30 AMERICANWAY
DECEMBER 15 2008
S C I E N C E
a $6 billionmarket. That’s just the biofuel
side. That’s not including plastics and all
theother things.”
TosoMEExTENT,
this isan “everythingold
is new again” story. Algae— a huge family
of more than 30,000 organisms that pho-
tosynthesize sunlight but lack roots, shoots,
and leaves—grows quickly,with some spe-
cies nearly doubling in volume overnight.
And nearly half the body weight of some
species may be lipids, the scientific term
for oil. There’s evidence that humans have
usedalgae formillennia:Chinese texts from
5,000 BC mention it, and Irish farmers
once fed it to their cattle.
Today, companies, led by firms in the
UnitedStates,Germany, and Israel, already
commercially grow about six microalgae
species for food, cosmetics, and pigments.
Inaddition,firmsallaround theworldgrow
macroalgae for thickeners, farmedfish feed,
dental molds, adhesives, ulcer medicines,
etc. But while these products command
generally high prices, their markets have
limits. Theworldonlyneeds somuch algae
moisturizer or algae-thickened ice cream,
after all. When the talk turns to biodiesel
andbioplastics, though, that takes things to
awholenew level.
The idea to use algae in a fuel capacity
was first tested about 50 years ago, when
Massachusetts Institute of Technology sci-
entistsexperimentedwithgrowingalgae for
biofuel.Then, in the1970s, theDepartment
ofEnergy spent$3.3million toestablish its
Aquatic SpeciesProgram (ASP), whichwas
eventually shutdown in 1996. Theproblem
wasfindinga cost-effectiveway togrow the
algae on such amassive scale in the lab—
like how to deliver just the right amount
of light, among other things — as well as
a cheapmethod for extracting the oil. Us-
ing organic solvents or just squeezing the
oil out of the algae is a pricey business. But
30yearsago,whenPresident JimmyCarter
first funded the ASP, a gallon of gas cost
about 70 cents. Today, themath looks very
different.
“At $10 to $20 a barrel of oil, algae is
tough to bring to market,” says Thomas
Byrne, secretary of the ABO. “If petroleum
is at $50 to $60 a barrel, that’s very differ-
ent.We thinkalgaewill be competitive.”
What’smore,algaeboosterssay,new tech-
nologies like closed bioreactors promise to
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