Algae // Current

Turning Algae into Biofuel

Green! Exxon is jumping on the bandwagon

Jenime
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Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again

« Treating Parkinson’s and other brain diseases could be just the beginning.... more

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Mouse's Behavior Controlled by Light/Algae

In the summer of 2007, a team of Stanford graduate students dropped a mouse into a... more

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….The $411 Massage…. (That's 4 Benjamin's 1 Alexander Hamilton & 1 George Washington)

C'mon, I don't need to say much else. That header alone should make you wanna see WTF... more

jrn
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PetroAlgae-Providing a New Source of Clean Energy

PetroAlgae is the first renewable energy company to commercialize a drop-in... more

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Is Algae The Next Miracle Fuel?

The fluorescent green mantle of biofuel savior has come to rest upon algae—slimily, sure, but for good reason. Algae grows in fresh water or salt water or sewage, rather than competing with food crops for land or resources. And algae actually sucks out the pollution from coal-fired power plants, with a theoretical yield of oil per acre that's hundreds of times greater than, say, corn.

But after all the hype—and there's been plenty of it—the fact remains that nobody has yet proven they can cheaply and reliably transform the stuff from a thick, green slurry to a finished fuel capable of making a dent in America's 870 million–gallon-per-day petroleum habit.

"I get a lot of people telling me that they've got thousands of gallons, but when I actually ask for a sample I can get maybe two," says Jennifer Holmgren, director of the UOP renewable energy and chemicals division, which is working to refine jet fuel from feedstocks that include algae.

"Google some of the numbers, and you've got people claiming that right now they're producing 35,000 gallons per acre per year, and they'll be producing 100,000 gallons—and that's just impossible," says Solix Biofuels lead scientist Bryan Wilson, a veritable grandfather with two successful years in the fledgling algae industry. "There's probably not more than a few barrels floating around right now."

Two years ago, there were less than a handful of companies chasing the next wave of so-called "pond scum" power. Today, there are dozens, many backed by big energy industry players such as Chevron and Shell. Last year, DARPA granted UOP $6.7 million to study how "second-generation" feedstocks, or nonfood crops, could turn into JP-8 jet fuel for U.S. Air Force and NATO fighters. Just this month, Airbus and JetBlue announced goals to replace 30 percent of jet fuel with second-gen biofuels by 2030. Air New Zealand and Dutch airline KLM have similar plans in the works.

All that's missing, for now, is all that oil they need to refine.

"It's frustrating for the outside world, but we've been learning how to do agriculture for about 5000 years, and we've been learning how to make oil from algae now for only a couple of years. So there's a lot of learning, and the curve is pretty steep," Wilson says. "This is probably going to be the first summer that you're getting anything more than just test tubes of oil produced."

This is algae's second coming. The first attempt, run by the U.S. government in the wake of the last oil crisis, was killed in 1996 by the Clinton administration while oil hovered around $20 per barrel. But even now, with record-high petroleum prices, algae stands in no position to compete, and hurdles remain at every stage of production.

Just choosing which kind of algae to start with is a herculean task. There are well over 100,000 species, each adapted to grow in different environments at different rates, and each capable of producing different amounts of oil—or none at all. The government collected more than 3000 different strains from all over the world in the 1980s, 300 of which were deemed promising. Today, many algal strains have been engineered into genetically modified superplants—the secret formulas of biofuel startups—but there is, as yet, no proven winner. Not to mention, there remains the small matter of how to make the algae flourish, how to cheaply dry several million gallons of subsequent slush, and how to get the oil out of minuscule cell walls and into the metaphorical barrel.

"It's not as easy as running a combine through a field of canola to get the seeds and crush them," says Michael Weaver, CEO of the Washington biofuels company Bionavitas. "For anybody who thinks that we can go from ‘Hey, let's look at algae,' to full-on fuel production in the period of the past three to five years, it's just never going to happen that way."

A number of pilot plants scheduled to come online in the next several months will likely give .....The fluorescent green mantle of biofuel savior has come to rest upon algae—slimily,... more

rav3
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3 months ago
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A New Test for Business and Biofuel

An unusual experiment featuring equal parts science, environmental optimism and Native... more

TravG73
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Alaskan blob mystery solved

Editor’s Note: Hey folks! Sorry for the hiatus! Green Air’s been getting busy with lots of new partners and contributors including the author of this piece, Kristin Arrigo. She’s the newest addition to the Green A-Team, a columnist for the Nashua Telegraph and we’re THRILLED to have her aboard. Enjoy!

