on the algae trail - the most important plant in the world?

algae are important plants, are useful in the soil - some help fix nitrogen or make it bio-available, but of course one of the most interesting uses for algae would be in the production of biofuels.  We blogged here about algae being used in reactors (or living foundries) to create a biodiesel, for example.

So what is Algae?  Is it just seaweed?

want to know more?  here's a 50 minute in-depth seminar/presentation on algae:

but (if you survived that in-depth study) there are continuing developments in farming algae, reported just recently. Recall the algae bio-reactors?  Well in this news item here i spied a novel way of locating reactors with minimum land-use and greater efficiency of production - in bags at sea!


If you have been paying even the slightest attention to the algae industry, you probably have heard of companies like Solazyme or Synthetic Genomics, the big names that are making big public strides in the field. Algasol Renewables, on the other hand, is one name in the industry that you have probably never heard mentioned. However, Algasol looks to be on the brink of joining those big names as one of leaders in the algae industry with their photobioreactor system.

Photobioreactors (or PBR’s) come in many different shapes, sizes, and designs. Essentially, they consist of some clear material formed in a way that it can hold an algae-containing liquid. Typically, you will find them looking like long tubes, snaking back and forth, that allow sunlight to reach the algae-water concentration that is pumped through it. They work great for growing algae but have typically suffered from high initial and operating costs.

This is where Algasol comes into play. They have designed a photobioreactor system that can potentially cut costs by 90 percent. How have they done this? Well, their thinking has taken them outside the tube and placed them into a bag.

Basically, their system grows freshwater microalgae in large plastic bags that float on top of bodies of saltwater. There, as in any other bioreactor, nutrients and CO2 are pumped in to feed the algae.
This design led Frost & Sullivan to give Algasol their 2010 “Global Algae Biofuels Award.” According to them, “Algasol Renewables provides a critical and innovative method for micro algae biomass production. Its modular floating bag technology, a new variation of photobioreactors (PBRs), provides a low-cost design coupled with industrial scalability, optimal light exposure, high biomass concentration, low energy consumption, and efficient system control.”

The oceans of the world have a great potential to be the location for floating algae farms. First off, oceans cover around 70 percent of the world. With land (especially agricultural land) becoming a very precious commodity, moving production of fuel offshore is a major bonus.

Additionally, the ocean cuts out a lot of the energy costs associated with traditional PBR’s. For example, the water surrounding the bags acts as a temperature buffer, a process that would require spraying down the outsides of the photobioreactor in typical systems. Also, the wave action in the ocean helps to mix the algae in the bags, something that would otherwise take additional energy in land-based designs.

Now, some may be concerned about putting all this plastic into the ocean should a storm comes along or worried about what happens if these bags break. Luckily, engineers at Algasol have addressed both of these problems. If a storm comes along, the bags have been designed to be submerged beneath the water to levels up to 250 feet. There, they can wait out a tropical storm, hurricane, etc.

Researchers are also not too concerned if one of the bags breaks. Since the algae will be freshwater species, they will die when exposed to saltwater and there, researchers have concluded, they can become food for fish and other marine life.

living foundries - the new future with microbes?

As the name suggests, "Living Foundries" are the bacterial and fungal colonies which can produce a new generation of human resources, with a low environmental impact.

Aside from new uses in supplying phosphor and nitrogen for truly sustainable farming, one farming input which can't be solved with microbes is fuel.  Whether we like it or not, bacteria can't just eat sugars and secrete petroleum products into the tractors, combines and delivery trucks to supply us truly sustainable foods - or can they?

it seems they might just be able to.

for some time, research has been ongoing into the possibility of pressing oils from algae

but now bio-engineers in the USA are taking the idea of living foundries further - by engineering e-coli to excrete diesel directly.  A guardian interview asked Jay Keasling, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and CEO of the US Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) about his previous successes manufacturing anti-malaria drugs using "living foundries" before asking him about his new biodiesel bugs:


How easy is it to make fuel from microbes?
About a year ago, we published a paper in Nature where we engineered E. coli to produce a diesel fuel. The beauty of it was that the E. coli took in the sugar, transformed it directly into diesel, and the diesel was secreted outside the cell. Because it's oily, the diesel floats to the top. So unlike ethanol, which you have to distil to get it pure enough to use in an engine, the diesel purifies itself. That reduces the cost and the amount of energy needed to make it.

Will your diesel be as good as the fuel at the pump?
It's as good, if not better. Fuel is incredibly complicated – it has many different components and it's optimised for different things. We can build the fuel from the most valuable molecules, so we don't have the unwanted components that existing fuels have. You get better gas mileage out of it and cleaner emissions. And we're talking about a substantial improvement for the environment. Our diesel reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, which is pretty substantial.

The world uses around 90 million barrels of oil a day. How can bugs compete?
We're looking at replacing 30% of transportation fuel in, say, a 20- to 30-year period. That is a huge undertaking. We are going to develop the technology to make the fuels and license them out. In the next 10 to 20 years, we'll see a very diverse range of companies all working with different techniques to make fuels.

How will your work affect the giant oil companies?
The energy business is the biggest sector in the world, and the beauty about working in the biggest industry on the planet is that there is room for everybody. Exxon is the largest company in the US, but it has only 5% of the transportation fuel market. That alone tells you that anybody can play.

Will synthetic biology be used to make more than fuels?
As well as fuels, we are looking at everything else we produce from petroleum, including polymers and plastics, and asking: can we go in and replace those? I don't see any reason why we can't make almost any chemical we want from sugar, a renewable resource. It's a great time to be in biology and biotechnology, because we have so many more tools and it's so much more powerful than it used to be.

Jay Keasling believes he can create alternatives to diesel and jet fuel using synthetic biology.
Photograph: Roy Kaltschmidt/Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab

a future-facing convention regarding living foundries is to be held soon.

in the mean-time, we wait with baited breath at what other uses bugs will be put to, in terms of the immense environmental service they can provide.