Algae Farms: Practical?

[Eulogy]

Accordingtosome sources,growing and using algae as a biofuel can be more efficient and practical than growing plants for fuel, not to mention that such farms can be situated in more locations.

How about algae? I know some people look down upon biofuel in general, but did algae factor into their considerations? And more importantly, are the claims true?

[Admiral Valdemar]

This is one project I need to look into more, but I hear mixed views about its prospects. The biggest hurdle is that the tax subisidies and funding and so on is all going to ethanol, namely cellulosic ethanol which, even if possible, is not going to solve anything.

It does sound more promising than putting the last six inches of top soil in our fuel tanks and burning it though.

[Eulogy]

The biggest hurdle is that the tax subisidies and funding and so on is all going to ethanol, namely cellulosic ethanol which, even if possible, is not going to solve anything.

Which means that if algae is to take off, the funding will need to come from venture capitalists, or someone acting as one.

It's really too bad for mankind as a whole, but wouldn't this also mean a great opportunity? After all, it'd be recycling carbon instead of adding to it while potentially producing more artificial crude (don't forget, oil is more than a power source!).

[Admiral Valdemar]

Technology is not really the limiting factor, as I've stated in the Peak Oil thread 11 pages in this week. It's human motivation and our economy, along with social factors that are making this a problem. If we had a command style economy made of a (so far fantastical) group of well learned individuals who sought long-term solutions over instant gain, as is the basis of Keynesian economics, then the drive would be there. You'd have people being told to go into making sustainable technologies that didn't squander centuries of potential energy in mere decades on rampant and rapacious growth that simply makes the fall when it comes that much harder.

And as you say, oil is so much more than energy for us. Replacing energy is one thing, but even with efficient TDP plants and CTL etc., you still have only a limited amount of hydrocarbons around to recycle before you see what you do produce get decided over whether to go into liquid fuel, or make certain materials. That much is discussed in the previously mentioned thread.

[Eulogy]

Technology is not really the limiting factor, as I've stated in the Peak Oil thread 11 pages in this week. It's human motivation and our economy, along with social factors that are making this a problem.

I meant more along the lines of said capitalists building algae farms themselves, not the actual technology.

And as you say, oil is so much more than energy for us. Replacing energy is one thing, but even with efficient TDP plants and CTL etc., you still have only a limited amount of hydrocarbons around to recycle before you see what you do produce get decided over whether to go into liquid fuel, or make certain materials. That much is discussed in the previously mentioned thread.

If algae is really able to replace oil, then that shouldn't be a problem. However, for stuff like drugs, alternatives would need to be researched fast, or else people start dying.

[His Divine Shadow]

This is one project I need to look into more, but I hear mixed views about its prospects. The biggest hurdle is that the tax subisidies and funding and so on is all going to ethanol, namely cellulosic ethanol which, even if possible, is not going to solve anything.

I've mentioned this before in threads, it seemed to be largely ignored and I noticed in others posts in the same thread that it was being dismissed, but I haven't really ever seen why this is so. What are the numbers on celluloistic ethanol production?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The numbers don't matter. It takes so much energy to break down such compounds, if even doable on such a scale, as to be a net energy loser. Until the technology is even proven to work, there's no point in nitpicking the details.

Simply put, bio-fuels are not an answer to the world's energy crisis.

[Sikon]

I've mentioned this before in threads, it seemed to be largely ignored and I noticed in others posts in the same thread that it was being dismissed, but I haven't really ever seen why this is so. What are the numbers on celluloistic ethanol production?

Wikipedia is fairly up to date and detailed on a lot of topics.

Here's a bit on cellulosic ethanol:

According to US Department of Energy studies conducted by the Argonne Laboratories of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process, reduces GHG emissions by 18% to 29% over gasoline. [The reason for describing corn ethanol production as causing such a small GHG decrease would be the limited net energy gain from growing corn for ethanol conversion, but cellulosic ethanol can be a lot better as the preceding figures illustrate, using more of the plants, using agricultural waste, etc.]

[...]
In April 2004, Iogen Corporation, a Canadian biotechnology firm, became the first business to commercially sell cellulosic ethanol, though in very small quantities.

