Langelier.Lester.Wiki.Spring.2011

=**__Algae Biodiesel__**=

Currently, people are discovering higher efficiency and lower cost methods of obtaining fuel. One avenue is biodiesel, which is diesel derived from fats produced by domestic resources. Simply, biodiesel comes from things that are alive: plants and animals. Biodiesel can be used exactly like diesel in a compression-ignition engine.

**__How Algae Biodiesel is made__**
//The overall process//

Any biodiesel is produced through a process called transesterification. In its simplest form, an alcohol is combined with an ester to produce a different alcohol and different ester. In our case, triglycerides (1) are combined with an alcohol (2) to produce methyl esters (3) (biodiesel) and glycerol (4).

Of course, growing and harvesting algae and then extracting the triglycerides is more than half the battle. Algae live on CO2, NO2, and other nutrients. There are two ways of growing algae: in open ponds or in photobioreactors (PBRs). A PBR is a closed system in which you can control CO2 supply, water supply, temperature, light, culture density, pH levels, and mixing. By controlling all these elements, you get higher crop yields, genetically pure algae, and no parasitic infestations. Also, positioning PBRs next to power plants solves two problems. Algae can grow quicker when exposed to higher levels and higher concentrations of CO2, and the emissions from the power plant can be pumped into the algae plant. This reduces CO2 output into the atmosphere. The only disadvantage of using a PBR is the high cost of the entire system. //A large scale photobioreactor//

The next step is harvesting the algae. There is really only one process for harvesting and it is called flocculation. This is the process of adding chemical flocculants to the algal solution, causing the algae to aggregate into larger masses. Flocculants are multivalent cations like magnesium or aluminum. After flocculation, the flocs, or large masses of cells, are centrifuged. The last part is extraction of the algal oil. For most extraction processes, the algae have to be dry in order for the cell walls to be broken with relative ease. The lipids from the cell walls are what are used to make biodiesel. There are generally two methods used: mechanical and chemical. Mechanical techniques require the algae to be dry. One way is using and expression/expeller press. It works very similar to a grape press for wine. The cells are pressed until the cell walls break. This process leaves behind around 6-14% residual oil. Another way is ultrasonic-assisted extraction which uses ultrasonic waves to lyse (break open) the cells. The chemical methods include the hexane solvent method, Soxhlet extraction, and supercritical fluid. The hexane solvent method is very effective and leaves behind only 0.5-0.7% residual oil. Soxhlet extraction is a rather slow process and therefore cannot process large quantities of algae to be practical. Supercritical fluid extraction requires high pressure equipment needing a lot of energy, which gets very expensive. An overall drawback to chemical extraction is health and safety issues. Breakthroughs in extraction have come into play that make it easier and more cost effective to extract the oil. One such advance is OriginOil’s® Single-Step extraction. This system utilizes electromagnetic pulses and pH modification to break down the cell walls. Everything is separated in the end into oil, water, and biomass.

//OriginOil's Single-Step Extraction//

//“We’re working with other best-of-breed companies to scale up algae rapidly so it can ultimately compete with petroleum.”// – Riggs Eckelberry, President and CEO, OriginOil

Another new method, developed by © Cavitation Technology Inc (CTI) is the BioForce 9000 which facilitates the use of cavitation bubbles. These bubbles explode and rupture the cell walls. The BioForce 9000 incorporates transesterification, so the final product is biodiesel. CTI claims their system is more effective and efficient in attaining biodiesel with continuous flow. //CTI's BioForce 9000//

The Iowa State University Center for Catalysis has developed yet another method that involves mesoporous nanoparticles. These particles separate fuel-relevant and high value compounds from the total mixture. Then they use the T300 Catalyst made by © Catilin Inc to create biodiesel.

**__The Advantages and Disadvantages Of Algae Biodiesel__**
There are many advantages to using algae as a source for biodiesel fuels. There are also many disadvantages. An alga helps the environment in ways but in others it hurts it. Algae can grow nearly everywhere but it is hard to get the perfect conditions for ultimate growth. The most efficient methods of growing and extracting oil from algae have not yet been developed and this is a major disadvantage to using algae as a biofuel so far. Using algae is a biofuel has many advantages to it, for the economy and the environment, but there are also some setbacks. Algae can grow in salt water as well as fresh water. This is a tremendous advantage because unlike other sources of biodiesel like corn, algae can be produced in the sea. There has been a lot of research on floaters in the ocean that float on the water and are made of a certain kind of material that algae easily grows on and then are collected and oil is extracted from them. This is such an advantage because a majority of the earth is ocean. There would be no shortage for areas to grow algae. An alga does not produce any water however. Algae can however purify wastewater because it consumes many of sediment in wastewater that makes it wastewater. It is not detrimental to the quality of the water and can be grown in salt water. So despite the fact that they do not produce any fresh water they can grow in much of the worlds un-desirable water sources and clean that water as well.

