Dear Dr. Emmanouil D. Fylladitakis, Thanks for your good contribution & the attached file.

Dear Professor Atul Kumar Mittal, your contribution is much appreciated. The algae are source of materials as they are source of energy as you know. Their ability, to convert CO2 and sunlight into chemical energy, is fascinating. There is feasibility , I think, to develop this carbon-negative, renewable, and sustainable E source. Investment here will be well-rewarded in the long run (e.g. stop of climate change, cease of some crops destruction, halt of ill-effects on human health...etc.).

Respected Dr. Nizar Matar, first of all let me acknowledge that the question has been explained in an excellent way. I like that.

I think, the reasons for not using algae as source of renewable sustainable energy is the lack of political will. The fact is, humans are reluctant to change. We are always afraid of adopting new paths and prefer to follow set paths and practices. Anyhow, there may be different reasons in the other parts of the world.

Can you really compare? Solar is good for electricity but how will you run trucks with it? The electric car is still far away... We need a reliable 'clean' source of liquid fuels. Ethanol and bio-diesel are and will be sought after. As for (micro)algae specifically there are many issues to solve - efficient growth (cost of water, fertilizers), ways to harvest, cracking the cells open etc. are still problematic economically wise.

Nevertheless it is nice to see the discussion heat up!

Yoram

Thanks Dr. Kamal,

At the moment both of them are expensive. Sunlight is intermittent in many countries & dilute, solar cells are relatively expensive & short-lived, and there is problem of storing solar E to generate electricity continuously. There has not been "good" amount of research on algae although there are many signs that they are promising. There are obstacles in front of this for sure, and the question seeks finding answer about them.

Thanks Professor Yoram,

I think whether it is micro algae or macro algae, there is a mistake or a problem of why there is no "good" effort directed towards R & D in this field.

Actually there are some efforts, both academia and industry, but the problem is like many bio-related the progress is slow and expensive. And since the product (fuel) is low cost (in contrary to pharmaceuticals, etc) the economic initiative is low. We need either governments to kick in and subsidize/fund R&D or the oil price to go up, either by market force or by taxes that will reflect the cost to the environment.

My personal feeling is that we are going to see both happening in the coming years.

Two sites to check:

http://www.univerve-biofuel.com/

http://www.nrel.gov/news/features/feature_detail.cfm/feature_id=1512

Yoram

I believe we can deal with most of our current energy problems through conservation (reducing wastage). Of course, to be 'sustainable', we also need to look to the long term future, which will require comprehensive sustainability strategies. To me it seems obvious that we will need many different approaches because a method that is well suited to one place (let's say geothermal energy in Iceland) is of little value somewhere else. Extracting fuel from algae is probably a good strategy in some places, but I agree with others that natural marshes are not the right place to do it. They have high ecological value in their natural states. Contained spaces, with precisely controlled conditions are the most efficient way to maximize fuel production from micro-algae. Facilities for this are best suited to city environments.

Respected Professors Yoram Gerchman & J.H. Martin Willison,

Thank you very much for your valuable contributions. For me, the picture now is more clear. I think that unless the prices of fossil fuels go up significantly , there will be no strong motivation to utilize algae properly (or other candidates as E alternatives).

In addition to the reply by Dr Emmanouil D. Fylladitakis , I have to add that the quality of tryglycerides obtained from algae is very poor having very high percentage of free fatty acid and unsaturation, mixures of several types of compound etc. This requires elevated conditions: temperature and pressure, catalyst, for conversion to biodiesel or green diesel. Thus the purpose of utilising the oil only is not economically viable at all. Instead, the integrated biorefinery and food products extraction from microalgae could only be the sustainable option.

Thanks for your contribution dear Anil Sarma. As you know, the number of algae is enormous. I do not think that all of them will give poor yields of oil. I know that there is need to select certain types & I appreciate that this work is not easy. Nevertheless, it is worth doing because we are all heading for a terrible energy crisis "estimated by many to occur by the year 2075".

As a student from my University I feel that the people of 1st world countries are beginning to see the eminent issues with our methods of coal burning and petroleum digging. The various enterprises that govern global trade markets continue to influence the lives of the consumer in a way the likes of which we've never seen. Many say that the biggest problem in this country is the way we grow our food. The way other consumer goods are manufactured are also a big problem. In order to become sustainable, two conditions must be met. Widespread adoption of reduced livability by the people, and disruptive innovation.

The developing technologies which produce alternative fuels for climate friendly travel are gaining an increasingly high amount of government incentives and seeing just a creeping change in adoption rates. I feel the policy-makers are responsible for merging the research department's funding with the business investors, teams of developers & various institutions. If policy-makers fail to kick-start the development of new fuel technology due to their vested interests in oil politics then the people will have no choice but to develop open-source hardware projects, a poor lonely hope to undercut the prices of oil and hopefully drive wedges between a self-sufficient people and the lovable but often scientifically aloof USA.