Abengoa is building a 5 million gallon cellulosic ethanol facility in Spain and has recently entered into a strategic research and development agreement with Dyadic International, Inc. (AMEX: DIL), to create new and better enzyme mixtures which may be used to improve both the efficiencies and cost structure of producing cellulosic ethanol.

On December 21, 2006, SunOpta Inc. announced a Joint Venture with GreenField Ethanol, Canada's largest ethanol producer. The joint venture will build a series of large-scale plants that will make ethanol from wood chips, with SunOpta Inc. and GreenField each taking 50% ownership. The first of these plants will be 10 million gallons per year [...]

In his State of the Union Address on January 23, 2007, President Bush announced a proposed mandate for 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017. It is widely recognized that the maximum production of ethanol from corn starch is 15 billion gallons per year, implying a mandated production of some 20 billion gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol by 2017. Bush's plan includes $2 billion dollars funding for cellulosic ethanol plants, with an additional $1.6 billion announced by the USDA on January 27, 2007.

[...]

On 28th Feb 2007, the US Dept of Energy announced $385 million in grant funding to 6 cellulosic ethanol plants. [15] This grant funding accounts for 40% of the investment costs. The remaining 60% comes from the promoters of those facilities. Hence, a total of $1000 million will be invested for approximately 140 million gallon capacity.

[...]

Ethanol, today, is produced mostly from sugars or starches, obtained from fruits and grains. In contrast, cellulosic ethanol is obtained from cellulose, the main component of wood, straw and much of the plants. Since cellulose cannot be digested by humans, the production of cellulose does not compete with the production of food. The price per ton of the raw material is thus much cheaper than grains or fruits. Moreover, since cellulose is the main components of plants, the whole plant can be harvested. This results in much better yields per acre—up to 10 tons, instead of 4 or 5 tons for the best crops of grain.

The raw material is plentiful. Cellulose is present in every plant: straw, grass, wood. Most of these "bio-mass" products are currently discarded[citation needed]. Transforming them into ethanol using efficient and cost effective hemi(cellulase) enzymes or other processes might provide as much as 30% of the current fuel consumption in the US—and probably similar figures in other oil-importing regions like China or Europe[citation needed]. Moreover, even land marginal for agriculture could be planted with cellulose producing crops like switchgrass, resulting in enough production to substitute for all the current oil imports.

In June 2006, a U.S. Senate hearing was told that the current cost of producing cellulosic ethanol is US $2.25 per US gallon (US $0.59/litre). This is primarily due to the current poor conversion efficiency.[19] At that price it would cost about $120 to substitute a barrel of oil (42 gallons), taking into account the lower energy content of ethanol. However, the Department of Energy is optimistic and has requested a doubling of research funding. The same Senate hearing was told that the research target was to reduce the cost of production to US $1.07 per US gallon (US $0.28/litre) by 2012.

From here.

Cellulosic ethanol isn't enough by itself, but the fuel production possible with it can help.

Though this is a bit off-topic, even though many people have a low view of wikipedia, their articles on science and technology topics are usually quite accurate in my experience. Although one should consider the possibility that statements may be invalid, one really should do that just as much when reading news articles and printed books (which definitely sometimes have a rather non-zero frequency of inaccuracies in my experience). Apparently wikipedia's attempt at partially copying the principle of a peer-review process works relatively well among the minority of scientific posters who write technical articles, perhaps much better than it does among the general body of posters writing wikipedia articles on other topics. Compared to most publications outside of scientific papers, wikipedia is unusual in a tendency to back up a lot of statements with references, and often the references are clickable links easy to look up, such as ones to reliable .gov web pages.

[Sikon]

While I won't try to greatly analyze the accuracy of the third article's estimates, one way or another, it is a rather interesting basic idea.

Let's post part of the article, since a link in the opening post alone isn't as convenient for readers:

[...] The economic strain on our country resulting from the $100-150 billion we spend every year buying oil from other nations, combined with the occasional need to use military might to protect and secure oil reserves our economy depends on just makes matters worse (and using military might for that purpose just adds to the anti-American sentiment that gives rise to terrorism). Clearly, developing alternatives to oil should be one of our nation's highest priorities.