Algal organisms consume carbon dioxide to complete photosynthesis. This is a huge benefit because today the pollution of the atmosphere is due largely to excess carbon dioxide released in the air from coal plants, cars and other numerous industrial sources. One method to feed algae is to contain flue gases from coal plants and funnel it to areas that algae is grown to increase efficiency and decrease pollution. Algae could lower harmful carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrocarbon levels by 50 to 100 percent. It thus reduces soot, smog and cancer-causing compounds. Unfortunately most of the carbon dioxide that is already in the air has gone up to the O-zone. Algae cannot retrieve that carbon dioxide, and actually cannot get enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to allow maximum growth. So algae cannot decrease the current level of pollution, but it could help curb the pollution effects on the environment in the future.

Algae produce a considerably larger amount of oil than corn or other sources of biodiesel. Fifty percent of an algae organism’s body mass is compromised of oil compared to twenty percent for the next highest producer of biodiesel oil. An alga is estimated to produce ten thousand gallons of biodiesel oil per acre per year. Palm which has the next highest yield only produces six hundred and fifty gallons per acre per year. These yields are insane and could greatly decrease the amount of land required to produce biodiesel fuels. Douglas Henston the CEO of Solix, a business dedicated to the research and production of algae oil says that “ If we were to replace all of the diesel that we use in the United States with an algae derivative we could do it on an area of land that's about one-half of 1 percent of the current farm land that we use now.” An alga also grows astonishingly fast and can double its volume overnight and can be harvested day after day, unlike corn or soybeans which are used for biodiesel fuel. Algae also are not consumed by humans. Other sources of biofuel are big staples in the world’s diet. Two of those big sources are corn and soybeans, which are two of the biggest biofuel producers in biodiesels today. If algae were used as a biofuel replacement for corn and soy then algae could assist in ending the world food crisis.

Once effective methods have been developed the integration of algae into already existing industry would be very easy. Algal biodiesel is a decarbonized liquid fuel that can be integrated into current pipelines used for other biodiesel fuels. Therefore it will be very cost effective to transport algal biodiesel fuel. Biodiesel created from algae oil can also easily be used in existing diesel engines with no necessary modifications. Lisa Mortenson, the CEO of Community Fuels, a company aiming to become the first California Company to commercialize the technology and feedstock necessary to make algae-based biodiesel a reality, comments on the advantages of algae as a biodiesel fuel, “One of its biggest advantages is that it’s appropriate for most diesel engines without the need to modify them, so it can easily merge into the existing supply chain. You don’t have to buy new vehicles or invest in new technology.” This advantage would allow the integration of algae biodiesel fuel to be very fast and complete.

Obviously there are many negative views on using algae as a biofuel. One of the main setbacks of algae is an economically viable way to extract the oils from them. No one has come up with an efficient and most importantly cheap way to do this. In order to extract the oil from algae you must separate the algae from where it is growing, which is difficult to do without disturbing the plant. Then you must dry the algae and finally compress it to extract all of the oil. In the end it is a lengthy process and an expensive on at that. The process is much too expensive to produce algae on a large scale. Along with this problem is the funding issue. Billions of dollars are needed for the research of algae as a biofuel but investors are becoming far and few between because of the economical hard ships. In order for scientists to make the harvesting and extracting process more economical they need investors to fund them for their research. Getting those funds is becoming harder and harder for algae scientists.

Environmentalists are surprisingly opposed to algae’s use as a biofuel as well. Going back to the harvesting issue, environmentalists are against algae as a biofuel because most of the machines used for harvesting it are large vehicles with high CO2 emissions. Environmentalists are also against the solvents used to extract the oil from the algae. Apparently they can be harmful to the environment and even dangerous to human health. So basically if scientist can develop an environmentally sound and economically viable means of harvesting algae oil then many questions will be answered and algae biofuel could become the next big energy source in the world.

