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An interesting article entitled How Algal Biofuels Lost a Decade in the Race to Replace Oil in Wired.com
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Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu is organizing workshop entitled SHORT-TERM TRAINING ON ADVANCED RESEARCH TECHNIQUES (START) from 8th to 19th February 2010.
Download Brochure Here
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The project will be designed to turn the manure from the dairy’s 400 cows into pure ethanol that can be blended with gasoline as fuel. Unlike conventional ethanol, it would require no fossil fuels to produce. The distillery would run on methane from a manure digester.
The byproduct of the distillations would include concentrated nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer, which could be packaged and sold. And carbon dioxide emissions from the process might even be used to grow algae that could be turned into biofuel.
But the main purpose is to develop systems that dairy farmers can buy to turn their herds’ waste into a profitable commodity instead of allowing it to pollute streams, Lehr said.
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The proposed Bio-Ethanol plant in the municipality of Murcia will have a complementary bio-diesel oil production out of plastic cellophane and bio-mass.
Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry, MBCCI, External Affairs Vice President Jose Ma. Zayco said the 61 Barangays of Bacolod City will be providing the Bio-Fuels International Phils., BFIP, some 40 tons plastic cellophane everyday.
The process will be using algae as catalyst to come up with the product.
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Aquentium, Inc, a publicly traded company in the United States with a strategy to bring green technologies to the global marketplace is pleased to announce the company’s expansion into Central and South America with the appointment of Mr. Manfredo Ferrada as Managing Director of Central and South America business and development of Aquentium advanced technologies to produce algal fuels, algal co-products and production technology systems.
Mr. Manfredo Ferrada is an international cluster development expert with experience in developing overseas structures and company strategic and tactic development. He has strong knowledge of green technologies and renewable energy sources as well as micro crops technologies and fulfillment of accurate methods to take production to the highest level possible in a conjunctive work with the Aquentium corporate headquarters in the USA and its engineering team.
“The need for renewable transportation fuels has never been greater. Our ultimate goals with our algae growing and production business in Central and South America is to be the top notch leader of the algae oil business. Our "Aquentoil" method is designed as a future petroleum replacement as well as feedstock and CO2 elimination systems,” added Ferrada.
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Frederic Scheer, the owner of cereplast talks about bioplastics made from algae. Cereplast is a company that designs and makes sustainable plastics from starches found in tapioca, corn, wheat and potatoes
Cereplast hopes to offer a plastic made with algae for commercial sale by the end of 2010 and is projecting its annual sales will have doubled by then.
By the way, have you subscribed to the Oilgae Blog?; How about joining the Oilgae mailing list?; and our forum to discuss on with others?The New Mexico Environment Department has reached a settlement with Marathon Oil Corp. under which the Houston company will pay $5.1 million in environmental projects and penalties to resolve air quality violations alleged by the state at Marathon's Indian Basin Gas Plant near Carlsbad.
The environmental projects include $3.75 million to build and maintain new pollution controls to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and $750,000 for an algae-to-biofuels project in Carlsbad.
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Punjab-based Beckons Industries is planning to set up a bio-diesel plant using algae as a feedstock at Derabassi (Punjab) at an investment of Rs 600 million. The plant will be the first of its kind in this part of the region. For the purpose, the company has technological collaborative agreement with Austria-based company Energia and also an agreement with Germany-based GTZ for carbon credits.
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At Seattle's Blue Marble Energy, chemists are cooking up a perfume made from the waste products of a local organic brewery, including rancid beer grains, green algae and a "sludge" consisting of 50,000 different kinds of bacteria. The grains replace petroleum in the production process making the perfume, called Eos, completely carbon neutral.
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U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have announced the selection of 19 integrated bio-refinery projects to receive up to $564 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
California-based Sapphire Energy will receive a non-ARRA loan guarantee for up to $54.5 million through the Biorefinery Assistance Program (BFA) to demonstrate a biorefinery process that will cultivate algae in ponds. The BFA program authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill promotes the development of new technologies for fuel production from non-corn kernel starch biomass sources.
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Seambiotic, one of the oldest companies in algae, has signed a deal with China Guodian Corp. to build algae farms near power plants in that country.
The first farm, opening in 2010 in Penglai, will cover 12 hectares and cost about $10 million. Seambiotic specializes in open "racetrack" ponds. In these ponds, flue gas from a power plant is circulated into water where multiple strains of algae grow. Add sunlight and time and careful cultivation techniques and in a few weeks you have mounds of slime. Guodian has 100 power plants to the deal could grow. Since 2003, Israel-based Seambiotic has been in the prototyping and pilot stage: this marks a transition toward larger commercial production.