[...] While the so-called "hydrogen economy" receives a lot of attention in the media, there are several very serious problems with using hydrogen as an automotive fuel. For automobiles, the best alternative at present is clearly biodiesel, a fuel that can be used in existing diesel engines with no changes, and is made from vegetable oils or animal fats rather than petroleum.

[...] First, we need to understand exactly how much biodiesel would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels. [...] So, we'd need about 2% more than that 138 billion gallons, or 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel. So, this figure is based on vehicles equivalent to those in use today, but with compression-ignition (Diesel) engines running on biodiesel, rather than a mix of petroleum diesel and gasoline.

[...] One of the biggest advantages of biodiesel compared to many other alternative transportation fuels is that it can be used in existing diesel engines without modification, and can be blended in at any ratio with petroleum diesel. This completely eliminates the "chicken-and-egg" dilemma that other alternatives have, such as hydrogen powered fuel cells. For hydrogen vehicles, even when (and if) vehicle manufacturers eventually have production stage vehicles ready (which currently cost around $1 million each to make), nobody would buy them unless there was already a wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system in place. But, no companies would be interested in building that wide scale hydrogen fuel production and distribution system until a significant number of fuel cell vehicles are on the road, so that consumers are ready to start using it.

[...] One of the important concerns about wide-scale development of biodiesel is if it would displace croplands currently used for food crops. In the US, roughly 450 million acres of land is used for growing crops, with the majority of that actually being used for producing animal feed for the meat industry. Another 580 million acres is used for grassland pasture and range, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service. This accounts for nearly half of the 2.3 billion acres within the US (only 3% of which, or 66 million acres, is categorized as urban land).

[...] Among the most photosynthetically efficient plants are various types of algaes.

The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this program was to investigate high-oil algaes that could be grown specifically for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production1. The research began as a project looking into using quick-growing algae to sequester carbon in CO2 emissions from coal power plants. Noticing that some algae have very high oil content, the project shifted its focus to growing algae for another purpose - producing biodiesel. Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates.

[...] NREL's research focused on the development of algae farms in desert regions, using shallow saltwater pools for growing the algae. Using saltwater eliminates the need for desalination [...] NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals.

The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course (and should not for a variety of reasons). The case mentioned above of building it all in the Sonora desert is purely a hypothetical example to illustrate the amount of land required. It would be preferable to spread the algae production around the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks.

[...] It's important to point out that the DOE's ASP that projected that such yields are possible, was never able to come close to achieving such yields. Their focus on open ponds was a primary factor in this, and the research groups that have picked up where the DOE left off are making substantial gains in the yields compared to the old DOE work - but we still have a ways to go. But, consider that even if we are only able to sustain an average yield of 5,000 gallons per acre-year in algae systems spread across the US, the amount of land required would still only be 28.5 million acres - a mere fraction still of the total farmland area in the US.

[...] In "The Controlled Eutrophication process: Using Microalgae for CO2 Utilization and Agircultural Fertilizer Recycling"3, the authors estimated a cost per hectare of $40,000 for algal ponds. In their model, the algal ponds would be built around the Salton Sea (in the Sonora desert) feeding off of the agircultural waste streams that normally pollute the Salton Sea with over 10,000 tons of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers each year. The estimate is based on fairly large ponds, 8 hectares in size each. To be conservative (since their estimate is fairly optimistic), we'll arbitrarily increase the cost per hectare by 100% as a margin of safety. That brings the cost per hectare to $80,000. Ponds equivalent to their design could be built around the country, using wastewater streams (human, animal, and agricultural) as feed sources. We found that at NREL's yield rates, 15,000 square miles (3.85 million hectares) of algae ponds would be needed to replace all petroleum transportation fuels with biodiesel. At the cost of $80,000 per hectare, that would work out to roughly $308 billion to build the farms.

