Process flow for liquid fuels from algae by hydrothermal processing. Elliott et al. Click to enlarge. Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have created a continuous-flow process that produces useful crude oil less than one hour after receiving harvested algae. The research was reported... Read more →

During his keynote and subsequent question-and-answer session at the BIO Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy in San Diego this week, Dr. Craig Venter, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, J. Craig Venter Institute and Founder and CEO, Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI) tangentially provided a brief update on the status... Read more →

San Diego-based Sapphire Energy, Inc., one of the world leaders in algae-based “Green Crude” oil production, and Phillips 66, an integrated energy manufacturing and logistics company, have entered a strategic joint development agreement aimed at taking production of algae crude oil a significant step toward commercialization. The companies will work... Read more →

An international team of researchers from Bio Architecture Labs, a synthetic biology and enzyme design company focused on the production of biofuels and biochemicals from macroalgae (seaweed) (earlier post), reports the development of a synthetic yeast platform based on Saccharomyces cerevisiae that can efficiently produce ethanol from brown seaweed; the... Read more →

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego report in an open access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that disrupting lipid catabolism is a practical approach to increase lipid yields in microalgae without affecting growth or biomass. This is turn, could greatly improve... Read more →

The EROI ratio and GHG emissions/MJ of (a) algae-derived diesel and (b) algae-derived gasoline produced using HTL. The results are benchmarked against commercialized biodiesel or bioethanol as well as petroleum-derived versions of the drop-in fuels. Credit: Liu et al. Click to enlarge. A new life cycle analysis by a team... Read more →

The EU-funded project DEMA (Direct Ethanol from MicroAlgae) is working to produce bioethanol directly from cyanobacteria—a microalgae found in almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat, including in oceans, lakes and damp soil, and on rocks—for less than €0.40/liter (US$2.00/gallon). The conversion of solar energy, H2O and CO2 into ethanol will... Read more →

CO2 to acetic acid fermentation. Source: LanzaTech. Click to enlarge. LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from waste gases, has partnered with the Centre for Advanced Bio-Energy, a joint venture between Indian Oil Corporation, Ltd. (IOC) and the Indian government’s Department for Biotechnology (DBT), to create a novel... Read more →

US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced more than $22 million in new investments to help develop cost-competitive algae fuels and streamline the biomass feedstock supply chain for advanced biofuels. Moniz was speaking at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Biomass 2013 conference. Nearly $16.5 million goes to four projects intended... Read more →

A team of University of Michigan researchers has been awarded a $2-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to identify and to test naturally diverse groups of green algae that can be grown together to create a high-yield, environmentally sustainable and cost-effective system to produce next-generation biofuels. National Science... Read more →

A techno-economic analysis of renewable aviation fuels by Australian researchers has found that, based on currently available long-term reputable technological data, biorefineries producing biofuels from microalgae, oil seeds of the Pongamia tree, and sugarcane feedstocks would be competitive with crude oil prices at $1,343, $374, and $301/bbl, respectively. Sensitivity analyses... Read more →

Trade-off analysis map showing the available and least expensive water option for each site. Sites where water supply costs are <20% of biofuel value are colored according to the least expensive available source. Where freshwater was not available and alternative water cost was greater than 20% of biofuel value, the... Read more →

The Government of Canada is supporting a three-year project that will result in the construction of a $19-million, demonstration-scale facility in Alberta that will use algae to recycle industrial carbon dioxide emissions from an oil sands facility into commercial products such as biofuels. The Algal Carbon Conversion (ACC) Pilot Project... Read more →

Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI) announced a new co-funded research agreement with ExxonMobil to develop algae biofuels. The new agreement is a basic science research program that focuses on developing algal strains with significantly improved production characteristics by employing synthetic genomic science and technology. Financial details of the agreement were not... Read more →

The California Energy Commission (CEC) approved $5,580,773 for clean-energy transportation projects including biodiesel production, power control electronics for medium-and heavy-duty battery electric vehicles, and buydowns for propane vehicles. The awards were made through the Commission’s Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program. In addition, CEC awarded $1,815,274 to fund... Read more →

Flow diagram of the solvent extraction and product recovery method used. Credit: ACS, Roberts et al. Click to enlarge. A team at the University of Kansas has demonstrated the feasibility of an integrated wastewater algae-to-biocrude process using hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) that can sustainably cultivate algal biomass for biofuel production. A... Read more →

Researchers at the University of Dayton Research Institute (UDRI) investigating the conversion of algal triglycerides to renewable diesel and HEFA (hydrotreated esters and fatty acids) renewable jet fuel have concluded that a renewable aviation turbine fuel strategy that preserves the overall highest liquid fuel yield from the renewable feedstocks would... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support longer-term projects to boost significantly the yield per acre cultivation equivalent of algae for use as a feedstock for algal biofuels. Approximately $10-20 million is expected to be available for new awards in FY 2013,... Read more →

