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Featured Articles
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Jul 2009
| Source: Oilweek Magazine
| | | A better grow op
| | | Algae may be the key to turning CO2 emissions from a liability into a resource
| | | by Paul Stastny
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| Seaweed was the talk of the day about a half-century ago during the green revolution, which transformed agriculture around the world. At the time, scientists predicted that algae´s randy reproductive prowess would one day make it the staple food of multitudes. Of course, it would also taste good in the guise of faux beef, mock duck, and veggie patties.
They were almost right. It seems, however, that the title of uber-food went to the more highly evolved soybean, which serves as the base for a gamut of health food products and digestible fillers, while algae languishes on grocery store shelves in the form of 40-gram packets of Dulse.
But don´t give up on the lowly algae just yet. Especially now, a year after so much, ink went into revealing corn-based ethanol as a net energy drain and an environmental sham. (At best, corn-based ethanol is a veiled farm subsidy and marginal contributor to the United States energy mix.) Similarly, canola or soy-based biodiesel isn´t the energy savior North American policy-makers were hoping for, although it does come off looking just a little better than ethanol.
And as for cellulosic ethanol, which the federal Tories pledged to throw some research money at a couple years ago as part of the $500-million NextGen Biofuels Fund, it´s fallen off the radar as the world economy has fallen on its face.
So algae may not exactly be grabbing headlines now, but it´s positioned to make some major gains in Canada. Algae´s staggering capacity for propagation is just as impressive now as it ever was, only this time the idea is to harness it as an energy source and a carbon sink. A common frame of reference cited in the United States is that one football end zone of algae can produce the equivalent biodiesel of three entire football fields of soybeans.
And like soybeans, algae is a plant, which means it´s made up of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Once the oil is squeezed out of it like a sponge, the remaining algae carcass can still be used as a feed, fertilizer, or in higher value chemicals.
About two years ago, Innoventures Canada (I-CAN), a consortium of Canada´s leading research agencies brought together by the Alberta Research Council (ARC), posed this question to its network: How can we turn CO2 into a value added product?
The recommendation that came back was to use nature´s best mechanism for dealing with CO2, algae.
Here´s what endeared algae to the researchers:
1. Many of the estimated 30 million to 150 million strains of algae reach maturity within three days.
2. Like other plants, algae has the ability to photosynthesize, which means that in the presence of light, algae builds its body mass by feeding on CO2.
3. Given the endless variety of algae strains, there is likely to be specific strains of algae imminently suitable for making a meal of most any chemical cocktail of flue gas out there.
As our energy-hungry civilization moves towards a carbon-restricted future, more and more of the world´s top scientists are turning their attention to algae. For the same reasons, ARC´s president John McDougall, who is also chairman of I-CAN, wants to shift algae research into high gear.
McDougall says ARC has already completed a two-year feasibility study that proves the science of converting CO2 into biological mass while turning out a variety of end products, including biodiesel. Now it wants to convince policy-makers and industry partners to support a national platform of research that would involve the construction of a small-scale demonstration project followed by larger scale project, all of which would lead to commercial production in as little as four years.
"The science is doable," McDougall says. "So, essentially, we now have an engineering problem. And one thing Canada´s good at is big engineering problems."
There are already a number of specialty algae grow-ops around the world. Most of them are in warmer climates like the southern U.S. and Australia. So an off-the-shelf solution from abroad wouldn´t work in Canada´s harsh environment. Canada would have to do its own research on the best way to feed and clothe algae.
Currently there are only a few algae projects around the world using CO2 to enhance the growth of algae. I-CAN´s focus on converting CO2 into biomass in a northern climate ensures Canada adds to, rather than doubles up on, the body of algae research being done elsewhere.
"The exercise here is scale up so that you´re producing very large volumes of [algae] material to deal with the very large volumes of CO2, which could deal with 10 or 15 per cent of Canada´s CO2 emissions," McDougall says. "This is thinking of CO2 is a new natural resource."
