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> A few people would admit that the challenge was going from algae growing in the pipes to algae growing on the pipes, where it could not be harvested. I'm not

> A few people would admit that the challenge was going from algae growing in the pipes to algae growing on the pipes, where it could not be harvested. I'm not an expert here but I've done a lot of reading on this. My understanding is that people really don't have a hard time growing algae, it's just that algae doesn't make very good fuel. This is evidenced, IMHO, by the vast number of companies that started as algae fuel producers and then pivot to algae supplement companies. This article goes more in depth on the topic [0]. "One of the biggest challenges was that wild strains of algae couldn’t deliver the high levels of lipids needed to produce large quantities of fuel, said Todd Peterson, the former CTO of Viridos, Exxon’s longstanding and now former algae research partner." [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/big-oil-algae-biofuel-funding-cut-exxonmobil https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/big-oil-...

maxbond 3y ago
Algae isn't hard to grow and makes great fuel, it's just very difficult to harvest (and depending on what you're doing, biofouling may make it difficult to maintain a system long term). Things like corn and soybeans work okay to create fuel, but they're easy to harvest. (Note that we aren't using wild types of vascular plants either, except in eg wood stoves.) Food supplements are a much higher ticket item than fuel. It's a lot easier to make money that way. But you're right, pivoting to some kind of food product is a cliche.
- hinkley 3y ago
  I suppose it makes sense to pivot, if you can find someone who’ll pay you $100 for a gallon of dried algae, versus $4 for a gallon of algae lipids catalyzed into fuel. And how many gallons of algae does that take?
  - maxbond 3y ago
    The dream would be to efficiently fractionate your algae, and separate out lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and specific high value stuff like phycocyanin or astaxanthin. Then you could sell into these high margin markets to supplement your fuel production. Or you could not do any of that and press your dry algae into a pill and sell it at a high margin. As far as the profit motive goes, it just doesn't add up. So the dream dies on the vine. I'd love to see the government pour money into this and build a plant that operated this way at a loss, on a sort of Apollo project basis; it wouldn't necessarily make financial sense, but we'd generate a bunch of great technology which would be applicable in many areas, and eventually it just might work. I think it's worth a shot to see if we can sustainably meet our food and fuel needs, maybe even in a carbon negative manner. But sadly I think we're going in a different direction.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I bet even as an animal feed supplement it makes more sense than making fuel. We have connected the dots between feed and healthiness of fish and eggs. For ungulates I understand you have to beware of high protein. Unrestricted access to clover (which is one of the most palatable things they can eat) can make them quite sick. An algae/clover blend could probably still be palatable, and if you selected for high fat to protein ratio in the algae it might actually be safer. As someone once put it, “oil is so plentiful we can afford to set it on fire”. Finding something else we can set on fire will be difficult, but it might be better to pyrolyze it directly and feed electricity into the power grid. The waste heat from the heat engine could be used in a heat exchanger to dry the algae before firing. Speaking of power, the cooling effect of photosynthesis is also an underexplored areas.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Why grow fuel, and not a fertilizer/top-soil additive for agriculture or soil remediation? If you've got a product which contains that much carbon, covering fields with it is a great way to take CO2 from the air and put it in the ground while also improving the soil. Cover millions of acres of marginal/desert soil with sheets of algal mesh built for moisture retention. Plant trees or crops into it. That it can't be burnt and turned back into CO2 seems like a positive, not a negative. Oh, it doesn't make money? I guess that's the rub.
- lukas099 3y ago
  Couldn't you get carbon credits or whatever for this?
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    No idea how reliable or good that revenue source is now, or in the long term. I wonder how hard it would be to make such an "algal mat". I would use something like this around here on my little farm/vineyard even as a kind of weed block, alternative to "plastic mulch": rolls of algal-produced fibrous mats, 2" or so thick. Permeable so water and air can get through, but thick and tight enough that weeds get blocked out. Would just degrade or be tilled into soil over time. There's already equipment out there for laying "plastic mulch" but the stuff itself is fairly controversial because even the biodegradable stuff is still a plastic. If one could economically produce such a thing made out of algae, and compete with plastics on cost, that would be pretty damned nifty. That and just some kind of bulk powder that can be soil incorporated as a carbon amendment. Pay farmers to lay the stuff down in huge quantities as a way of improving soil while getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even better if a bioreactor and related equipment to make this stuff could be made to operate locally on site.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      For what it's worth, I worked for a company making an algal soil amendment, and we would distribute it as a suspended biomass (green water).

