Algae That Cleans Emissions and Produces Fuel

**$tarDu$t** writes "Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at MIT has come up with an idea for using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust. His research began 3 years ago in an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station. His idea consists of building algae farms near power plants to provide a means to reduce CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions. Emissions are filtered through the algae. Then the CO2 saturated algae is harvested and squeezed to produce a combustible vegetable oil (biodiesel) and a dried green substance that can be further processed into ethanol."

Comments

Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[eldavojohn]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2. I have seen lectures given where Alzheimer's susceptible genes were spliced into the genes of mice neurons using a strain of the herpes virus that had previously infected neurons of Alzheimer's patients.

Does anyone know if there are techniques like this to use to directly alter the genes of other organisms (like algae) using perhaps similar tricks?

Furthermore, what if this could be used for gases other than nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide?

Is there maybe a possibility of coating hot air balloons or zeppelins with this algae and letting them float about in the atmosphere until they become so heavy with algae they descend? I know it's kind of farfetched to propose that but stranger things that once were science fiction have become useful. The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Politburo]

I don't have a biology degree but it seems to me that there might be faster ways of creating strains more efficient at harvesting/reducing CO2.

Well gee, please do enlighten the biologists then.

The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Did you miss this part in the summary in your rush for FP? "Emissions are filtered through the algae."

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[PaintyThePirate]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I remember reading that to produce a useful amount of algae, the air needs to be at least 13% CO2. Coal plant emissions reach that level. So it would be possible to run the nation's diesel fleet off 15,000 square miles of desert if that desert contained a few dozen coal power plants and a system of pipes to carry exhaust to the algae ponds.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[Rhinobird]

The article seems to make it sound like just having the algae exposed to the air near a plant.

Actually, I got the impression that they diverted the flue gasses from the powerplant and bubbled them through the algae; instead of just venting the gases right into the air.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[arivanov]

Nope you are not wrong. Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow. They require loads of sun, loads of CO2 and the moment their concentration reaches a usefull level the broth tends to start dieing out, bacteria take over and contaminate the broth. So on. Of course, growing them for fuel is different from growing them for biotech where you need them "pure", but still. The idea of using algae is wildly optimistic.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[hankwang]

Algae are an extreme pain in the arse to grow. They require loads of sun, loads of CO2

Tell this to anyone who has an aquarium, artifical pond in the garden, or swimming pool. I'd say it is an extreme pain in the arse to prevent algae from growing in any water that is exposed to light. I have seen them grow in cooling-water hoses that were only exposed to fluorescent light tubes. Mind you, the cooling-water circuit was filled with deionized water, so all the nutrients must have been leaking out of the various stainless steel, brass and plastic parts.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[arivanov]

You are kind'a correct. True, algae grows everywhere. The problem is that it is not growing in a concentration for anything usefull. If you dip your fish in an algae broth that is as concentrated as necessary for it to be of any use for extracting food supplements they will die in 5 minutes or less because their gills will be completely clogged up. I assume that biofuel is the same (I may be wrong). And by the way - I used to study this (granted this was 20 years ago) and I used to have 8+ fish tanks around the apartment. So I know both sides of the story first hand.

Re:Better Strains and Algae Zeppelins?

[kesuki]

well, if one grows algea on land you run into the issue of harvesting enough, unless you're using controlled environments where every nutrient level is precisely tuned to the needs of the algea. in which case you're not producing a huge volume, but it's very useful for cleaning emissions from coal power plants. and if every coal plant in the us used algea tanks insted of conventional 'scrubbers' enough algea to produce enough biodiesel to run a large segment of our diesel market would be produced. now that's not using a lot of land at all, to replace a large portion (say as much diesel as every farmer in the US uses annually, plus every schoolbus)

growing algea on land is kinda silly though, when it grows on the ocean. but you're right 'algea' needs to be seperated from the sea water, it's harvesting and it would take a lot of acres of ocean to produce enough algea to say fill a harverster tanker, since you are probally only taking the top inch of water, and getting about 1% of the content of that inch of water back as 'concentrated' algea.