The ‘blob’ or sometimes referred to as the ‘glob’ , or the ‘goo’, is 12 miles long of black filamentous, or ‘hairy’ plant life. Strongly resembling an oil spill, it was discovered in a far end of Alaska on July 16, 2009.

While the growth of algae is a natural occurrence, this particular strain is considered at this point, aside from trapping a few jellyfish, to be unique. The growth of algae is a response to the way light and nutrients combine in water. These conditions may include an area of low water level, creating a surface algae. Algae grows very quickly once the perfect conditions present themselves.

So what does it all mean? Well, that is yet to come, but it is possible that this algae form is nature’s response to global warming in a more positive way than we are used to concluding when we hear the phrase ‘ response to global warming’.

Blooming algae is one of the greatest cleaners of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Cold water, is nutrient rich, stimulating algae to bloom. The remote location of the origin of ‘the blob’ was in an area where the surface water is extremely cold. This cold, cold water which exists normally at the bottom of the ocean, now on the surface combining with sunlight, at the intensity it is at these days, and the right nutrients and voila, it’s the blob! Allowed to grow undisturbed, the algae is undeterred from it’s global mission.

However, certainly only blanket statements from scientists are currently available, because the analysis will take some time.

What we do know is best summed up by Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer (who) says, “It’s certainly biological. It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter. It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”Editor’s Note: Hey folks! Sorry for the hiatus! Green Air’s been getting busy... more

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Gas Guzzlers

Exxon partners up in search of a new bio-fuel made from algae. AAA will now include... more

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4 months ago
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Low cost Algae Oil Extraction Process

What remains after separation is what amounts to vegetable oil, water, and biomass.... more

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4 months ago
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DOE funds to boost algae-based biofuels | Green Energy News

The development of algae-based biofuels has received a boost after the US Department... more

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Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska - TIME

A strange floating mass of the northern coast of Alaska caused some concern. It has... more

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Friends of the Earth gets this deal in SPADES

It's Gillian Madill that sees right through the major integrated energy companies and... more

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Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called "the blob." It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska's northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black.

Test results released Thursday showed the blob wasn't oil, but a plant — a massive bloom of algae. While that may seem less dangerous, a lot of people are still uneasy. It's something the mostly Inupiat Eskimo residents along Alaska's northern coast say they could never remember seeing before.

Algal blooms are a common and often menacing event along many U.S. coastlines. Some strains are toxic and can close beaches and poison seafood, posing a hazard to consumers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maintains a forecasting system for the Gulf of Mexico to warn of harmful Florida blooms. On Thursday, on the other side of the continent, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, urged NOAA to direct at least $500,000 to assess a disastrous red tide — a form of algal bloom. "The state of Maine is currently besieged by the most virulent red tide event ever recorded in the region," Snowe wrote. "As a result of this outbreak, virtually the entire coast of our state has been closed to the harvest of clams, mussels, ocean quahogs, and other shellfish."

While Alaskans may find the algal blob unusual if not frightening, scientists say that algal blooms are nothing new in Arctic Ocean waters, though the blob itself might be a little weird. Brenda Konar, a marine biology professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said algal outbreaks can and do occur even in icy Arctic waters. It just takes the right combination of nutrients, light and water temperature, she said. "Algae blooms," she says. "It's sort of like a swimming pool that hasn't been cleaned in a while." The blob, Konar said, is a microalgae made up of "billions and billions of individuals." "We've observed large blooms in the past off Barrow although none of them at all like this," Barry Sherr, an Oregon State University professor of oceanography, said in an e-mail. "The fact that the locals say they've never seen anything like it suggests that it might represent some exotic species which has drifted into the region, perhaps as a result of global change. For the moment that's just a guess."