The operating costs (including power consumption, labor, chemicals, and fixed capital costs (taxes, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and return on investment) worked out to $12,000 per hectare. That would equate to $46.2 billion per year for all the algae farms, to yield all the oil feedstock necessary for the entire country. Compare that to the $100-150 billion the US spends each year just on purchasing crude oil from foreign countries, with all of that money leaving the US economy.

These costs are based on the design used by NREL - the simple open-top raceway pond. Various approaches being examined by the research groups focusing on algae biodiesel range from being the same general system, to far more complicated systems. As a result, this cost analysis is very much just a general approximation. [...]

From here.

On a separate topic but regarding other posts in this thread, while there will tend to be substantial peak oil troubles with the lack of proper advance preparation, it is shortages of fuel for vehicles that is the biggest issue, far more than shortages of hydrocarbons for plastics and misc uses. The latter would be less expensive to counter. For example, there is about a 10:1 ratio of U.S. vehicle & aircraft fuel consumption to total plastics consumption by mass. Meanwhile, for the world, it is about 1100 million tons of vehicle and aircraft fuel consumption annually versus 150 million tons of plastics annually. Annual hydrocarbons needed in drug production are presumably a lot less than 1 million tons.

[His Divine Shadow]

Well, it sounds like the algae reactors are our magic bullet now instead of celluloistic ethanol.

[Alferd Packer]

It sounds pretty interesting to me. The problem seems to lie in technical issues, rather than a fundamental inability of the process to produce enough energy without outright disastrous results.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Funding too, don't forget. Most of the big bucks are going into that dead end ethanol which will only work for nations like Brazil, not the US.

[Alferd Packer]

Sure, but the private sector can pick up some of that slack, at least initially. Later, those in the government from southern and/or lumber-poor states could push for subsidies. I mean, being able to generate fuel is like a license to print money. A senator or congressman would love to see all that revenue come into his state, because it means jobs for his constituency, and sustainable tax revenue for his state.

And to be fair to the northern states, these algae farms would be workable, too, just less productive than the ones at lower latitudes. So there is potential incentive for both, but time will tell how quickly people get on this bandwagon (assuming it is technically feasible, of course).

[Admiral Valdemar]

Algae have even been looked at to replace PV cells in order to make hydrogen directly in sunny areas using base nutrients and water. Their efficiency isn't that high, since it's just a by-product that they produce hydrogen as it is, but if it was engineered to become a major factor in their metabolisms, you could maybe use them for that.

I object to the hydrogen economy myself, my reason for mentioning that though, is that those companies may invest in that more and then swithc what investments they've made so far into biomass production instead via algae.

[Eulogy]

What if your average citizen put up a hobby algae farm? It's not as if all of the land is suitable for farming anyway.

[Alferd Packer]

What if your average citizen put up a hobby algae farm? It's not as if all of the land is suitable for farming anyway.

I was thinking the same thing, but I think the question becomes that of harvesting and refining the biodiesel, which requires a significant investment, either in a hobby biodiesel manufacturing kit of your own or a prefab one.

Another problem then, is the fact that diesel cars are largely unavailable in the United States. Because of California's extreme emissions requirements, no diesel passenger car produced on the planet today is 50-state street legal(note, this excludes Medium and Heavy Duty commerical trucks, as they are exempt from passenger vehicle requirements). Thus, few car manufacturers bother producing diesel cars, since California is such a huge market.

But let's look at some numbers. From the article in the OP, they suggest that 5000 gallons per acre-year is not unreasonable to expect. Let's say someone dedicates 1000 square feet in their back yard to their hobby algae farm. An acre is approximately 43,560 square feet, so doing some sixth grade math, we see that you'll get yourself about 110 gallons of biodiesel annually. At 40mpg, you'll get yourself about 4400 miles of driving from your hobby farm per year.

So, it could be done, but I imagine that it's not cheap to set up or maintain. You'd probably be better off devoting that 1000 square feet to growing fresh fruits or veggies, victory garden style, and get a good, sturdy bike. On the other hand, it may not be a bad idea to have your own biodiesel refining equipment, or go in halvsies with a neighbor or something. Being able to turn used cooking oil into heating/driving fuel would definitely be a good capability to have.[/url]

[Eulogy]

If algae is as viable as you implied, then that is a great business idea.