DECEMBER 15 2008
AMERICANWAY 35
produce enough algae biodiesel to drive a
Volkswagen Vanagon to the Sears Tower
from Al Raby School for Community and
Environment on the West Side. And if a
classof chemistrystudentscanmake ithap-
pen, then the rest of the world can’t be far
behind.
getting the algae oil. Companies such as
Sapphire and Solazyme put the time hori-
zon for their products at three tofive years,
but experts say itmaybe 10yearsbefore the
supply of algal oil is large enough to be felt
in the market. Still, Solazyme’s biodiesel
(Soladiesel) was tested in military trucks
in April, and a Chicago chemistry teacher
and his class of 140 students managed to
biofuel that in testsbehaved just like jet fuel
derived from petroleum: It didn’t freeze at
the low temperatures of high altitudes, and
it passed all the government testing specifi-
cations for aviation turbine fuel.
BY REAdINg thE WEBsItEs
of various
start-ups, youfind that anacreof algae can
possibly produce 100,000 gallons of fuel
in a year — or maybe it’s 30,000 gallons
or 4,000 gallons or 400 gallons. Yet even
the lowest figure, scientists say, compares
favorably with the 50 gallons that an acre
of soybeans produces.
The challenge is that algae canbefinicky.
Toomuch light or too little, andalgae stops
producing. Too hot or too cold, and again,
algae stops producing. Wrong nutrients or
too many nutrients, same thing. Invasive
species can overwhelm the desired species,
contaminating the whole batch. Andwhen
you grow a large amount of algae, the cul-
tures eventually get so thick that it blocks
light, preventing the optimal growth of
morealgae.
Various companies have come up with
ingenious solutions to these problems. So-
lazyme grows algae in dark fermentation
tanks, feeding it sugar. Valcent, inEl Paso,
Texas, growsalgae in slowlymovingvertical
plastic bags that hang from a turning rod;
this allows light to get in from every angle.
Other companies grow it in plastic rods or
triangular chambers. OriginOil, inLosAn-
geles, has patented a systemwith a vertical
shaft that rotates very-low-energy lights in
a helix pattern. And then there are compa-
nies like PetroSun, in Rio Hondo, Texas,
and LiveFuels, in San Carlos, California,
that stick to the old-fashioned method:
They simplygrow thealgae in largeponds.
Several firms are alsobetting that the oils
from algaemight replace the petrochemical
oils used tomanufacture plastics. Research-
ers at theUniversity of Texas at Austinhave
shown it’s possible, and PetroSun is using
someof thealgaloil from its farm toconduct
bioplasticsresearch.TheEuropeanUnionhas
also funded research intoalgalbioplastics.
“We’re getting tremendous interest from
plastics companies— some really big com-
panies— thatwant togoover togreenplas-
tics,”Cohen says. “Noone’s
[
gone
]
publicyet,
and it’s still in the research stage, but algae
plasticsandalgaepackagingare coming.”
The first step to any of this, though, is
Brooklyn, New York–based writer
hEAthER MIllAR
is a fre-
quent contributor to
AmericanWay
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