Algae, the fuel of the future?

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Algae. Photo: EFE

Set amid cornfields and cow pastures in western Holland is a shallow pool that is rapidly turning green with algae, harvested for animal feed, skin preparations, biodegradable plastics and biofuel.In a warehouse 200 kilometres (120 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, a bioreactor is producing algae in pressure-cooker fashion that its manufacturer hopes will one day power jet aircraft.

Algae is the slimy stuff that clouds your home aquarium and, in larger form, gets tangled in your feet in a lake or ocean. It can grow almost everywhere there is water and sunlight, and under the right conditions it can double its volume within hours.Opinions differ on how best to grow algae and how quickly it can come on stream as a commercially viable alternative or supplement to fossil fuel. But scientists and industrialists agree the potential is huge.

"Algae are very small and they grow very fast and they also need less space," says Carel Callenbach, the director of Ingrepro, which operates the one of the largest algae farms in Europe producing 80 tons a year, "..and if you are dealing with biofuels, with energy, but also with nutrition - we need both energy as well as nutrition and algae have both energy and nutrition. And that's what algae do, so if you make biofuels, get oil out of algae, than there will also be protein left over," he says.

Algae doesn't require much space or good farmland. It can grow in fresh water, polluted water, sea water or farm runoff.It can purify a city's sewage while feeding on the nitrogen and phosphates in human waste.And it is rich in oil.The most common strains farmed today have an oil content of 30 percent, and it can go up to 70 percent or more.Yet, it avoids the fuel-for-food dilemma that has plagued first and second generation biofuels like corn, sugar and palm oil.

Rene Wijffels, a professor of bioprocess engineering at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the province of Gelderland has been researching algae as a source for biofuel.He says it costs 5 Euro (7.30031 USD) to produce 1kg (2.25lb) of Algae and that biofuel production is shackled by two factors: the limited availability of nutrients, and an unfavourable energy balance. "The biggest problem in algae farming is water because the concentration of bio mass, algae in water is rather low, so you are actually transporting a lot of water," he says.

The European Union has mandated that 20 percent of Europe 's energy must come from renewable sources by 2020, including a 10 percent biofuel component for transportation fuel. According to Wijffels, a promising method for reducing emissions is to capture carbon from power plants and heavy industries and to store it harmlessly in the ground.

At Ingrepro's farm near the Dutch border with Germany, the scum from the double Olympic-size pool is filtered and processed into flaky green strips that crumble to the touch. The algae can be made into dozens of products, from iodine tablets to horse feed. Algae oil goes into paints, resins, and bioplastics.

AlgaeLink, by contrast, sells bioreactors rather than algae products. It nurtures the Algae in a closed and controlled environment of clear tubes, speeding the reproductive process by two to four times as the water turns darker. But the process requires much more energy than open pools.

Peter Van den Dorpel says making jet fuel will be viable within a few years if petroleum prices stay above $100 a barrel. Van den Dorpel explains that Algae Link closed tube system innovation have two unique solutions: a cleaning tube system that allows light through for photosynthesis and integrated control systems that measure growth parameters.

The AlgaeLink system is still in the experimental stage - they have yet to produce more than a litre of oil, but Callenbach believes that if the system can create the volume, demand for the product will remain high. At Ingrepa we know very well what we can do with the waste products as well; we develop our own brand food for animals and we are closely involved with the fish food industry. So we knew what to do with proteins that are left over and as a result we can offer them even cheaper on the market," he says.