maxbond 3y ago

Algae isn't hard to grow and makes great fuel, it's just very difficult to harvest (and depending on what you're doing, biofouling may make it difficult to maintain a system long term). Things like corn and soybeans work okay to create fuel, but they're easy to harvest. (Note that we aren't using wild types of vascular plants either, except in eg wood stoves.) Food supplements are a much higher ticket item than fuel. It's a lot easier to make money that way. But you're right, pivoting to some kind of food product is a cliche.

hinkley 3y ago
I suppose it makes sense to pivot, if you can find someone who’ll pay you $100 for a gallon of dried algae, versus $4 for a gallon of algae lipids catalyzed into fuel. And how many gallons of algae does that take?
- maxbond 3y ago
  The dream would be to efficiently fractionate your algae, and separate out lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, and specific high value stuff like phycocyanin or astaxanthin. Then you could sell into these high margin markets to supplement your fuel production. Or you could not do any of that and press your dry algae into a pill and sell it at a high margin. As far as the profit motive goes, it just doesn't add up. So the dream dies on the vine. I'd love to see the government pour money into this and build a plant that operated this way at a loss, on a sort of Apollo project basis; it wouldn't necessarily make financial sense, but we'd generate a bunch of great technology which would be applicable in many areas, and eventually it just might work. I think it's worth a shot to see if we can sustainably meet our food and fuel needs, maybe even in a carbon negative manner. But sadly I think we're going in a different direction.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I bet even as an animal feed supplement it makes more sense than making fuel. We have connected the dots between feed and healthiness of fish and eggs. For ungulates I understand you have to beware of high protein. Unrestricted access to clover (which is one of the most palatable things they can eat) can make them quite sick. An algae/clover blend could probably still be palatable, and if you selected for high fat to protein ratio in the algae it might actually be safer. As someone once put it, “oil is so plentiful we can afford to set it on fire”. Finding something else we can set on fire will be difficult, but it might be better to pyrolyze it directly and feed electricity into the power grid. The waste heat from the heat engine could be used in a heat exchanger to dry the algae before firing. Speaking of power, the cooling effect of photosynthesis is also an underexplored areas.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Why grow fuel, and not a fertilizer/top-soil additive for agriculture or soil remediation? If you've got a product which contains that much carbon, covering fields with it is a great way to take CO2 from the air and put it in the ground while also improving the soil. Cover millions of acres of marginal/desert soil with sheets of algal mesh built for moisture retention. Plant trees or crops into it. That it can't be burnt and turned back into CO2 seems like a positive, not a negative. Oh, it doesn't make money? I guess that's the rub.

lukas099 3y ago
Couldn't you get carbon credits or whatever for this?
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  No idea how reliable or good that revenue source is now, or in the long term. I wonder how hard it would be to make such an "algal mat". I would use something like this around here on my little farm/vineyard even as a kind of weed block, alternative to "plastic mulch": rolls of algal-produced fibrous mats, 2" or so thick. Permeable so water and air can get through, but thick and tight enough that weeds get blocked out. Would just degrade or be tilled into soil over time. There's already equipment out there for laying "plastic mulch" but the stuff itself is fairly controversial because even the biodegradable stuff is still a plastic. If one could economically produce such a thing made out of algae, and compete with plastics on cost, that would be pretty damned nifty. That and just some kind of bulk powder that can be soil incorporated as a carbon amendment. Pay farmers to lay the stuff down in huge quantities as a way of improving soil while getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even better if a bioreactor and related equipment to make this stuff could be made to operate locally on site.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    For what it's worth, I worked for a company making an algal soil amendment, and we would distribute it as a suspended biomass (green water).