By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON * Isaac Berzin is a big fan of algae. The tiny, single-celled
plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut
global warming.
Overshadowed by a multibillion-dollar push into other "clean-coal"
technologies, a handful of tiny companies are racing to create an
even cleaner, greener process using the same slimy stuff that
thrives in the world's oceans.
Enter Dr. Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. About three years ago, while working on an experiment
for growing algae on the International Space Station, he came up
with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.
If he could find the right strain of algae, he figured he could turn
the nation's greenhouse-gas-belching power plants into clean-green
generators with an attached algae farm next door.
"This is a big idea," Berzin says, "a really powerful idea."
And one that's taken him to the top - a rooftop. Bolted onto the
exhaust stacks of a brick-and-glass 20-megawatt power plant behind
MIT's campus are rows of fat, clear tubes, each with green algae
soup simmering inside.
Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power
plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays
of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with
40 percent less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates)
and another bonus: 86 percent less nitrous oxide.
After the CO2 is soaked up like a sponge, the algae is harvested
daily. From that harvest, a combustible vegetable oil is squeezed
out: biodiesel for automobiles. Berzin hands a visitor two vials -
one with algal biodiesel, a clear, slightly yellowish liquid, the
other with the dried green flakes that remained. Even that dried
remnant can be further reprocessed to create ethanol, also used for
transportation.
Being a good Samaritan on air quality usually costs a bundle. But
Berzin's pitch is one hard-nosed utility executives and climate-
change skeptics might like: It can make a tidy profit.
"You want to do good for the environment, of course, but we're not
forcing people to do it for that reason - and that's the key," says
the founder of GreenFuel Technologies, in Cambridge, Mass. "We're
showing them how they can help the environment and make money at the
same time."
GreenFuel has already garnered $11 million in venture capital
funding and is conducting a field trial at a 1,000 megawatt power
plant owned by a major southwestern power company. Next year,
GreenFuel expects two to seven more such demo projects scaling up to
a full pro- duction system by 2009.
Even though it's early yet, and may be a long shot, "the technology
is quite fascinating," says Barry Worthington, executive director of
US Energy Association in Washington, which represents electric
utilities, government agencies, and the oil and gas industry.
One key is selecting an algae with a high oil density - about 50
percent of its weight. Because this kind of algae also grows so
fast, it can produce 15,000 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Just 60
gallons are produced from soybeans, which along with corn are the
major biodiesel crops today.
Greenfuel isn't alone in the algae-to-oil race. Last month,
Greenshift Corporation, a Mount Arlington, N.J., technology
incubator company, licensed CO2-gobbling algae technology that uses
a screen-like algal filter. It was developed by David Bayless, a
researcher at Ohio University.
A prototype is capable of handling 140 cubic meters of flue gas per
minute, an amount equal to the exhaust from 50 cars or a 3-megawatt
power plant, Greenshift said in a statement.
For his part, Berzin calculates that just one 1,000 megawatt power
plant using his system could produce more than 40 million gallons of
biodiesel and 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. That would
require a 2,000-acre "farm" of algae-filled tubes near the power
plant. There are nearly 1,000 power plants nationwide with enough
space nearby for a few hundred to a few thousand acres to grow algae
and make a good profit, he says.
Energy security advocates like the idea because algae can reduce US
dependence on foreign oil. "There's a lot of interest in algae right
now," says John Sheehan, who helped lead the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL) research project into using algae on
smokestack emissions until budget cuts ended the program in 1996.
In 1990, Sheehan's NREL program calculated that just 15,000 square
miles of desert (the Sonoran desert in California and Arizona is
more than eight times that size) could grow enough algae to replace
nearly all of the nation's current diesel requirements.
"I've had quite a few phone calls recently about it," says Mr.
Sheehan. "This is not an outlandish idea at all."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.html
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