biofuels, cost-effectiveness is an issue. Biofuels currently compete with petrochemical fuels, which have economy of scale. A 2007 analysis of the economics of algal biofuels by Chisti suggested that a five-fold reduction in production costs was needed to compete with plant- or petroleum-based diesel. Now, Chisti says, “issues relating to climate change may leave us with no choice but to replace petroleum fuels with renewable, carbon-neutral algal fuels, despite a somewhat higher cost.”

    Algal-based Biofuel Manufacturing Yields Valuable Coproducts

    Algal biofuel manufacturers have another ace up their sleeves: coproducts. Algae excel at making complex organic compounds like B and C vitamins and beta-carotene that are used as fragrances, flavorings, pigments and supplements. These can sell for hundreds of dollars a kilogram, so harvesting both the coproducts and feedstock oils can potentially offer manufacturers another revenue stream and make cultivating and processing microalgae more economical.

    Even after lipid and coproduct extraction, the remaining proteins and carbohydrates in the biomass can be used as animal feed, or fermented by anaerobic bacteria to generate methane. The coproduct strategy lets algae manufacturers achieve economic feasibility. Plus, the Exxon-Synthetic Genomics partnership gives algal biofuels a big publicity boost. Dr. McCormick of Targeted Growth says it’s “great for the industry…this shows that companies are looking to see how they can make algae work for them, and we welcome that investment.”

    Chris Tachibana, Ph.D, is a science writer based in Seattle and Copenhagen, Denmark. Visit her website here.

  • SA towns to get water the Murray can’t buy

    The Commonwealth buyback scheme is being conducted in stages to ensure purchases are in line with the budget’s forward estimates.

     

    The unsuccessful irrigators were promised another chance at selling their water back to the river, with new buyback rounds set to begin within the next nine months. But Ms Maywald said SA would seek to get in first and buy the water for critical human needs – drinking supplies in towns and cities.

    She said the move would bolster drinking supplies in 2010-11 and also help struggling farmers.

    “We understand that many irrigators had factored water sales through the Commonwealth’s buyback into their business plans and now as a result of the full subscription of the program, are uncertain about the future,” she said.

    Australian Conservation Foundation spokesman Dr Paul Sinclair said “critical human needs” was a vague term and he hoped the environmental needs of the Murray River remained a priority.

    “If it’s genuinely for critical human use we would have no problem, but we need to ensure the speed at which water is being purchased to help the Lower Murray is matching the scale of the environmental catastrophe that has unfolded there,” he said.

    Commonwealth spokeswoman Ilsa Colson said $790 million was spent last financial year buying back 507 billion litres of water entitlement.

    She said the states were entitled to enter the water market as they saw fit for either critical human needs or the environment.

    The Brumby Government has confirmed plans to divert about 12 billion litres of water that would usually be destined for the parched Wimmera-Mallee region, and instead send it to Melbourne through the north-south pipeline.

    The diversion will be a one-off event in a bid to ensure Melbourne gets its promised 75 billion litres in 2010.

    The water would have gone to rivers in the region, but the Government defended the move, saying nearby water-saving projects were completed years ahead of schedule and the water was available earlier than planned.

  • Major pushes sustainable farming into mainstream

    Read the original in The Land

    “We gather together very capable people to work pro-bono to look at certain issues, and to use their intellect and resources to find solutions to particular questions,” Maj-Gen Jeffery said.

     

    The General plans to establish Outcomes Australia teams to address a range of issues, from the tangle of State and Federal environmental legislation to use of soil microbiology and the impacts of chemical-based farming.

    He believes the core of the solution to many of Australia’s environmental issues lies with the Natural Sequence Farming methods developed by Peter Andrews.

    “We’re not saying we have the total answer to all the problems in regenerating the landscape, but we have a pretty good indication of what needs to be done,” Maj-Gen Jeffery said.

    “I’ve spent the past six months visiting properties in many parts of the country and, for example, have seen what biological fertilisers can do for soil fertility and carbon sequestration.”

    “My main conclusion has been that Peter Andrews’ ideas are applicable in a holistic sense across much of the country, supported by bio fertilisers and other measures.”

    Mr Andrew’s ideas hinge on the understanding that 200 years of misinformed land management have dehydrated the landscape, with implications for stream flows, soil fertility and fire risk.

    Adjunct Professor David Mitchell of Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water and Society disagrees with Mr Andrews on certain details, but not on the general principle.

    “Water is critical,” Prof Mitchell said.

    “Without knowing it, we have been drying out this countryside. A lot of our water resources were not in pools, but in soil and vegetation. When it rains those reservoirs start filling again, and there’s less water for us. The current dryness is not just lack of rain.”

    Prof Mitchell applauds the General’s initiative. “We have to bring together everyone who has a good idea on this issue,” he said.

    While few will quarrel with the ideal of restoring landscape health, not everyone is likely to be in favour of the approaches endorsed by the General.

    He hopes that within a decade a third of Australia’s farmers – and eventually all of them – will have stopped using artificial fertilisers, dramatically boosted vegetation species, substantially reduced or ceased irrigation and adopted a more holistic approach to farm management.

    He also wants water to be recognised as the nation’s most valuable asset, owned by the people and managed by the Federal Government.

    “Our water has to be controlled at the national level with a value attached to it that equates to its importance,” General Jeffery told the Batemans Bay gathering.

    “Unless we can address the threat to world-wide water and food security, we stand to see conflict on a scale unknown since WWII.”