To accomplish this ambitious task, I-CAN researchers had to rethink the usual ways of cultivating algae. The traditional approach in warmer climates is open ponds. The other approach, much less common, is a closed system of photobioreactors. These are typically plastic bags of what is best described as green slime hung out in the open for maximum exposure to sunlight. Photobioreactors grow algae very quickly, but the size and cost of the bags is the limiting factor.
"The advantage of a closed system is you can control the environment and light penetration and all those things," says Quinn Goretzky, project manager for the I-CAN Carbon Algae Recycling System (CARS) project."We quickly recognized both [open and closed growing] platforms have their strengths, so we decided to combine them and pursued a third option-a covered pond," he says.
To process large volumes of flue gas from industrial facilities, the ponds also couldn´t be the usual 28 or 30 centimetres deep. That would take up too much land. Instead, the CARS team conceived of deeper ponds that are covered in order to control the environment and allow algae to grow year-round in a northern climate.
There is, however, a reason algae ponds are built shallow: to allow for light penetration. The metre-deep ponds that CARS researchers envision will require a way to get light down to depth. Cindy Jackson, an engineering specialist on the project, is working on a system of solar collectors and light tubes to channel sunlight into the murky depths.
At this early stage in the research, Goretzky prefers to avoid specifics of lighting design. He simply says, "The deeper the pond, the less footprint. So, at this point in time, we´re exploring every lighting option that we can to get light to a greater depth."
To provide the kind of balmy temperatures these little fellas love, Goretzky envisions capturing low-grade waste heat from major CO2 flue stream producing facilities. The power station at Alberta´s Lake Wabamun, for example, uses lake water for cooling, which keeps a good part of the lake open year-round. Waste-heat capture also provides a dual environmental benefit.
The promise of algae´s potential to turn Canada´s industrial CO2 emissions into a natural resource can lead to a new way of seeing CO2 McDougall furnishes an example when he says, "[Canada´s] got petrochemical plants, we´ve got fertilizer plants, we´ve got cement manufacturers, we´ve got oilsands projects, and so on-the beauty of all these is that they produce large volumes of CO2 emissions."
But it´s the excitement of this research that fuels such remarks. Since Canada already has facilities emitting large volumes CO2, why not set up beside them and let algae process flue stack emissions into value-added products. It makes more sense than separating out CO2 and shipping it over large distances for sequestration. Instead, CO2 processing could be done at large point-source-emitter sites, whether that´s an oilsands facility, an upgrader, a power station or a smelter.
For Goretzky, what´s particularly attractive about this scenario is that adding a CARS facility to a point source emitter could turn it into a carbon bio-industrial cluster.
"Think of communities that have an aluminum smelter or a power plant," he says. "This would not only extend the continuity of the present industrial facility and give it a competitive edge, but you could potentially be providing the community with a new industrial base to pursue and develop as well."
The CARS research business model provides three major areas of economic opportunity. The first is an algae strain selection component. If Canada becomes a leader in identifying and growing specific strains of algae for specific flue gas mixtures, and specifically algae strains that grow well in a northern environment, it could sell this knowledge to the world.
A second area of opportunity is the engineering, construction, and operation of these super-sized grow-ops, a very nice business in itself.
"And then there´s the whole bio-processing backend, which is the ability to convert the stuff into useful products," McDougall says.
Recognizing the worldwide interest in algae research, McDougall is now pushing for more aggressive timelines towards commercial production.
"We´re in the process of trying to convince the federal government to put down a national platform for development," he says. "This would put Canada at the forefront of what´s going on in the world."
As for the price tag, the early stages of research were a bargain-a half-million dollars or so. But the next step is a tall one at $25 million for constructing a pilot operation. To build the type of national infrastructure I-CAN envisions will require in the range of $250 million. To put that into perspective, that´s half of the federal government´s entire NextGen Biofuels Fund budget.
In a bad economy, this may be a tall order, but McDougall is reasonably confident he will be able to sell at least the pilot stage and build a compelling case for algae as an environmental super plant.
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