Bloomfield Hills, MI-based Sequest LLC is contemplating building a pilot algae biodiesel plant in Holland (on Michigan's west side). Holland has a number of attributes that make it a good location for this particular project. Sequest wants the plant to use waste water for growing the algae and carbon-dioxide to feed it. A coal-fired power plant is in close proximity to the local water treatment plant. Michigan State University also has a research lab nearby.

The intention is to pipe the CO₂ from the power plant through the waste water but it must be separated from other pollutants, like mercury. MSU, which has tremendous expertise in agricultural research, is expected to provide assistance with developing new strains of algae that would be more amenable to the biofuel production. The state of Michigan is currently in the process of passing legislation that would provide $18 million for biofuel projects including $7 million for the Holland algae plant.

[Source: MLive.com]

There are plenty of flex-fuel capable cars on the roads, but there is not nearly enough ethanol available to power all of them on the gasoline alternative. It's no secret that corn-based ethanol is not the answer to our oil woes, but if that's the case, what alternatives should we be looking closest at? Regular readers are surely aware that cellulosic ethanol is the way to go when it comes to alcohol-based fuels, but even with that process, a crop of some sort is required. Additionally, biodiesel offers plenty of advantages over petroleum-based diesel fuel, but an oil-rich crop is required for its creation as well. A new study from the University of Washington was commissioned to find the most desirable crops for biofuels which suggests that algae and fast-growing trees be considered as the cream-of-the-crop, so to speak.

"While some biofuels may be an improvement over traditional fuels, we believe we should focus much more on the biofuels of the future that can be developed in small spaces, rather than extensively on crop lands," according to lead author Martha Groom. "We also must shun biofuels that are grown by clearing biologically-rich habitats, such as tropical rainforests, as has occurred with oil palm and some other biofuels," she adds. The study also recommends that a special look be taken at crops which sequester carbon as they grow.

We may add that another benefit to both algae and fast-growing trees is that nobody is growing them already for food.

[Source: Science Daily]

Over the past couple of years, algae has been gaining a lot of attention as a potentially high-yield source of biodiesel fuel. As the controversy over food vs. fuel and water use grows for corn ethanol, researchers have been trying to find alternatives that don't require arable land and more energy to produce than they yield. Algae is looking like one of the best prospects with yields per acre of up to 100 times what can be achieved from soy and other crops.

It turns out that algae as a fuel source actually has a history going back three decades to the Carter administration. In between the first and second oil shocks of the 1970s, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory began the Aquatic Species Program to research different species of algae that could be cultivated and harvested for producing fuels. As oil prices settled back down in the late 1980s, a lot of the work was scaled back but the data was still available for researchers. During the current decade, as the environment and the security of energy supplies became a greater concern, researchers have latched onto algae once again. Companies like Solazyme and International Energy are now working aggressively to commercialize algae biodiesel. Green Fuels Forecast has a great summary of the history of algae over the last three decades and where it stands today.

[Source: Green Fuels Forecast]

PetroSun Inc. has been working on developing algae biodiesel production and they're now almost ready to start buliding a commercial-scale production facility. The company is cultivating algae paste, and they will be supplying it to companies that produce the refinery equipment for testing. Based on those test results, subsidiary Algae Biofuels will select an equipment supplier for their first biodiesel plant will may be built in either Arizona, New Mexico, California, Louisiana or Michigan. Initially they were planning to build in Arizona, but they are also evaluating algae cultivation in more northern states like Michigan. Growing the algae and producing the fuels close to where it will be consumed is essential to the model of minimizing distribution costs and environmental impact. Algae has much better potential as a biodiesel feedstock because of the cost of cultivation, the amount of CO2 it consumes, growth rate and potential yields. Plus it doesn't compete with food the way corn or soy does.

[Source: PetroSun via GreenCarCongress]

Ok, we know biofuels hold great promise to end our addiction to oil. And we know that finding the perfect biomass feedstock is a point of serious contention. To me, algae (not watermelon, it may surprise AutoblogGreen regulars) hold the greatest promise to make a lot of a biofuel cheaply. Of course, there are a lot of hurdles to jump before the little green things produce biodiesel in a commercially-viable way.