(a) Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) values from previously published LCA studies of algal biofuel production. (b) EROI values resulting from the “worst” and “best” cases of this study. Center lines represent median values, edges of boxes represent 25th and 75th percentiles, and error bars represent 5th and 95th... Read more →

Researchers from UC San Diego and Sapphire Energy, Inc. have demonstrated for the first time that genetically engineered marine algae can be just as capable as fresh water algae in producing industrially relevant products such as enzymes or biofuels. The scientists engineered marine algae to produce five different kinds of... Read more →

Solazyme, Inc., a renewable oil and bioproducts company, and Bunge Global Innovation LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bunge Limited, a leading global agribusiness and food company, signed an agreement expressing their intent to expand their joint venture-owned oil production capacity at Solazyme Bunge Renewable Oils from the current 100,000 metric... Read more →

Biocrude from Nannochloropsis. Credit: Savage Lab. Click to enlarge. A team led by Prof. Phillip Savage at the University of Michigan has found that with appropriate parameters, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) can convert 65% of wet algae (a Nannochloropsis species) into biocrude in one minute. The team, which has been investigating... Read more →

Pathways for cultivating and processing algae to fuels and their products. Each row details a processing step or process option. Different combinations of cultivation and processing options have resulted in more than 60 different proposed pathways for producing algal biofuels. Source: NRC. Click to enlarge. Scaling up the production of... Read more →

Oil squeezing out from microalga. Click to enlarge. Dr. Arum Han, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, has received a $2-million award from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) office to lead a multidisciplinary team of... Read more →

Aerial photo of Green Crude Farm in November 2011. Click to enlarge. Sapphire Energy, Inc. announced that the first phase of its Green Crude Farm, a commercial demonstration algae-to-energy facility, is now operational. Construction of this first phase, which began on 1 June 2011, was completed on time and on... Read more →

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Navy will provide $30 million in federal funding (FOA-12-15-PKM) for Phase 1 projects to match private investments in commercial-scale advanced drop-in biofuels. The program envisions a subsequent investment of up to $180M in follow-on Phase 2 projects. The US Department of Energy... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a request for information (RFI) (DE-FOA-0000745) to solicit information on the development of algae production and downstream processing technology to enhance the yield of algal biofuel intermediate products. The DOE Office of the Biomass Program (OBP) considers “biofuel intermediates” to be biomass-based... Read more →

VG Energy, a majority-owned subsidiary of Viral Genetics, is launching its first commercial product: LipidMax, a lipid enhancement compound based on VG’s Metabolic Disruption Technology (MDT) for use in the production of oils from algae and other plants or plant-like organisms. VG is currently verifying the chemical activity in industrial... Read more →

While algae are among the most potentially significant sources of sustainable biofuels in the future of renewable energy, issues remain regarding human exposure to algae-derived toxins, allergens, and carcinogens from both existing and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as well as the overall environmental impact of GMOs, according to a critical... Read more →

A team from Yale described advances toward achieving a single-step lipid extraction and transesterification process to produce algal biodiesel during the symposium “Biobased Feedstocks for Chemical and Fuel Production” at ACS’ 16th annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference. Such a one-pot process would have a significant impact on the lifecycle... Read more →

Confocal image of the algae Chlamydomonas showing the accumulation of oil droplets (golden dots). Red represents chlorophyll autofluorescence. Source: BNL. Click to enlarge. Although interest in microalgal oils as potential feedstocks for renewable fuels is high, the understanding of the regulatory mechanisms controlling oil biosynthesis and storage in microalgae is... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a funding opportunity announcement (DE-FOA-0000739) to identify, evaluate, and select innovative pilot- or demonstration-scale integrated biorefineries that can produce hydrocarbon fuels that meet military specifications for JP-5 (jet fuel primarily for the Navy), JP-8 (jet fuel primarily for the Air Force), or... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will award (DE-FOA-0000686) up to $15 million to projects that will accelerate the development of thermochemical liquefaction technologies to produce a bio-oil feedstock from high-impact biomass feedstocks that can be utilized within a petroleum refinery for further processing to final fuels such as renewable... Read more →

Characterization of N. gaditana lipid content. (a) Lipid droplets (green) in cells during logarithmic growth. (b) Lipid droplets in cells during stationary phase. (c) GC-FID chromatogram showing a typical N. gaditana fatty acid profile. Source: Radakovits et al., Supplementary material. Click to enlarge. With the goal of transforming a natively... Read more →