Instead of producing algae for cars, Seambiotic grows it for the nutraceutical and pet food markets: oil for nutraceuticals and protein for pets.
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Foster Wheeler will provide engineering services to help PetroAlgae develop commercial solutions that will allow existing oil refineries to convert micro-crop biomass into green fuels, according to a memorandum of understanding signed by the companies.
PetroAlgae believes the partnership will fully advance processes that will transform large quantities of biomass into green diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and specialty chemicals.
“These solutions offer the promise of transforming sunlight into fuels, thereby providing countries around the world with yet another option on the path to sustainable and clean energy independence,” says PetroAlgae chief executive John Scott.
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A researcher at Washington State University recently received a $2 million federal appropriation to improve the process of turning algae into energy. The money came through the 2010 Senate Energy and Water Development bill and will go to the Washington State Algae Alliance.
Shulin Chen is a professor of biological systems engineering. He has patents pending on several algae culture, harvesting and nutrient-recycling systems. The money will be used to improve ways to process and produce algae.
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BioFields will produce biofuel from algae on an industrial scale as of 2014 in a plant located in Puerto Libertad, Sonara state.
This large-scale pilot programme will be set up 300 km from the United States, which will be their main client.
According to Sergio Ramirez, director of Corporative Affairs of the company, the plant should be finalised in the second half of 2010.
BioFields owns the rights to use the technology “Direct to Ethanol” in Mexico, developed by the firm Algenol, which permits biofuel production from hybrid green-bluish seaweed, Ramirez explained.
Algae produces ethanol naturally, and the technique applied optimises the process so that it is direct and on an industrial scale.
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Truman State University held its 2nd Annual Bioenergy Conference earlier today. The conference addressed production and handling of bio-mass feedstock’s, algae oil production and utilization, as well as developments in bio-energy. Throughout the afternoon, several presentations were going on including hands on bio-energy demonstrations and exhibits at the University Farm.
Dr. David E. Brune was one of eleven featured speakers. Dr. Brune is currently Professor of Bioprocess and Bioenergy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He gave two presentations on algae production and energy generation systems.
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Bioalgal Marine, an Almeria University spin-off company specialised in cultivating and integral usage of microalgae has developed a new fertiliser manufactured from a microalga called Spirulina, called Algafert. This natural fertiliser visibly enhances plants' roots and resistance
According to Marta Sánchez de Puerta, Bioalgal Marine's Manager, “this biofertiliser, which is particularly suitable for intensive agriculture crops, is simply a mixture of the microalga Spirulina, water and enzymes. This mixture is heated and, upon reaching a specific temperature, the microalgae break up and release the amino acids. By applying this fertiliser on the crops we save the plant the work of creating the amino acids, with which it grows faster.”
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Big Island-based microalgae producer Cyanotech Corp. said the presence of Vitamin K2 has been identified in one of its primary products, spirulina.
The company has sold spirulina for more than a decade as a food supplement rich in natural beta carotene and other nutrients, but said it recently received an independent contract laboratory analysis showing the product contains K2.
K2 is a form of Vitamin K, and is most known for properties aiding blood coagulation. Cyanotech said a 3-gram serving of spirulina has as much K2 as roughly 1 1/4 cup of romain lettuce, or about 19 percent of the recommended daily amount.
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According to the press release, Dennis Shen and team have completed the scaled down version of BioCentric's commercialized Closed-Loop Photobioreactor System, The Algae Culturing Station, The Wall and The BioCentric Eye Monitoring System. These products will be available for purchase and posted on both the BioCentric Energy website and the National Algae Association website in the coming weeks.
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Researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles found a way to create genetically modified bacteria called cyanobacterium, which consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, reported Science Daily.
The research originally published on Wednesday in the journal Nature of Biotechnology states that consumption of carbon dioxide is directly powered by the sun, a process similar to photosynthesis.
The new method has two major advantages: it recycles carbon dioxide which reduces greenhouse gas emissions and it uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide to liquid fuel which can be used in automobiles.
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SCOTTISH Enterprise (SE) has announced that leading international energy and environmental consultancy AEA has been awarded the foresighting and economic modelling work for SE’s recently integrated ITI Energy Seaweed Anaerobic Digestion (SAD) programme, to aid and underpin the commercialisation of the technology being developed.
Seaweed (or marine algae) remains an untapped global natural resource that could be sustainably harvested and processed, using anaerobic digestion, to provide a renewable energy source. The £3.7 million R&D programme aims to exploit this potential with the development of key enabling technologies, that will scale-up the SAD process and optimise seaweed harvesting to generate renewable, sustainable and secure energy.
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Saudi Arabia first disclosed plans for the carbon injection project in October, but Mr al Naimi detailed a longer-term strategy noting that the eventual goal was to tie carbon capture with the kingdom’s interest in producing biofuels from algae.