Unless of course you harvest at 'low tide' daily through some sort of automated growing field that's anchored off shore... you'd be expending a lot of energy just trying to collect the algea. it's something that's never beeen tried before, something that's never ben tested, and never been proven, Of course it's full of uncertainty. the only certainty though is that as long as everyone says 'it's unproven' and looks for more ways to exploit fossile fuels the longer it will 'stay' unproven.

BTW, on land algea production in controlled raceways has been researched, and is considered viable, but only at a 'certain' price point historically that price point has always been above the price of oil, but that's changing. the most heavily exploited fields have long since peaked, many fields are projected to peak soon, and the number of untapped fields are projected to grow a lot less slowly than the old over tapped sites begin to run dry, at least here in the US. and in certain parts of the mid-east as well. the united states is likely to 'hit' a new peak somewhere between 10-30 years from now, and if there had been a large outcry against possibly the worst oil spill in the history of mankind, our offshore rigs (the largest sector of field growth potential in the US) could cause that peak to hit even earlier.

I strongly believe that someone is going to come up with a viable business model to produce enough algea from free floating ocean harvesting to make it commercially viable. there is just too much 'under utilized' ocean water. some slow release 'wires' on boyoys could 'fertilize' the crop of algea, as slow moving harvester ships make 'runs' that allow them to harvest whichever 'field' was ripe, to concentrate the useful algea for processing into diesel and ethanol and oils and fertilizers etc. what would really get this going though are subsudies on production of biodiesel and/or ethanol. everyone likes no risk investments, so a government promising that you'll make a profit makes it a no brainer. I believe once the methods are designed, tested and proven, the 'need' for government assurances will go away. Consider sugar farming, sugar was once something only the rich could afford, but increasing production has reduced costs associated so much that it's now a very cheap commodity, so cheap that some growers would rather turn their sugar into ethanol in the hopes that they'll make more profit.

The same should also be true for algea, it will take time, and money, and research and risk taking to make algea viable, but once that has been done it will seem so easy some people will be wondering why we didn't do it 30 years ago. it took some bold risk takers in the 1980's to make soybeans the commodity they are today, and it will take bold risk takers to make algea the commodity it can be in the future.

Obligatory 'Soylent Green' reference

[trailerparkcassanova]

Isaac Berzin's algae IS people!!!!

OILIX

[HunterZ]

Nice, they've invented OILIX from Metal Gear 2 (MSX, not PS2)!

Algae

[mysqlrocks]

Can't algae itself get out of control and cause environmental problems?
http://www.google.com/search?q=algae+blooms

Re:Algae

[fireduck]

Yes, under the proper conditions. Stack emissions are primarily CO2, NOx and various sulfur compounds. What primarily keeps algae levels in check in the environment are various micronutrients (phosphorous, nitrogen, iron). Given that smokestack emissions should be fairly defined composition, it should be straight forward to supply the exact amounts of additional nutrients to stimulate growth without overpopulation problems. Besides, this is an engineered process, not simply dumping emissions into a river.

Cheap Solar Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Fuel -> Power Plant -> Emissions
2. Emissions -> Algea -> Fuel
3. Profit!

UNH Biodeisel?

[ydnar]

This sounds very similar to a similar process documented by the UNH Biodeisel Group.

Re:UNH Biodeisel?

[PaintyThePirate]

The UNH study is based on a ~20 year U.S. DoE study on algae biodiesel. Anyway, while it is true that there is enough land in the United States to grow enough algae to replace all gasoline and diesel fuel use, it's not the ideal solution. The problem is that the algae requires something around 13% CO2 gas to grow in any useful amount. The level of CO2 naturally occuring in the atmosphere is about 0.035%. The only economical source to generate that much CO2 is burning Coal. So, the entire process still yields tremendoes amounts of CO2, contributing to global warming. Certainly, it is better to harness CO2 from existing Coal power plants for biodiesel instead of releasing it into the atmosphere, but it is not a permanent solution.

New advertising campaign

[eclectro]

Now -- With the cleaning power of Slime!!!

covered on PBS

[LEPP]

They had a Scientific American segment on this. Here is the segment transcript. It was quite interesting.

