Accelergy and A2BE Carbon Capture Form Alliance to Commercialize Integrated-Carbon-to-Liquids (ICTL) Fuel Technologies; Coal and Algae to Fuels
09 October 2009
| Accelergy’s Integrated Coal to Liquids platform is the basis for the Integrated Carbon to Liquids initiative. Source: Accelergy. Click to enlarge. |
Accelergy Corporation, an advanced coal-to-liquids company, and A2BE Carbon Capture LLC, an algae photobioreactor company, have formed the Carbon Cycle Technology Alliance to commercialize a platform for Integrated Carbon to Liquids (ICTL) fuel production technologies that incorporates recycling of process CO2 using algal biomass to produce additional fuel production feedstock. The companies made the announcement at the 3rd Algae Biomass Summit in San Diego.
ICTL incorporates proprietary Accelergy catalytic conversion technologies for what it calls Integrated Coal to Liquids production and A2BE Carbon Capture algae photobioreactor CO2 recycle technology. Other key partners are working with the Alliance in areas of development engineering, systems integration, and Six Sigma driven manufacturing capabilities.
ICTL produces a tunable range of low net-carbon fuels including premium gasoline, diesel, Jet-A, and military JP-5, JP-8, and JP-9 jet fuel. The Alliance anticipates bringing an integrated demonstration scale plant online within 24 months.
Accelergy Integrated Coal to Liquids. Accelergy’s ICTL process quadruples the liquid output from a ton of coal—from one barrel using conventional CTL technologies to four using ICTL—according to the company.
Broadly, Accelergy’s process currently comprises three elements:
Microcatalytic Coal Liquefaction to Fuels
Dimethyl carbonate (DMC) synthesis for fuel additives
Greenhouse gas mitigation (using process CO2 for input to the algae farm) Algae biomass is then fed into the gasifier.
A2BE Carbon Capture photobioreactor (PBR). Each PBR machine is 350’ long and 50’ wide consisting of twin 20’ wide x 10” deep x 300’ long, transparent plastic “algae water-beds”. Each PBR is a closed photo-bioreactor with bio-isolation to prevent cross-contamination.
CO2- and NOx-bearing flue gas emissions are piped into the PBR, which produces pure O2 and a concentrated slurry of biomass through piped manifolds. Multi-function rollers pump in both directions, re-suspend algae, degas media, and clean internal surfaces. Parallel sets of counter-rotating helical currents within the bags photo modulate the light to the algae as they are carried up through the photo-tropic zone.
The fully enclosed system prevents water evaporation and percolation. Water consumption is 3” of equivalent rainwater use per year. Passive control of temperature extremes is achieved through a thermal radiation-conduction switching membrane within the bioreactor tubes.
Bio-harvesting aggregates algae cells into larger, more separable, organisms allowing in-situ extraction and continuous production without resorting to batch stressing.
The Algae Biomass Summit is the official conference of the Algal Biomass Organization.
Very informative.
"CO2- and NOx-bearing flue gas emissions are piped into the PBR, which produces...
Fluegas contaminants dont harm the Algae? or are they removed and at what cost.
Here is another case of the necessity of the total EROI that we dont have could be worse than the reduction when compared to the alternatives that are well understood.
"Green Algae " is an desirable advertising and promotional tool, one gets suspicious when they bed down with the coal industry that it can easily obscure the reality.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to thoroughly explore these areas of interest to gain the understanding and learn the limits to our capability.
Posted by: arnold | 09 October 2009 at 02:10 PM
This just came up on Greencarcongress.,Blue marble energy........
Light Immersion Technology can be used to grow algae to remediate selenium, zinc, lead, cadmium, boron, mercury, and other undesirable elements and compounds from industrial waste streams. Blue Marble can then process the generated algae biomass into specialty biochemicals."
Some of these algae must be pretty tough or expected to be strengthened.
Posted by: arnold | 09 October 2009 at 02:46 PM
Some oppose CTL or IGCC because they oppose coal in general. If you can take the carbon and feed it to algae, then you have a use for it. Sure, it is not the carbon neutral version like biomass, but it beats blowing it out the smoke stack along with sulfur, mercury, particulates and other nasty stuff the way it is done now.
Posted by: SJC | 13 October 2009 at 09:33 AM