Cellulosic Ethanol Sugar Diverted to Algae Biodiesel Production
Note: See the precursor to this post, BREAKING NEWS: First Cars Run on Algae Biodiesel; Breakthrough Production Possible.
Today I had a few minutes to speak with Harrison Dillon, President and CTO of Solazyme. But with all the publicity around the film Fields of Fuel (see earlier post), I didn’t have much of a chance to get into a detailed discussion. When I approached him, Harrison was surrounded by a group intent on elucidating the not-so-subtle points of using biodiesel (such as, does it require conversion to run in a diesel engine?).
In our brief conversation I was able to learn that Solazyme is going to combine cellulosic ethanol and algae biodiesel production technology, which they think provides a more positive energy balance than either one alone (Harrison said that algae are 1000 times more efficient when fed sugar vs. grown by sunlight). Solazyme will be buying sugar, including cellulosically-derived sugar produced by cellulosic ethanol companies, to feed to their algae. They’re basically short-circuiting the cellulosic ethanol process and diverting the sugar to what they say is a more efficient process: growing micro-algae.
- » See also: OriginOil Announces Algae Processing Breakthrough
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I asked why they thought the energy balance of using that sugar for algae production vs. fermenting it into ethanol was more favorable. This doesn’t seem like the whole story, but Harrison said harvesting materials for cellulosic ethanol production requires diesel machinery, and using biodiesel in this equipment helps decrease the energy and carbon balance of the whole process. By producing biodiesel from the algae and then sending this biodiesel back to the cellulosic ethanol producers, they can close part of the loop and improve the whole process.
Hmmmm…
I intend on trying to get more details out of Solazyme, but in the mean time I’d be interested to hear your thoughts…
More posts on this topic:
Chevron Backs Solazyme’s Algae Biodiesel Production Process (+Video)
BREAKING NEWS: First Cars Run on Algae Biodiesel; Breakthrough Production Possible
The Latest on Cellulosic Ethanol:
GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap, Green Ethanol?
Huh? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. So they’re taking sugar from cellulosic material that’s been hydrolyzed? If the ultimate goal is biodiesel, why not just take the biomass and run it through a biomass-to-liquids plant? Are they claiming they’re more efficient than that?
You’ve got me on that. They seem to think it’s pretty efficient, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to provide any details. What it would have to be is an amazing productivity boost (in biomass) by feeding the algae sugar.
I’m not an expert on the energy balance of biomass-to-liquids. Would you mind giving us a little more background on that?
I am not an expert on the field so can’t really comment on their energy balance. But the description of the process is raising a lot of doubts in my mind. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when they scale up.
Oh, i think i got it.
They say producing biodiesel is less energy costing than the ethanol-purifieng process, where you have to destillate it to f.e. 97% alkohol and then need some special technik to purify it to 100% which is used for car motors.
I think that is right but i don’t know it for real.
Alcohol:
* bacteries convert sugar to alcohol
* bacteries needs a little bit energy
* Alcohol is destillated
* that will need a lot of energy
* then it will be purified to 100%
* high cost cemical and technical and difficult chemical processes
Solazyme’ idea:
* algae convert sugar to algae/biomass
* algae will lose a little bit energy in that process
* algae will be an high oil containing strain
* should be a strain which produce wright kind of oil
* the oil will be extracted, only little bit of energy
* not all of the biomass will be oil, some kind of lose tempending on the strain.
* extracted oil will be used for biodiesel production
* the biodiesel production will also need some engery, and is i think technical not so easy
What is better on the energy balance could only say some technikan and researcher.
I think, if they manipulate an algae gens to high effiecienzi it should be better, maybe there are already the wright ones known, i don’t know.
The pro is the gentech algae are in closed pons, and the nature will not be contaminated by them.