Solazyme produces tailored oils using heterotrophic algae grown in industrial fermenters. Source: Solazyme. Click to enlarge. Algae-based renewable oil company Solazyme, Inc. and Bunge Global Innovation LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of agribusiness and food company Bunge Limited, along with other Bunge subsidiaries have signed definitive agreements forming a joint venture... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) will make $30 million available for a new research competition in the coming months focused on natural gas vehicles (DE-FOA-0000672). DOE will also make $14 million available (DE-FOA-0000615) to support research and development into biofuels from algae. President Obama... Read more →

Pond-to-wheel GHG estimates for low-impact, nominal, and high-impact algal diesel fuel technology sets. Well-to-wheel GHG estimates for palm hydrotreated renewable diesel (HRD) fuel, with and without direct LUC, and diesel fuel included to enable comparisons. Contribution by stage shown in the inset charts. Credit: ACS, Vasudevan et al. Click to... Read more →

Design of the microbial platform for production of biofuels and renewable commodity chemical compounds from macroalgae. Wargacki et al. Click to enlarge. A team of scientists from Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) in Berkeley, California, (earlier post) has engineered a strain of Eschericia coli to break down and then to ferment... Read more →

In an open access paper published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, scientists at Sapphire Energy report on a hybrid yeast-bacteria methodology for cloning and modifying the chloroplast genome from the green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and then inserting it into algae. The chloroplast—the site of photosynthesis—is responsible for producing organic... Read more →

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) has signed a contract to purchase 450,000 gallons of advanced drop-in biofuel for the US Navy from Dynamic Fuels, LLC, a joint venture between Tyson Foods, Inc. and Syntroleum Corporation. Solazyme, Inc., a renewable oil and bioproducts company, will help Dynamic Fuels fulfill the contract,... Read more →

ExxonMobil is progressing in its partnership with Synthetic Genomics (SGI) (earlier post) to explore algae biofuels. At the 2011 Algae Biomass Summit in Minneapolis, Dr. Michael Matturro, Corporate Programs Laboratory Director for ExxonMobil, provided a brief overview of the scope of the work and described some preliminary results from a... Read more →

The photos show wild type algae and magnetic algae placed in a test tube next to a permanent magnet. The wild type (left) settles to the bottom of the tube under the influence of gravity. The genetically transformed algae (right) stick to the wall due to magnetic attractions. Source: LANL.... Read more →

New Zealand-based algal technology company, Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, signed an agreement with Texas-based CRI Catalyst Company to test and to evaluate projects that bring together Aquaflow’s algal capability and the Integrated Hydropyrolysis and Hydroconversion technology (IH2) technology to produce commercially viable cellulosic hydrocarbon fuels and blendstocks. Early this year, CRI... Read more →

A baseline scenario for algal biodiesel (top) was 2.5 times as energy intensive as conventional diesel (bottom). Shirvani et al. Click to enlarge. Currently, algae-derived-biodiesel is up to 2.5 times as energy intensive to produce as conventional diesel, which restricts the current financial and environmental feasibility of algae production, according... Read more →

Annual vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) per hectare-year for four bioenergy systems (error bars are median ±1 standard deviation). Credit: ACS, Clarens et al. Click to enlarge. A new well-to-wheel life cycle assessment (LCA) by researchers at the University of Virginia of algae’s potential use as a transportation energy source for... Read more →

The US Department of Energy is awarding up to $36 million to fund six small-scale projects in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin, that will advance the technology improvements and process integration needed to produce drop-in advanced biofuels and other valuable bio-based chemicals. The projects aim to improve the... Read more →

Researchers have developed a previously undescribed approach to optimize hydrogen production in a photosynthetic process by microorganisms such as algae and cyanobacteria. An open access paper on their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although photosynthetic water splitting, coupled to hydrogenase-catalyzed hydrogen production, is... Read more →

Japanese subterranean termites and groups of protists that live in their intestines. A dozen types of protist live in the intestines of Japanese subterranean termites, the most common type of termite in Japan. Source: RIKEN. Click to enlarge. The Biosphere Oriented Biology Research Unit at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute... Read more →

The Linde Group and algal-based crude oil and algal fuels developer Sapphire Energy, Inc. have entered into a multi-year agreement to co-develop a low-cost system to deliver carbon dioxide to commercial-scale, open-pond, algae-to-fuel cultivation systems. Linde, the leading merchant CO2 supplier in the US, will partner with Sapphire Energy to... Read more →

Secreted FFAs (white deposit) from a culture. Picture on the left shows secreted FFAs precipitated out of the culture medium as a granular ring on the flask wall above the aqueous phase. Picture on the right shows microscopy of FFA secretion. (Scale bar: 10 µm) Liu et al. (2011a) Click... Read more →