Aquaflow and Solray, Two New Zealand Algae Biofuel Companies, Partner Up

New Zealand algae-to-biofuel hopefuls Aquaflow Bionomics and Solray Energy have teamed up to see if they can overcome the challenges that have kept algal biofuels from commercial production to date.

The partnership announced Thursday will combine Aquaflow's methods of harvesting algae grown from wastewater streams and Solray's process of turning that algae into fuel, the companies said.

Aquaflow's system of growing algae in open ponds using the effluent in wastewater from sources like sewage plants, food processing facilities and dairy farms could help lower costs.

That's because algae helps clean wastewater, a service companies can be expected to pay for. Seattle startup Blue Marble Energy has a plan to grow algae to treat wastewater and then turn the algae into industrial chemicals, for example (see Green Light post).

A similar concept is using the carbon emissions from power plants or factories to grow algae – the plan of, among others, the recently disbanded algae-to-biofuel pioneer GreenFuel Technologies, which is now seeking a buyer of its intellectual property (see Green Light post).

GreenFuel's demise has brought up a key challenge facing would-be algae biofuel makers, however – how to cut the costs of actually getting the algae harvested and turned into fuel (see Green Light post and Algae Biodiesel: It's $33 a Gallon).

Using open ponds, rather than enclosed "bioreactors" as GreenFuel had done, could be more cost effective, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Aquatic Species Program, one of the earliest research efforts into algae biofuels that ended in 1998.

On the other hand, proponents of closed systems for growing algae say they've found ways to surmount the challenges noted in that report (see Can Solix Cut the Cost of Making Algae by 90%?).

Startup Algenol says it's gotten around the harvesting challenge with a process that allows for algae-made ethanol to be extracted without killing the algae. It's building a test plant at a Dow Chemicals site in Texas (see Green Light post).

Despite the challenges – or perhaps because of them – money continues to pour into algae-to-biofuel research and commercialization efforts.

Solazyme last month raised $57 million to push commercialization of its unusual process of growing algae in the dark and feeding it industrial and biomass byproducts (see Solazyme Snags $57M to Make Algal Oil for Cars and Salad).

Oil giant Exxon made a big splash earlier this month when it promised $300 million in a algae biofuel research partnership with J. Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics, as well as $300 more in in-house research (see Green Light post).

As for Aquaflow, it already has a relationship with Honeywell company UOP to work on bio jet fuel, making it one of many algae biofuel developers working with aviation industry partners, such as Sapphire Energy, Solazyme, Inventure Chemical, PetroSun and Chevron (see Biofuel Powers Air New Zealand Test Flight).

In March 2008, Aquaflow said it was successfully harvesting algae and planned to commission a prototype biorefinery to turn the algae into fuel.

Thursday's announcement didn't make clear if Aquaflow was continuing its own biorefinery work or switching efforts to Solray's system.

Solray says it has come up with a way to convert all of the algae – not just the fatty acids that make up a portion of it – into an "Algae Crude" oil that can be processed into transportation fuel.

With several years of testing the process in a prototype plant, Solray – a joint venture of New Zealand companies Solvent Rescue, which reconstitutes used solvents, and Rayners, which makes high-pressure vessels and HVAC equipment – says it commissioned a larger-scale plant in July 2008, according to its Web site.

Both Aquaflow and Solray have said they are seeking investment.

ExxonMobil Fuels Venter's Efforts To Run Vehicles on Algae-Based Oil

After years of skepticism about the promise of biofuels, ExxonMobil has decided to make one of the biggest biofuel bets so far. Last week, the world's second largest company announced that it will spend up to $600 million over 5 to 6 years to produce biofuels from algae.

Half the money will go to Synthetic Genomics Inc., a San Diego, California-based start-up run by genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter. Exxon will spend another $300 million on in-house research including attempts to scale up biofuels production from algae and refine the resulting oils into finished fuels.

Webinar Features Talk on Algae for Fuels & Chemicals

Last time, we told you about how researchers are working on ways of making algae into a viable feedstock for Midwest biodiesel production. In this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast, we continue the conversation on algae and it’s potential as a fuel… and the chemical by-products and processes it can bring to the table.