“We are looking at capturing carbon dioxide, injecting it in sea water, creating algae and hopefully producing two things: ethanol – you might be surprised by our interest in ethanol – and food products,” he said.
Producing fuel from algae has become a priority of researchers across the world, including major oil companies such as ExxonMobil. But experts say scientists still need to induce each unit of algae to absorb more carbon dioxide and produce more oils to make algae a commercially viable source of energy.
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UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced that its Ecofining process technology was used to convert second-generation, renewable feedstocks to green diesel fuel that will power vehicles at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Conference (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
UOP's process technology converted oil from algae provided by Solazyme, a renewable oil company, to green diesel, which will be utilized during the Driving the Future showcase organized by Denmark's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A Mercedes Benz E-Class Sedan, an unmodified, factory-standard diesel vehicle, will be powered by unblended (B100) green diesel for the duration of the event.
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A San Francisco company's will tap into under-used large vats at Cherokee Pharmaceuticals plant in Riverside to open its first facility to make biodiesel fuel from algae oil.
"Cherokee has under-utilized vats and our company hopes to use them to execute this grant to produce fuel from algae," said Michael Meehan, of Blue Line Strategic Communications which handles public relations for Solazyme Inc. Solazyme Inc. was awarded a $21.8 million federal grant to build its first integrated biorefinery at Cherokee.
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The Washington State Algae Alliance, comprised of bioscience firm Targeted Growth, Inc. (TGI), Inventure Chemical (Inventure) and Washington State University (WSU), will benefit from $2 million in funding through WSU as part of the 2010 Senate Energy and Water Development appropriations bill. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) was instrumental in securing funding for the Alliance, which will jointly develop a new system for the production of sustainable and renewable fuels, chemicals, and chemical intermediates, creating jobs and furthering the state’s growing clean technology base.
The Alliance has three objectives: First, to develop an efficient and integrated algae cultivation system for the production of fuel and other products; second, to build first class capabilities; and third, to advance related science and technologies. These objectives align with initiatives identified in the National Algae Fuel Roadmap developed by the US Department of Energy.
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OriginOil Inc. of Los Angeles has been listed as one of the 50 hottest biofuel companies in the world. OriginOil was chosen out of a field of more than 1,400 companies worldwide, working in algae, ethanol, renewable diesel and biobutanol.
Biofuels Digest, the most widely read daily biofuels newsletter in the world published the list. The companies on the list were chosen by an international panel of invited selectors and subscribers to the daily newsletter. Jim Lane, the editor of the Biofuels Digest newsletter said, “Thirteen of the top 50 companies are working on micro-crops and algae-based biofuels, including three of the top five. With companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP investing in algae-based fuels, there could not be clearer signs that algae is now viewed as the most promising of all the emerging biofuel platforms.”
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Press Release
The National Algae Association's Mid-South Chapter workshop "Algae: Exploring Open Pond Production Opportunities, " which brought top experts in open pond production together with catfish pond owners, investors and algaepreneurs to learn from each other and fast-track commercial-scale algae open pond production for energy, animal feedstock, organic fertilizer and many other products, far exceeded all expectations, with comments like "... I believe your approach to getting people together to advance the industry is very valuable for all involved ..." and " keep up the good work - your efforts are helping to form our future!" The next workshop focusing on open pond production is in the works!
Save the Dates:
National Algae Association's West Coast Chapter is planning a workshop at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas on February 24-25, 2010, focusing on the latest innovations in algae growing, harvesting and extraction systems; details to follow.
The next Houston conference will be held at the Doubletree Houston on April 29-30, 2010. Presentations are now being accepted for consideration.
We are pleased to announce that a new NAA algae production certification program will begin the first quarter of 2010. An intensive 3 day course will be taught in Houston. If you are interested in signing up for the course, please let us know.
National Algae Association
4747 Research Forest Dr., Suite 180
The Woodlands, Texas 77381
936.321.1125
www.nationalalgaeassociation.com
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The U.S. government on Friday said 19 biofuel refinery projects have been selected to receive up to $564 million to enhance the development of advanced biofuels using biomass feedstocks.
The funding includes $25 million to Honeywell's UOP subsidiary, $24.8 million to Archer Daniels Midland, $21.8 million to Solazyme and $50 million to Sapphire Energy.
The government said of the nearly $564 million in funding, up to $483 million will go to 14 pilot-scale and four demonstration-scale biorefinery projects across the country.
The remaining $81 million will focus on the construction of Bluefire LLC's biorefinery project previously awarded funding. The facility will produce ethanol fuel from woody biomass, mill residue, and sorted municipal solid waste.
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