LEPP

Nitrous?

[drewzhrodague]

I will personally take care of any spare nitrous oxide gas you happen to have. Please contact me via the email address attached to this account.

How does this really help?

[Bob_Villa]

From reading the article, the algae suck up the CO2 and the Nitrogen Oxides from the power plant emissions. That's obviously a good thing. The algae are then used to create methanol and biodiesel. What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

Does it take less pollution to create methanol and biodiesel this way, versus drilling them from the earth?

Re:How does this really help?

[Politburo]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, you are. See in the current situation, both powerplant CO2 and vehicle CO2 (and NOx) are being emitted from different energy sources. For the sake of argument, let's assume equal amounts of emissions are emitted from the powerplant and the vehicles.

So you put in the algae and you get .4x CO2 out the powerplant stack, and let's assume the remainder goes to biodiesel. You burn that 100% biodiesel in a car, get you get your .6x CO2 back. CO2 before: 2x. CO2 after: x. Obviously the real-world numbers won't be as good, but there's still an obvious emission reduction.

Re:How does this really help?

[slcdb]

am I missing something here?

Yes. The theory is that you'd get twice the amount of use from the same amount of CO2 emissions -- once to generate electricity, and again to drive some cars (or something else). End result is total CO2 emissions are reduced because driving the cars only emitted the CO2 that the electicity generation plant would have already emitted otherwise.

Re:How does this really help?

[j1m 5n0w]

What happens when you burn the methanol and biodiesel? Doesn't that just release the stored CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides back into the atmosphere, or am I missing something here?

Yes, it ends up in the atmosphere in the end, but you get to use it twice. If you're going to polute, you might as well pollute in a way that maximises the energy generated per quantity of carbon dioxide produced. Also, this could partially solve a political problem of reliance on foreign fuel.

Also, if these algae are so great, why don't we fill up thousands of acres with them, not just 15,000, and suck the CO2 and Nitrogen Oxides out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gasses. Maybe the algae could then be dumped into the deep ocean, creating a carbon sink.

I assume that the algae grows better in an environment with a high concentration of carbon dioxide, such as power plant exhaust. The gains from pumping regular air through an algae filter would be less dramatic (and you could probably acheive a similar result by, say, planting a tree).

Re:How does this really help?

[jcorno]

But what about the other emissions? Coal plants put out a lot of arsenic and radioisotopes, among other things. Releasing it from smoke stacks is bad enough. When it's coming out of exaust pipes on busy streets, we're gonna have some problems.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[idsofmarch]

Yeah. Comes nothing good ever comes from research, we should just stop trying.

sprayers vs bubblers

[G4from128k]

I'd bet that this will work more effectively if the algae/water mixture is sprayed into the power plant exhaust rather than bubbling exhaust gas. Spraying will maximize the surface area exposed to the exhaust and reduce the system's energy use. It will take much less energy to compress a small volume of algae-liquid and make small drops than it does to compress a massive volume of gas to make small bubbles.

I can even imagine a multistage sprayer. A hot-stage sprayer injects matured algae-mix into the hot exhaust gases to both cool the exhaust stream and create a desiccated algae powder (for fuel production). A cool-stage sprayer injects living alga mix into the cooled water-saturated exhaust stream. Even with the two stage process I'd bet that the "cool" stage will still run at a relatively high temperature. Perhaps the engineers will need to adapt a thermophilic algae (such as live in hot-springs) to make the system feasible.

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[Red Flayer]

"I wish I had a nickel for every "So and so scientist at so-and-so university has come up with such-and-such alternative to gasoline" story I've seen over the last 30 years."

Wish I had a penny for every knee-jerk post made by someone who didn't even bother reading TFS, let alon TFA.

This isn't about alternative energy supply (mostly). This is about waste mediation, particularly CO2. The generation of usable fuels by the algae is just a nice little benefit, kind of like using an afterburner to generate extra power while reducing particulate emissions.

Re:Still Not "0x00ff00"

[Gzip Christ]

The fact that innocent algae have to be subjugated to digest our waste will still irk some environmentalists.