Another contributing factor to critic’s views on algae as a biofuel is the amount of algae species. There are thousands of known species of algae and probably hundreds of unknown species. One problem with this is that different species grow in different environments. Meaning they grow in different temperatures of water, certain types of water etc. Different species also provide different yields of oils. So scientists are trying to find the easiest algae species to grow, but at the same time they are looking for the species that has the best yields. Therefore, they are trying to finding the perfect medium species, this has caused some controversy because scientist don’t even really know what species they would harvest to create the biofuel which makes many critics and investors alike very skeptical.

In order for mass production and incorporation of algae biofuel into the economy and infrastructure many things need to happen. Scientists need to discover cheap ways to harvest the algae oil and convert it to biofuel. They also need to decide if they want to have a complete biofuel, in which case they would have to completely revamp the automotive industry and create new engines to use the biofuel. Or they could decide to incorporate the algae biofuel into diesel fuel, making a biodiesel which could be used in many existing cars today. This would be very similar to how ethanol is used today. However this would also mean that the world would still be dependent on some fossil fuels, and only diesel vehicles would be able to use the new green fuel. This would mean that all non diesel cars would still be using fossil fuels and it would not really solve the oil crisis. One way they could do it is incorporate the biofuel into diesel fuel and create more efficient ways of extracting the oil and harvesting the algae while they are making a profit. During that same period they could begin building cars that run solely on biofuels and slowly incorporate them into the economy. Despite all of these hypothetical things that they could do, they still need to create more efficient and economical ways of harvesting and extracting the oils from the algae. That is what the entire algae as a biofuel idea comes down to.

Biodiesel as a whole does not make up much of the world’s fuel supply. You will find that at most gas pumps, ethanol is mixed with the gasoline. In the same way, biodiesel is mixed with petrodiesel. For example, B20 diesel has 20% biodiesel and 80% petrodiesel. A perk of B20 is that a diesel engine can run off of it without any modifications. B20 has less energy than regular diesel, but it has higher combustion efficiency, so the difference is only 2% less MPG. Biodiesel has no sulfur. It also has superior lubricating properties which equates to reduced system wear. It also gives off less particulate matter and less greenhouse emissions than diesel. Algae biodiesel when burned returns to the air the carbon dioxide that the algae used for growing. Although it has many advantages, it isn’t replacing petrodiesel as quickly as it could be. The costs of producing algae biodiesel, even with advances in growth and extraction technology, are still relatively high compared to petrodiesel.

Petrodiesel 4 C12H23 + 49 O2 ® 48 CO2 + 46 H2O

Biodiesel 2 C19H34O2 + 53 O2 ® 38 CO2 + 34 H2O

By these numbers, 4 moles of petrodiesel makes 48 moles of carbon dioxide, and 4 moles of biodiesel makes 76 moles of carbon dioxide. At first you would think that biodiesel makes more carbon dioxide, but in fact, that amount of carbon dioxide was used to grow the algae, so there is no net gain of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The use of algae as a biofuel would be very beneficial to the world today. It would help with the world food crisis, stopping biofuel products such as corn, palm and soybeans to be used as a biofuel and would allow them to be consumed by humans and animals. Algae biofuel would also be very beneficial to poorer and third world nations that do not have a lot of arable land because algae can grow just about anywhere. Algae biofuel would assist in stopping carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere because algae consume large amounts of carbon dioxide. Algae biofuel would be much more efficient source for biofuels because it produces more oil than the current highest yielding biofuels, and grows much faster than current biofuels. Algae would also not use nearly as much land as current biofuel sources such as corn and soybeans would use. Algae biofuel is a very viable source of energy that possible could replace petroleum based gasoline in the next fifty years. Once better harvesting methods have been created and the biofuel is incorporated into the industry it could have an instrumental impact on life as we know it. There are a few flaws in the use of algae as a biofuel but scientists are currently working on those problems and getting closer to solving them every day. //Futuristic Algae PBR fields//

"We believe OriginOil’s concentration and extraction technology holds promise of reducing costs and energy requirements in the algae harvesting process." - Andrew Lawson, Managing Director at MBD Energy Ltd.

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**The use of algae as a biofuel is a very promising and exciting new source of energy, not only for America but for the entire world.**
[][] [|http://www.northbaybiz] [|__http://interestingenergyfacts.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-promising-is-algae-biofuel.html__] [|.com/General_Articles/General_Articles/Algae_Americas_Next_Super_Fuel.php] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
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