Another algae-biofuel project: Colorado State University and Solix Biofuels Inc.

Yet another initiative aimed at producing biodiesel from algae, using expensive photo- bioreactors, has been announced by Colorado State University (CSU) researchers. They are partnering with a company called Solix Biofuels Inc.

Interestingly, the rationale behind the project indicates that many are still not aware of the bioenergy potential in the developing world: "You cannot meet the demand for biofuels from current oil crops ... you can't grow enough", says Doug Henston, CEO of Solix, referring to canola (rapeseed) grown in the US and Europe. Mr Henston forgets that the Global South can produce an amount of biofuels several times the total amount of oil the world currently consumes, in sustainable manner (earlier post).

But that aside, let us look at the technology in question. The company's process uses algae grown in specially designed photo-bioreactors. Through photosynthesis, the microscopic algae use sunlight, water, carbon dioxide and other nutrients to produce lipids, a type of oil that can be extracted and made into biodiesel. The goal is to produce massive quantities of algae and oil by tapping into carbon dioxide produced by industrial smokestacks, said Bryan Willson, director of the CSU Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory:

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Through its technology, Solix, which CSU helped create, is addressing the problems of declining petroleum reserves and the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere linked to global warming.

Algae grows fast, Willson said, and has the potential to yield 30 to 100 times the amount of lipids per acre produced by traditional oil crops, such as soy of canola [note, these yields are only valid for closed photobioreactor systems; in open ponds, algae yields decline below levels of ordinary energy crops - see below].

Research on oil-producing algae began at the National Renewal Energy Laboratory in 1978. Solix, working with CSU engineers and students, has expanded on that research to overcome some of its problems, said Solix founder Jim Sears. The trick now is applying the advances on a massive scale, Sears said. The United States uses 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel a year and is likely to use up to 100 billion gallons by 2025, he said.

Using oil-from-algae technology, about 25 billion gallons of biodiesel could be produced annually on 4 million acres of land, or about four-tenths of 1 percent of the land dedicated to agriculture in the United States, Sear said. “And it doesn’t have to be farmland,” he said. “It just needs to be flat and get a lot of sunshine.”


Let us remind the reader that the Aquatic Species Program in the US as did European and Japanese algae-to-fuels programmes looked at photobioreactors but quickly dismissed them as being far too costly. The reactors cannot be scaled up, require a huge amount of materials (plastics, glass, steel), which are very carbon and energy-intensive to produce.

So the programmes focused on the alternative: growing algae in open ponds. The research then found that in the open air, algae cultures become unstable and their yield declines to levels below that of many ordinary energy crops.

The algae-to-fuel programs were discontinued in the early 1990s, when oil prices declined.

Today, the situation has changed again, with oil at over US$60 per barrel and with an existing market for carbon, which puts a price on each tonne of CO2. Both these factors may make the economics of algae biofuels more interesting.

Expensive photobioreactors
Crucially, Henston declined to say how much a bioreactor costs or when large-scale use of the technology is likely to occur. He also gave no indication of the energy inputs used to build the reactors, nor of the carbon dioxide released during the manufacturing stage. Market forces will determine how the company and the technology advances, he said.

An experimental bioreactor is expected to be built at New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins next year. The bioreactor would be 350 feet long and 40 feet wide. It would tap into excess carbon dioxide from the brewing process. If the New Belgium experiment is successful, the technology would be applied to other industrial uses, Henston said.

Henston said the science of oil from algae and the fundamental technology used to do it is not all that new. “What we’re doing is integrating science with various aspects of technology in a new fashion,” he said.