So far in Alaska, nothing suggests the Chukchi Sea blob is toxic, although the Coast Guard's Hasenauer said toxicity tests were planned. In any case, virtually no commercial seafood production comes from the waters along Alaska's northern coast, but residents do fish, hunt whales and harvest other animals as part of a traditional subsistence lifestyle. In the meantime, the blob for the most part is staying away from the shoreline and slowly drifting farther and farther away.A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright... more

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Exxon join with DNA pioneer to develop algae biofuels

(CNN) -- ExxonMobil is teaming up with the biotech research company run by genomics... more

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ExxonMobil Bets $600 Million on Algae

Exxon Mobil Corp. in collaboration with Synthetic Genomics inc. are investing $600... more

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Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

1) Use algae to produce oxygen and Ethanol. 2) Feed oxygen to coal plant - get CO2 in... more

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5 months ago
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Graphic Series: Earthly Ideas, Algae Energy

This week's cartoon describes algae-based energy -- one of the possibilities for... more

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6 months ago
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NASA Grows Algae for Biofuel, Treats Waste

"Take some NASA-developed plastic membranes, add algae and municipal waste water and... more

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Genes from tiny algae shed light on big role managing carbons in oceans

Scientists from two-dozen research organizations led by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have decoded genomes of two algal strains, highlighting the genes enabling them to capture carbon and maintain its delicate balance in the oceans.

These findings, from a team led by Alexandra Z. Worden of MBARI and published in the April 10 edition of the journal Science, will illuminate cellular processes related to algae-derived biofuels being pursued by DOE scientists.

The study sampled two geographically diverse isolates of the photosynthetic algal genus Micromonas-one from the South Pacific, the other from the English Channel. The analysis identified approximately 10,000 genes in each, compressed into genomes totaling about 22 million nucleotides.

"Yet, surprisingly, they are far more diverse than we originally thought," said Worden. "These two picoeukaryotes, often considered to be the same species, only share about 90 percent of their genes."

To put this in perspective, humans and some primates have about 98 percent genes in common. Worden said that the algae's divergent gene complement may cause them to access and respond to the environment differently.

"This also means that as the environment changes, these different populations will be subject to different effects, and we don't know whether they will respond in a similar fashion."

She said that their apparently broad physiological range (exemplified by their expansive geographical range) may result in increased resilience as compared to closely related species, enabling them to survive environmental change better than organisms with a narrower geographic range.

Testing the hypotheses developed through cataloging their respective inventory of genes, Worden said, will go a long way towards understanding their biology and ecology.

Algae were blazing the pathway of photosynthesis long before plants colonized land-so the results bear significantly on terrestrial plant research as well.

"Genome sequencing of Micromonas and the subsequent comparative analysis with other algae previously sequenced by DOE JGI and Genoscope [France], have proven immensely powerful for elucidating the basic 'toolkit' of genes integral not only to the effective carbon cycling capabilities of green algae, but to those they have in common with land plants," said Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director.

Tiny Micromonas, less than two microns in diameter, or roughly a 50th of the width of a human hair, are one of the few globally distributed marine algal species, thriving throughout the world's oceans from the tropics to the poles.

They capture CO2, sunlight, water, and nutrients and produce carbohydrates and oxygen. Their productivity-which provides food resources within marine food webs-as well as their knack for capturing carbon, and influencing the carbon flux that may have bearing on climate change, make these algae keen target of study.Scientists from two-dozen research organizations led by the U.S. Department of Energy... more

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tagged w/ Algae

Turning Algae into Biofuel

Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again

Mouse's Behavior Controlled by Light/Algae

….The $411 Massage…. (That's 4 Benjamin's 1 Alexander Hamilton & 1 George Washington)

PetroAlgae-Providing a New Source of Clean Energy

Is Algae The Next Miracle Fuel?

A New Test for Business and Biofuel

Alaskan blob mystery solved

Gas Guzzlers

Low cost Algae Oil Extraction Process

DOE funds to boost algae-based biofuels | Green Energy News

Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska - TIME

Friends of the Earth gets this deal in SPADES

Arctic Mystery: Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska

Exxon join with DNA pioneer to develop algae biofuels

ExxonMobil Bets $600 Million on Algae

Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

Graphic Series: Earthly Ideas, Algae Energy

NASA Grows Algae for Biofuel, Treats Waste

Genes from tiny algae shed light on big role managing carbons in oceans

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