    Similar discussions have been held around the fringes of mainstream agriculture for many years, but this is the first time that such a radical overhaul of agriculture and landscape management has had the backing of a leading public figure.

    And in a clear sign that this is more than just a talk-fest, the Batemans Bay meeting was sponsored by Federal Departments of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts and Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, CSIRO and NSW Industry and Investment.

  • Palm oil power plants become burning issue thanks to UK’s crazy ‘green’ policy

     

    When I say vegetable oil, I mean mostly palm and soya oil. The developer of the Newport plant, Vogen Energy, has admitted that these oils will form at least part of the mix. So has W4BRE Limited, the company hoping to receive planning permission for a similar plant at Portland in Dorset in the next few weeks. This isn’t surprising, as they are the cheapest sources of vegetable oil.

    They are also the most destructive. The world’s soya frontier is the Brazilian Amazon, where great tracts of rainforest are being trashed to produce oil and meal for western markets. Palm oil plantations now threaten to destroy almost all the remaining rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia – even reserves such as the famous Tanjung Puting national park in Kalimantan, which is currently being wrecked by planters. Oil palm threatens the extinction of the orang-utan, Sumatran rhino and at least one sub-species of tiger. It is driving tens of thousands of indigenous people from their homes. But, maddest of all, it produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.

    A report for Wetlands International shows that every tonne of palm oil results in up to 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces.

    A paper published in Science suggests that when tropical forest growing on peaty soils is cleared to plant palm oil, it would take around 840 years for any carbon savings from burning this oil to catch up with the emissions caused by planting it.

    After these plants were challenged by the small but very effective campaign group Biofuelwatch, the two companies started backtracking, suggesting that they might use other oils, not just palm oil and soya oil. But if they receive planning permission, there would be no means of enforcing this – no means, in other words, of preventing them from using the cheapest feedstocks to supply their power stations. And even if, out of the goodness of their hearts, they decided not to use either of these sources, it’s doubtful that this would make any difference. As Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice-chairman of Malaysia’s United Plantations Bhd, remarked: “Even if it is another oil that goes into biodiesel, that other oil then needs to be replaced. Either way, there’s going to be a vacuum and palm oil can fill that vacuum.”

    The fact is that all these plants would be burning food to produce power. Even if the Newport scheme were to use rapeseed oil (which still produces more greenhouse gases than fossil fuel, though it’s not nearly as bad as palm or soya), Biofuelwatch calculates that the land required to grow it could otherwise have fed 35,000 people. As the government’s environment department, Defra, now says that food security is one of the major issues the UK faces, this is madness squared. Last year the World Bank calculated that biofuels were responsible for 75% of the inflation in the price of food.

    But already the UK’s first vegetable oil power station – Blue NG’s plant in Beckton, east London – has been approved. Blue-NG doesn’t use palm or soya oil, it says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Thanks to a powerful campaign by local people and the group Food Not Fuel, Blue NG’s attempt to build a similar one in Southall, west London, was thrown out last week by the council, though the Greater London Authority could reverse that. There are several more in the pipeline.

    So why is it happening? For one reason: the government awards double renewable obligation certificates for power stations burning vegetable oil. In other words, you harvest twice as much taxpayers’ money this way as you would for generating the same amount of electricity with a wind turbine. None of it would be happening if it weren’t for this perverse incentive, which the government justifies by defining sustainability so narrowly that it excludes the greenhouse gases caused by clearing land to grow the oil. Ed Miliband’s department is responsible for this. Over the next few weeks I hope to discover how the hell he justifies it.

    monbiot.com

    • This article was amended on 14 September 2009 to make clear that Blue-NG does not use palm or soya oil and says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Becton, was changed to Beckton.

  • Global oil reserves and fossil fuel consumption

     

    Opec nations control the lion’s share, with 76% of the world’s reserves. Interestingly, many of the Opec countries’ proven reserves have barely changed in the past 20 years, despite massive exporting activity.

    The largest percentage growth in oil wealth is in Vietnam, with a 39% surge in its proven oil reserves from 2007-08. This newfound wealth corresponds to 1.3bn barrels, which may sound like a lot, but would feed the world demand for less than three weeks (17 days) at 2008 levels of consumption.

    Oil consumption fell by 0.29% from 2007-08, while its more polluting relation coal saw a 3% increase in its use. Reasons for coal’s recent rise include the low price of emissions trading permits and the fuel’s increasing promotion as key for ‘energy security’.

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  • What we urgently need need is a new mindset on climate change

     

    The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report in 2007. There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

    The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper has also been widely accepted since the Stern report in 2006. The election of President Obama has shifted policy in the US from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.

    So the chances of success should be good, but the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem so why should the poor world pay to put it right?

    Can the rich world do enough through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate doesn’t help, giving sceptics from the rich world arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions.

    These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity.

    Coal-fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets, and drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong. Climate change makes it unanswerable.

    The threat to health is especially evident in poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent Lancet and University College London report shows. These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

    Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, greatly increase their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan.

    And the implications for the health of local populations are acute: on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies; on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse; and on malnutrition where food is scarce. And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.

    Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands. Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences and the poorer the chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

    Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what’s good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost.

    This is an opportunity too to advance health equity, which is increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon rich and carbon poor within and between countries.

    The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care. It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and in the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.

    A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part.

    It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right – the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.

    • Michael Jay, chair, Merlin; Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director, International Institute for Society and Health