Also i think the high energy cost of destillation is higher than the lose by extracting/purifing the oil.
seb jodelhuber
someone writing on an hill from austria
They don’t use algae to PRODUCE energy, only to convert - like the bacteries producing beer…
[...] Biofuel – meaning fuel created from biomass (biological material), with the most common being ethanol (especially in Brazil) - is popular for many reasons. They’re much cleaner burning than gasoline; it can be made yourself (if you have the know-how of course); and also, critically, requires little change to the current refueling infrastructure and no real change in customer behavior. E85 ethanol is called such as it contains 85% ethanol and 15% regular gasoline. The gasoline is required for the engine to run properly, primarily in starting the vehicle. People are used to the way they fill up their tank now, and biofuel would not change that. It’s not all good news though; using crops such as rapeseed and corn to use as the biomass uses a lot of water, not to mention potential food, and also releases a lot of nitrogen. Alternative methods of production are being developed to address these problems, mainly using a technique known as plasma gasification. Particularly interesting is the tie-up of GM and Coskata creating ethanol from almost anything (just not glass or metal), including trash, and also potentially algae biodiesel production. [...]
Yeast (not bacteria) is used to convert sugars to ethanol in the vast majority of systems.
The problem is alcohols and water are attracted to eachother. They mix evenly and don’t want to come apart. They even suspend other organics. This is why beer is stable, etc.
Oil on the other hand will self-seperate from water and many organic solids making it much easier to extract. Think of oil and vinegar salad dressing.
Oil also contains much more energy per gallon than ethanol and diesel engines are more efficient than gas. Furthermore, oil can also be converted for lubrication and aviation fuel and plastics whereas ethanol doesn’t provide solutions there.
To top it off, you can go up to 80% biodiesel in existing engine designs vs ethanol which requires a modifed engine past 10% or so.
So why do they want ethanol too? Well, it has to do with reforming the oil into standardized diesel. The oil is reformed by knocking the glycerin (a very heavy alcohol) off the oil molecule and replacing it with ethanol or methanol which are light alcohols. This makes the fuel non-gelling and very consistant - better than petro-diesel in fact.
U American: They actually don´t want ethanol too, they want the (as you said) very useful oil produced by algae after feeding them sugar. The sugar could come from sugarcane or it could come from cellulosic sugar sources.
On the topic of biodiesel/ethanol: you can use 100% biodiesel in any diesel engine. The conversion to run a gas engine higher than 10% ethanol requires a new injection pump, injectors, and a fuel oxygen sensor that monitors engine exhaust. I don´t think it´s that expensive to do.
Unreformulated oil works in old diesels with manual adjustments but not the new high tech ones because of differences in viscosity, cetane, timing and sensor effects. They need to reformulate it with something like ethanol, methanol or benzene. Of those, ethanol is renewable and the least toxic.
B100 is much closer to jet fuel than it is to regular diesel and will disolve cheap gaskets. The Mercedes and VW turbo-diesels use very high quality gaskets and pumps that resist it but many other brands use cheap parts! B100 also burns so clean it will strip the carbon deposits off the inside of the engine. That’s great for turbines but leaves cylinders unprotected.
Normal gas and diesel have waxes disolved in them that coat the inside of cylinders with carbon deposits like an old cast iron frying pan. Using B100, E100 or M100 will strip that right off leading to that brand new engine wear and sluggishness. But a mix like B80 gives better performance than either alone.
Converting a modern gas car to E85 also requires new lines, a new computer and to get full advantage, a new head because optimal ethanol combustion requires a higher compression ratio. We’d be better off if we just put 1% extra ethanol into all the gas for every car instead of building all new cars and distro system for E85.
We don’t have the ethanol yield that Brazil and India have and B80 is a much better fuel overall anyway (better yield, milage and safety).
Plus, VW & BMW already have instant start diesel engines which allow the engine to stop at red lights instead of idleing which increases milage by 10-15% on top of the 20-30% better milage diesels get over gas to begin with.
[...] another cellulosic-ethanol related announcement, see later post: Cellulosic Ethanol Sugar Diverted to Algae Biodiesel Production Comment on this post Tags: automobiles, biofuel, cars, cellulosic ethanol, E85, ethanol, [...]
50% of algae, lipids, 25% carbohydrates, 25% protein. Lipids make biodiesel, Cabohydrates make ethanol sugar, Protien make animal feed. It would seem to follow, instead of importing refined sugar, refine the carbohydrates produced into the sugar to make biodiesel in the dark, without photosynthesis, or am I missing something?