3 ms·
Algae and Cyanobacteria tend to be substantially more efficient than whole plants (6-8% [1]). There are some caveats though. Generally the industry has found it
by entee 6y ago
Algae and Cyanobacteria tend to be substantially more efficient than whole plants (6-8% [1]). There are some caveats though. Generally the industry has found it hard to grow algae at commercial scale cost-effectively for several reasons including (but not limited to):
- Contamination by outside organism kills your algal culture
- If you create a closed system, the algae will stick to the glass, fouling the surface and reducing light transmission
- Extraction of materials from the algae is hard, you end up with a lot of water weight you need to get rid of somehow
There are also some counterintuitive aspects in that apparently dropping the efficiency of the antennae (light collection) actually makes the overall culture more productive because excess light makes it past the initial cell layer and therefore other cells can benefit from the light. Otherwise the initial cells grab all the light they can, and waste whatever light energy they don’t need.
I think it’s an interesting field, but so far it’s been a hard road to make it actually work at scale cost effectively.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/photosynthetic-efficiency https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/photosyntheti...
- hinkley 6y agoSince lichen are a symbiosis with algae, cyanobacteria, or both, it's possible that we could create lichen-like habitat for both or either and extract the sugars for fuel. Just a few years ago we realized a pretty profound misunderstanding of how lichen function, which partly explains why we have trouble propagating them in a lab. Perhaps there's enough new information there to warrant some more research. During the dot-com boom there were people cooking biodiesel from algae but I suspect they couldn't get the embodied cost of the system down. Either materials, or maintenance. I'll bet microbial mats in particular foul the system over months if not weeks. Edit to add: Whereas the earlier work was on 'digesting' algae and extracting the lipids, within a symbiotic structure (lichen, coral, root nodules, mycorrhiza) the host is exchanging sugars for minerals. You wouldn't have to 'crack open' anything to get to them, if you can find a way to collect them, which I suspect puts us deep into nanomaterials territory.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- samatman 6y agoI worked on phycology for an algae biofuels startup for the better part of a year. Just chiming in to say that this is a good post, and I don't even have much to add to it. I quit once I realized that paving over desert ecosystems with huge raceway ponds filled with glyphosate, wasn't solving any problem I wanted solved.
- whatshisface 6y agoIf we don't switch fuels, there will soon be no shortage of desert ecosystems no matter how many we pave over...
- johnny99 6y agoI don't want to speak for anyone else, but the point might have been that there may be other ways to get energy which accomplish the goal without requiring that sacrifice.
- samatman 6y agoCorrect, and while I work on developer tools these days, I had a satisfying stint at a battery-analytics company after transitioning to software development.
- maxbond 6y agoRaceway ponds full of glyphosate in the desert; sounds like Sapphire Energy? For what it's worth, I think we'll be able to dispense with the glyphosate if we're more flexible about what algae we're growing, and fuzzily select ecosystems rather than strains. That way we're better able to tolerate invaders & other stresses. But that means we're not operating at peak efficiency, which means a larger footprint. I'm more concerned about how we source fertilizer. (For context, I'm between jobs, but my last job was as an algae cultivation technician.)