During the recent 2009 World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) hosted a webinar so that reporters and those who could not attend in person could still participate in a discussion on the feasibility of algae to fuel our vehicles, feed our bodies and even free our air of carbon emissions.

Folks like Steve Gluck, a scientist with Dow Chemical Company; Tom Burn of XL Renewables; CEO of Culturing Solutions Dean Tsoupeis ; and Chief Operating Officer of Algenol Biofuels Ed Legere; discussed different methods of algae production and the future for it in the fuel and chemical fields.

You can hear part of the conversation in this week’s Domestic Fuel Cast here:

The entire hour and a half webinar is also posted online here.

Joint effort on algal biofuel

Two South Island companies seeking to turn algae grown in sewage and other polluted water into fuel are combining their efforts.

Solray Energy and Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation are expected to try to tap dual revenue streams - from not only their capability to clean polluted water using algae, but from the provision of the algae as feedstock for the next-generation biofuel.

Marlborough-based Aquaflow has developed low-cost, low- energy, commercial technologies to harvest and store significant daily tonnages of micro algae, and in addition a wide variety of uses for such algae.

But Solray has separately developed a reactor and extraction process to detoxify algae and deliver a crude oil and other co-products, with the oil capable of being refined as biofuel.

Their work will target global demand for clean water, reduction of nitrogen and phosphates which have seriously degraded aquatic ecosystems, and renewable biofuels from waste.

UC Berkeley: Why Switchgrass Matters, and Algae by the Numbers

It's field trip day, and I'm at the Synthetic Biology Workshop at the University of California Berkeley co-sponsored by Innovation Center Denmark.

And naturally, one of the main topics is cellulosic ethanol, particularly from wild grasses like switchgrass and miscanthus.

"They can grow without fertilizer with little water on somewhat marginal land," said Henrik Scheller, director of cell wall biosynthesis at the Joint BioEnergy Institute at Berkeley.

The price is right too. Switchgrass and miscanthus can be grown for $50 to $80 a ton. That translates to feedstocks for ethanol of around 49 to 78 cents a gallon and feedstocks for octane (gas) producers at 72 cents to $1.15. By contrast, corn starch as an ethanol feedstock at the moment costs around $1.90. Using corn for octane would come to $2.80 a gallon. Palm oil is now around $2.55 a gallon and sucrose, the sugar harvested from Brazilian sugarcane, comes to around $2.15 a pound. Although sugar and corn prices are still above their traditional norms, these traditional feedstocks would still cost more than the grasses.

Unfortunately, lignocellulose is the most difficult to convert into sugars that can then be turned into alcohols or other substances. "The difficulty is in the processing," he said.

Research in the next few years will focus on ways to make it easier to remove lignin, the tough protein that surrounds plants. Research will also continue on enzymes to remove deconstruct plant materials, but progress could be more incremental. Enzymes are already highly evolved. Industrial enzymes come largely from a species of enzyme called Trichoderma, which in its natural state can chew up tents in the Philippines.

Another big focus for research: phase separation. Now, alcohol is distilled to separate it from water, a time consuming process. If microbes could be developed that produce fuels that will naturally separate from water somewhat quickly, the energy required to make fuel could be greatly reduced.

Algae? He likes it. But it may not be a miracle cure. Algae is capable of capturing 10 watts of energy per square meter, which translates to 4,385 gallons of fuel per acre per year. Although some companies promise 50,000 gallons of algae an acre, unless they shine lights on it, it won't happen.

"We can't promise more out of algae than incident sunlight can provide," he said.

Fun fact: It takes eight photons of light for algae to capture a single molecule of carbon dioxide.

Biofuels invariably will require genetic engineering, but it is debatable whether protests will erupt in the U.S.

"I've always viewed GMOs as a European problem," he said. A while back, he had a Swiss delegation in his lab. When they asked if some of the plants were genetically modified, and learned that they were, the guests asked why there weren't any guards around the lab.