Enter the New Mexico State University and a team of researchers at New Mexico State University's Agricultural Science Center at Artesia. This team is working to find the best way to get single-cell, green algae to agree to become biodiesel. The Artesia center is working on generating the highest level of oil possible (far more than either corn or soybeans can produce, acre for acre). The Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management, based in Carlsbad, New Mexico, is leading the research. Officials from NMSU say that the school has a lot of things going for it to experiment with algae in biofuel production.

"We have sunlight and space, and we have a brackish and saline water supply," Steve Loring, assistant director of NMSU's Agricultural Experiment Station, told the Las Cruces Sun-News. By March, Artesia should have a quarter-acre-sized pond to conduct larger tests in. And in 2008, a 100-acre test bed will be started.

[Source: Las Cruces Sun-News]

Maria "Girl Mark" Alovert is promoting a biodiesel-related slideshow presentation/lecture in San Francisco that will delve deep into the possibilities of using algae to make the biofuel. The class will be taught by algae researcher Jon Meuser, Ph.D. Candidate in the Division of Environmental Science and Engineering, Colorado School of Mines on January 9th from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Artists' Television Access. The best part: it's free.

Meuser not only researches biological fuel production, he's also a biodiesel homebrewer and is a co-organizer of the Biodiesel Co-op's Conference. Alovert writes that Meuser's current research is on the natural biodiversity of photosynthetic fuel production by algae, including hydrogen and lipids.

If you're interested in attending send an email to [classregistration] @ [girlmark] . [com] (remove the brackets) or just show up. No RSVP required.

[Source: Maria "Girl Mark" Alovert]

Like the nascent hydrogen economy, the biodiesel industry is trying to figure out the best way to move forward. Corn and soy are two of the main feedstocks right now but they're not the most promising for long-term use. As Imperium Renewables president John Plaza told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, these bridge feedstocks need to be used now so we can get a handle on how best to make and use biodiesel.

One of the candidates for highly efficient biodiesel production in the coming decades is, of course, algae. GreenFuel just sent its algae-in-the-smokestack to a South African company, and the numbers that Plaza gave for algae biodiesel efficacy mean it only makes sense for us to head in the direction of the little green creatures as soon as it's feasible:

• Soy = 40 or 50 gallons of oil per acre per year
• Brassicas = 100-150 gallons per acre per year
• Palm = about 650 gallons per acre per year
• Algae = perhaps 10,000 gallons per acre per year (algae can be harvested every two weeks instead of once a year)

(btw, because algae does "not represent a single evolutionary direction or line, but a level of organization that may have developed several times in the early history of life on earth," the term can refer to simple plants or organisms that are more animal-like)

[Source: Robert McClure / Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

A newly announced biodiesel plant in Nevada will use a geothermal energy source. The plant, to be built by Infinifuel (cool name, that) will build the biodiesel plant as part of facility that generates 5 MW of electricity from two production geothermal wells and seven power production units, while the 220 degree steam will be used in the production of biodiesel. All of this geothermal power will be able to produce five million gallons of biodiesel a year, made from oilseed and/or algae (Infinifuel is in discussions with the University of Nevada Reno Agricultural Extension and the Desert Research Institute to find the best feedstock). This will be the first geothermal power plant in Nevada, Infinifuel says.

[Source: Infinifuel via Biodiesel Blog]

PetroSun Drilling Inc. has created Algae BioFuels Inc. as a wholly-owned subsidiary to research and develop methods of using algae to produce biofuels. The subsidiary will be based in Arizona and Australia and will research using the algae into biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, methane and even hydrogen, the company says. Previous algae energy research was conducted by the Department of Energy from 1978 until 1996. PetroSun says that research shows that algae might be able to produce 30 times (!) more oil per acre than current crop farming methods. I wonder how much political muscle will be thrown into promoting ethanol when farmers can't compete against little microbes who are producing 3000 percent as much ethanol as they can.

[Source: PetroSun, Yahoo! News]