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Eric Wesoff | June 30, 2009 at 12:06 AM 13 Comments

Algenol: The Elephant in the Room

I wrote a perspectives piece last week (see Algae Fantasists Predict 1B Gallons Per Year by 2014) on the viability of commercial algal biofuels and received a slew of comments, on and off-line, endorsing my claim that we are a longer way off from commercialization than claimed by breathless algae start-up press releases.

But according to Jim Lane of Biofuels Digest: Paul Woods, the chief executive of algae farmer Algenol is adamant he will produce 250 million gallons per year by 2013.   

And according to Lane in email correspondence – when it comes to biofuels from algae, "It really comes down to how one thinks about Algenol. That's the elephant in the room when it comes to photobioreactors."  

Today Algenol told the New York times that it is building a photobioreactor-based algae-to-ethanol demonstration plant at a Dow Chemical site in Freeport, Texas with plastic material supplied by Dow.  Photobioreactors or PBRs, in Algenol's case, are simply plastic covered troughs housing a mixture of saltwater, algae, nutrients, and CO2. 



Note that algae expert Dr. John Benemann flatly states that photobioreactors "do not work” and are useful only in supplying inoculum.

Algenol's proposed fuel harvesting method does differ from traditional algae oil extraction methods.  Rather than grow, flocculate, filter, de-water, and extract oil from the algae – Algenol uses a very different approach. Algenol's "Direct-to-Ethanol" process gathers ethanol produced by algae without destroying the algae and without the necessity of refining oil into biodiesel.  This method, if viable and scalable, has huge potential cost and embedded-energy advantages.

But according to Algenol's website:

  • Initial proof of science was generated by Dr. John Coleman at the University of Toronto between 1989 and 1999. Since then, the process has been refined to allow algae to tolerate high heat, high salinity, and the alcohol levels present in ethanol production.
  • The algae are metabolically enhanced to produce ethanol while being resistant to high temperature, high salinity, and high ethanol levels, which were previous barriers to ramping to commercial scale volumes.
  • Algenol’s prototype production strains can produce ethanol at a rate of 6,000 gallons/acre/year, and are expected to improve to 10,000 gallons/acre/year by the end of 2009. With further refinement, the algae cells have the potential to increase production rates to 20,000 gallons/acre/year in the future.
  • Algenol only uses algae strains that do not produce human toxins. In addition, the specific algae cells used cannot live in the environment found outside their Capture Technology contained sealed bioreactor.

Although this wording doesn't use the specific terms – these algae strains are clearly genetically modified – and that might be a hard sell in the U.S.  The food vs. fuel debate was bad press for biofuels and the frankenalgae debate would be even worse.

Algenol was reportedly underwritten with $70 million invested by the CEO and a few partners. Algenol claims to have plans to build a billion gallon per year facility in Mexico with a subsidiary of Mexican-owned BioFields at a cost of $850 million.  Mexico might be a bit more lax about genetically modified algae.
 
The company has applied for DOE stimulus bill funding.  More details from Lane at Biofuels Digest here.

I'll close with a comment from another renowned aquaculture and algae expert with more than 30 years of real-world experience:
 
"Few of the current slew of algae promoters seem to understand the immense energy/financial hurdles that algae fuel production need to overcome to be financially viable alternative fuels and as such their R&D priorities reflect this. As soon as I see an article touting algae's production of oil per unit area over terrestrial plants – I know the author(s) are clueless about the financial economics of algae fuel processing. As soon as I read about some special process that increases algae production per unit area – PBR's (that often use more energy than they produce), aphotic production, etc. I know the promoters don't understand the energy budgets involved in producing and processing algae to fuel.

"Bottom line – in our opinion the reality of economically viable algae fuel production is still quite a few years in the future – unless someone finds a truly novel short cut through the Laws of Thermodynamics and basic economics."

GTM Research has a brief report on algae players and technical challenges available here

Thanks to all the commenters for their input.

‹ Older | DOE: $346M For Building Energy Efficiency Yellostrom Likes Google’s PowerMeter – And Microsoft Too | Newer ›

Comments [13]

  • russ 06/30/09 6:39 AM

    Dow must have bought it to become part of a JV. True breakthroughs do happen though rarely and when they do they tend to make fools of all the experts.

    The Algenol site does not seem to be looking for investors which is a good sign. Most sites for new processes, designs are meant only to try to squeeze money from the fools out there.

    Let us see. They give a date this year to produce and sell - not long to wait.

     Reply
  • Cynic 06/30/09 8:25 AM

    Quote: “plastic covered troughs housing a mixture of saltwater, algae, nutrients, and CO2. ”  I admit to being one of the uneducated but isn’t the idea to get away from CO2?  Or is that only in the case of electric generation, manufacturing and automobiles?

     Reply
  • Eric Wesoff 06/30/09 9:06 AM

    Cynic -
    The goal is to use coal plant smokestack emissions as a source of CO2.
    Eric

     Reply
      • Carl Hage 06/30/09 12:47 PM

        Even better, use biogas from feedlot waste,  sewage treatment plant, or landfill (and use the algae to remove nitrogen from wastewater). Many places incorrectly state that feeing coal plant output to algae “cleans” the CO2 (during the day)—that would only be true if the algae was sequestered instead of used for fuel. Better to just shut down the coal plants, because algae from coal is still releasing fossil carbon. Recycling bio-fueled power plant emissions, on the other hand, doesn’t release any fossil carbon. Ideally, the power plants would be run during the day as peaking plants unless the plastic covers over algae ponds could expand to buffer nighttime output.
  • Steve Pluvia 06/30/09 11:23 AM

    Nice work Eric, as usual.