Can this MIT guy perhaps develop a separate strain of algae that will feast on hippies?

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[SchrodingersRoot]

I'd like to point out that many alternative fuels are already used

Biodiesel is already in use, as it (as I understand) functions is normal diesel engines without and retrofitting.

Hybrid cars are becoming commonplace

Many companies are planning on making ethanol capable models--Ford even has the CEO of Ford making some promises on-air (not that that necessarily means they'll live up to them)

Various mass transit systems are putting hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol, and biodiesel into production. Mass transit systems, by the way, can provide an answer to the chicken/egg problem for alternative fuel vehicles. Since companies won't create a signficant number of vehicles until there's an infrastructure to support them, so people will buy them, and an infrastructure won't be built until there's a market, there's traditionally been a problem. However, governments have the money and the muscle to bring both of them into being at the same time, if in a limited capacity. Mass transit systems can have buses, for example, fuel at the depots, to start with. They could also open the depot up for public purchase. As more mass transit systems adopt alternative fuels, more fuel stations will arise, and more people will purchase alternative energy vehicles. Slow, maybe, but potentially very effective.

Things don't happen overnight, but they do happen.

It works for heavy metals too

[skiingyac]

I don't know the details, but Dr. Ray Crist at the college I went to worked on getting algea to clean up heavy metals since like the 70's until he passed away last year at the age of 105. Hopefully more people will work on this type of stuff... I don't think it takes a rocket scientist... though it probably helps that Dr. Crist was the director of the Manhattan Project for a time.

Real world implementation

[ikornalot]

This has been under discussion here since 2004.

More CO2 scrubbing/sequestering

[greg_barton]

Check out this dangerous idea

Related Yahoo group

[flicken]

The Yahoo group, oil_from_algae has many knowledgeable people who are currently looking into the best strains of algae to grow, as well as methods for extracting oil from the algae.

all time favorite

[alex_guy_CA]

This issue was previously reported on Slashdot. last year

I have to say, as an environmentalist, this line of research is one of the most hopeful I have seen. Besides cleaning power emissions, it can clean farm and industrial waste while generating fuel.

While at a farm products convention I talked to the bio- diesel and ethanol people from Iowa about this stuff. They had never heard of it, which is a shame. It seems like there should be better ways to get good ideas out there, but I guess market forces are the best we can do considering the government is so in line with the status quo.

This might actually work. But does it scale?

[Animats]

It's not actually processing any significant fraction of the flue gases. It's just connected to a sampling line from the smokestack. The big question is how much equipment you need to process the output from a power plant. Numbers like a thousand acres of tube field are mentioned. And how much manual servicing does this gear take?

Here's the technical paper.

Check out the original

[brianerst]

I've long been fascinated by the UNH and GreenFuel proposals for algal biodiesel, so everytime it pops up, I take a look. No big changes lately, but the GreenFuel process still seems like the one that could actually have a real impact in our lifetimes.

Check out the original Slashdot thread on GreenFuel from back in May, 2005. The news.com article link has changed.

News.com had a few followup articles as well here (about investing in clean tech) and here (about J. Craig Venter looking at bioengineering more effective microbes for doing this kind of stuff).

Re:Alright, another idea that will go nowhere!

[RingDev]

Actually, WI is upping their ethanol blend again, we have a 200mil gal/year soy plant going in just out side of madison, and the new Milwaukee power plant could wind up being one of the most advanced clean coal burning plants in the US.

The big problem is not solutions, but cost. $3/gallon is the magic point for gas. Unless vehicles shoot way above 30mpg and gas prices don't increase past $3/gal alternative fuels will be cheaper. And the joy of capitalism is that the most financial sound path is the best funded. So yeah, hydrogen fuel cells have been possible for decades. But why would anyone invest in hydrogen when it costs the equivilant of $3/gal of gas today when gas has always been cheaper? If hydrogen costs 15 cents per mile, and gas costs 10 cents per mile, gas is going to get the investment. But when gas costs 13 cents a mile, and is only going to rise, people start looking into hydrogen.

That's where we're at now, gas is still cheaper, but just barily. As the hydrogen and alt fuel networks expand, and the cost of gas increases, alt fuels will become more and more popular.