     Reply
  • Tim 06/30/09 6:07 PM

    Hey papadaddy. So what if Woods has a nice house - maybe it’s because he’s a sucessful business man? I wouldn’t have though raising no investor money from the general market and partnering with the worlds third largest company by market cap is exactly the profile of your average scammer.

     Reply
  • Mark A in Illinois 06/30/09 6:56 PM

    A pilot plant to demonstrate the technology at a reduced scale would go a long way to giving this concept some legitimacy.  On a separate note I suspect the the issue of GMO algae is overstated.  Americans eat BT corn and potato products everyday.  Roundup ready soybeans are in thousands of food products and I seldom see anyone complaining outside of the EU.  GMOs are a fact of life in stuff we eat so what ‘s the issue with modified algae that we don’t consume in a closed loop?

     Reply
  • Eric Wesoff 06/30/09 11:15 PM

    Mark,
    I agree - GMOs are undoubtedly already here in our food chain. It’s more a matter of perception and NIMBYism that might be a roadblock.  As well as the sheer futility of PBRs.
    Eric

     Reply
  • russ 07/1/09 12:00 AM

    I think Pappadaddy just wants what the other guy has but can’t get it so better to beat the other guy down.

    Hi links are so much garbage. The extensive research must have been on some other topic.

     Reply
  • PappaDaddy 07/1/09 6:40 AM

    Hi Russ & Tim

    It’s not that he has a nice house (a huge understatement).  His nice house is the corporate headquarters.  That is according to Florida state incorporation documents on myflorida.com.  17,000 sq ft and this guy has the stones to talk about reducing carbon footprints?!?!  That’s 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, 2 elevators (gotta have 2), an attached garage, a detached garage and five additional HVAC units.  Algenol doesn’t sell anything—-where’s the money coming from?

    I find it odd that his web site says he SOLD his natural gas marketing business (think Enron).  That is not so.  He changed the name of the company from United Gas Management of Georgia, Inc to Titan Energy of Georgia and three months later declared bankruptcy in the US Bankruptcy Court, Northern Georgia.  His partner in that venture, Mr Chaitu Parikh, actually went on to work as an executive for Enron-lite (The New Power Company).

    Does anyone find it curious that Algenol Biofuels Ltd has a post office box in the Cayman Islands?  From a patent application online:

    Algenol Biofuels Limited
    PO Box 10324
    Georgetown, Grand Cayman, KY1-1003 (KY)   

    Algenol doesn’t sell anything.  How do they finance their worldwide operations (their words) with no revenue stream?  How does a two year old company possess the largest algae library in the world (their words)?  The government sponsored Aquatic Species program ran for over 17 years!

    To cap this off Woods has repeatedly said he doesn’t need any money from outside sources as he has his own financing.  At the same time he’s lobbying Congress for stimulus money.  How many lies do YOU have to see before the light goes on?  As the author mentioned, the DoE says algae is not ready for prime time.  I can give references if you like. 

    I started this research because I thought algae sounded promising.  I spent the better part of 22 years overseas in uniform, so the geopolitics of energy are not abstract concepts to me.  I missed several birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries while “playing in the sand box”.  I wish this stuff was real.  Regrettably it seems it’s just a money grab.  Did I mention Algenol doesn’t sell anything?

    For the author:

    “Mexico might be a bit more lax about genetically modified algae.”

    I do not believe that’s the case.  I recall some years back a huge protest made by the Mexicans about our GM corn contaminating theirs.  Also tourism is huge there and algae (let alone GM algae) could have devastating affects on the ocean.  And Algenol has even created a lie about that.  They say their GM algae only lives in the PBRs and will die in the atmosphere.  That may be true until a strain mutates and doesn’t die!  Their process also desalinates water as a by-product.  The ethanol magically separates itself from water too…PLEASE.

    Oh and half the year is gone.  What gives with the Algenol venture with Biofields in Puerto Libertad, Mexico?  Oops, that’s slipped to 2010 now.  Oh and Algenol doesn’t sell anything.

     Reply
  • FDDoty 07/1/09 9:23 PM

    Great work, as usual Eric, both here and in your previous articles on this subject.  Good to know we’re not alone trying to bring rationality to renewables projections.  In a C&EN; article published in January, all companies contacted said the cost of producing oil from photosynthetic algae needed to come down by an order of magnitude before it could compete.  The conclusions from serious studies have been the same for 40 years.  I didn’t seen anything new in the NREL forum last fall on carbon recycling that would lead anyone with a scientific and industrial background to conclude that fuel-grade oil would be able to be produced from photosynthetic algae for under $25/gal in the foreseeable future.

    There will be some good opportunities for non-photosynthetic algae routes from waste streams that require treatment for other reasons, but those opportunities are rather limited.

    Your science-oriented readers will probably find some of my analysis (on our WindFuels site) on algae oil and other alternatives of interest.

     Reply
  • PappaDaddy 07/8/09 7:02 AM

    Mr Wesoff

    What happened to my original post? Did I disparage Mr Lane?  Apologies if that’s the case.  Your article is one of the more balanced I’ve read on this subject.  I find it interesting whenever I bring up facts about these companies like Algenol, no one ever refutes my charges.  I write these posts so someone can challenge my research and maybe tell me where I’m wrong.  I welcome rational criticism.  Those facts about Woods are easily verified online in Florida and Georgia state records.  Pretty reliable sources I would say.

    That’s super that Algenol and Dow are going to piss away government stimulus money on this fraud.  Gee, I wonder why a chemical company would want to appear to be green?  That would be terrible PR for them (he said with tongue in cheek).

    I see nothing but a scam in Algenol and IF they get a dime of stimulus, I’ll have to make that slug up to DC and ask the DOE why they are giving my tax money to pay for millionaires’ mansions.  Diligence appears to be a foreign word in DC.

     Reply

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