-Rick

Re:His idea?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

A coal plant with a 2000 acre algae farm might produce 40 million gallons of biodiesel. Sold at market value, that's $100million USD. Per year. Amortized over a period of many years, just how much could the system cost for that one coal plant, before it's not worth it?

Especially considering that it means staving off new regulatory costs when we have a non-asshat president and something like Kyoto goes through? (If we were going to have to spend $25 million per year starting in 2009 anyway, just to be clean...)

Economically, it reduces demand for oil, once there's less pressure on supply from all the diesel guzzlers out there, the economy would improve.

There are too many reasons to do this to list, supposing it works at all.

Re:while these veggie environmental cleanup storie

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You really think we can best algae at converting sunlight to useful energy? The little buggers have been around billions of years. We've been screwing with photovoltaics for decades. There's this thing known as "expertise"...

Re:people please

[Yergle143]

'Just go Nuclear OK'

This scientist considers the problem a bit more carefully.
World Power consumption tallies 12 TW annually.
Recoverable Uranium deposits tally 3.4-17 million metric
tons with a total energy content of from 60-300 TW.
So after 6-30 years and all of the U is used up the world
will be left with the same quandary it had before (assuming
that WMD proliferation and/or an acute waste problem have
not forced the issue sooner).
Nature (2002) v 298 p 981
The trouble with coal is it is very cheap.
The trouble with 'just' type answers is that somebody
has probably not done their arithmetic.
537

Re:people please

[dbIII]

so, review: modern nuclear tech has no greenhouse gases

Please stick with reality - the fuel is made from a rock dug out of the ground and processed, so there are greenhouse gasses, but with high grade fuel it comes out at about one third less than the next contender (gas turbines). This still makes nuclear look very good on that point but has the advantage of being real and not just being advertising spin. If you want to advocate nuclear power on an unrelated article first learn about how it works and the entire process.

Re:Did anyone balance the energy "budget"?

[Bryansix]

You are missing the point entirely. Let's take a look at the alternative of using gasoline in cars.

1) Drill for Oil
(Burn Fuel)

2) Pump Oil up to the surface
(Burn Fuel)

3) Pump oil in pipeline to tanker ships
(Burn Fuel)

4) Transport Oil across world's oceans
(Burn lots of Fuel)

5) Truck Oil to refineries
(Burn Fuel)

6) Refine Oil into usable form and add MTBE
(Burn Fuel and harm the groundwater)

7) Truck gasoline to gas stations
(Burn Fuel)

Yet with all of that it is still economical to do. So any process designed to replace it doesn't have to be that effecient to beat using fossil fuels.

Re:people please

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Doesn't that total energy content come from one trip through a thermal reactor? You get about a 1000 kilowatt per gram, but you also produce plutonium.
octave:1> kw_per_gram=1000 kw_per_gram = 1000
octave:2> kw_per_metric_ton=kw_per_gram * 1000000
kw_per_metric_ton = 1000000000
octave:3> 3.4 * kw_per_metric_ton
ans = 3400000000

So this agrees with your calculation. But we aren't at this point "right back where we were before", because the "waste" is actually a fuel (which France's and Japan's breeder reactors make use of, and "actually produces more fuel than it consumes"). There are also thorium breeder reactors, with "thorium reserves estimated to be 5-6 times the known availability of uranium sources"

So 6 to 30 years becomes an estimate that ignores the energy content of the fuel produced, and also ignores thorium reserves. In fact, "recoverable" is based on current market prices. If you allow for the inevitable doubling of the market price,

Thus, while today's low uranium cost equates to about 50 years of assured resources (3.1 Mt) using conventional reactors at the current usage rate, a doubling of the market price increases this time roughly ten-fold. In all, conventional estimated resources account for about 250 years' supply (16.2 Mt) at the current consumption rate. This does not include advanced uranium-extraction scenarios (phosphate deposits accounting for 22 Mt, seawater accounting for up to 4000 Mt) that require 10-15 times the current market price.

Bottomline: there is a lot more to nuclear power than the numbers you sketched out.