It seems like a Greek tragedy. To recover from our atmospheric impact takes reducing livability as described in Randal O'Toole's "Reducing Livability - 'How Sustainability Planning Threatens the American Dream'" to a level that is sustainable. As Genetic Scientists map the genome of various micro-algae, and energy companies and airline agencies fuel their travel algae biofuel that was developed in an open pond, you wonder about what the solution to our problem is going to be, and who is going to find it? Wastewater treatment, membrane technology, water science, aquaculture, genetically modified organisms; it all offers us clues to the final solution. Whether people realize that the fate of the world is now hinged on environmental technology presses the issue of WHEN we will have these technologies readily available. As practical solutions bring us closer to the answer we'll all been hoping for, there is still a huge role of individual efforts to change the course of history. Disruptive innovation is certain to throw curve balls, but cutting costs and adding clean energy back to the grid is imperative for our survival. Time is ticking, we'd better hurry.

Dear Timothy, Your contribution indicates deep thinking & constructive imagination.

The last parargaph is great: "Disruptive innovation is certain to throw curve balls, but cutting costs and adding clean energy back to the grid is imperative for our survival. Time is ticking, we'd better hurry." We really need politicians & influential people to think about the consequences.

I have to concur with Dr. Fylladitakis, it purely economics. Focusing on the production of fuel does not promote the development of algae as an economic resource for several reasons. First, you are going up against the fuel industry which is well established and has a vested interest in your failing so they can acquire your work and use it to sustain themselves. Second, you are being subject to the prices dictated by the fuel industry to be competitive. It makes more sense to focus on the production of molecules from algae that command a much higher price in the market. By producing higher value products you make investment into algae attractive whereby other beneficial and economically competitive products can be developed from algae.

Dear Edward Calt, you are adding a very valuable point. The well-established fossil fuel industry will be in deep trouble if a more attractive industry is founded. I think that you are absolutely right.

Algae grown in coastal regions are not good sources of biodiesel owing to very low lipid contents.Marshes or river side regions where surplus algae grows naturally, can be harvested for biodiesel or can be very well utilized as energy source by making lubricant oil ...... In such a manner we utilize ever small pocket of stored energy. But it is like- a thirsty person knows the value of every single drop of water.

Few countries are cutting the production cost of algal diesel development but advancements are in successive steps and a break through just a dream, yet to be achieved. Once the bigest challange of cost of downstream processing overcomes significantly, people will charge to sell algae from their farming fields or ponds.

Dear Pooja Sharma, I agree that algae will have a cost and may be a rising cost. When I was a child, eggs were not sold in any shop. You either have hens or your relatives or neighbors give you eggs. Now, for every 4 eggs we pay to a shop one dollar at least !

Your contribution has really added to my knowledge.

As of now, the combined annualised capital cost plus operating cost of operating a microalgae growing facility, plus the downstream processing cost (harvesting) does not make microalgae competitive for producing biofuel. UP TO NOW, if you lower annualised capital cost plus operating cost (e.g., open pond, yielding very dilute microalgal suspensions) you increase harvesting cost; if you succeed in lowering harvesting cost (certain closed-photobioreactor, or even some open-pond photobioreactor production technologies attain fairly high concentrations in the microalgal suspension) you discover that setting up and running those photobioreactors is rather costly. I am not going deep into naming technologies or providing numbers (literature is rich), just summarising concepts.

As others have pointed out, valorising every molecule is the way to go, which requires biorefining. This is the same as for oil. If oil were to be turned into one product only, i.e. gasoline, that gasoline would be extremely expensive.

HOWEVER:

1. large scale productions such as biofuels are (material balance!) accompanied by large amounts of co-products. Trying to market all of them, and particularly the more valuable ones, probably exceeds the capacity of some small-volume markets, thus severely cutting overall profits. This is hindering many developments in the area, as the elasticity of those markets is unknown and makes business plans aleatory. If you want a well known example of this, think of what happened to glycerol from transesterification.

Therefore, extensive biorefining might be applied for a limited amount of microalgal biomass. It is more likely that some rough fractionation can be applied that does not lead to niche market saturation and that only part of some fractions be separated further. However, the less you bio-refine, the less you raise profits.

Cars were initially conceived to run on ethanol, not oil. Taxes on ethanol, at the time, did a great favour to the refining industry under development, giving it the opportunity and time to develop refining streategies for oil, which eventually made gasoline competitive. It took 100 YEARS to the fossil fuel refining industry to reach the current optimised yields! So, there is nothing bad in taxing back fossil energy for its pollution (not only CO2, but water and much else, think to all the fracking issues these days.........).

There are other very important considerations that would stem here, but they fall largely out of the scope of the raised question to which I am trying to contribute an answer.

Look Into self sufficiency. It becomes evident that the solutions exist in how energy is used. Smart grid technology and hybrid forms of renewable energy provide clean energy but usage will forever determine our path. The responsibility of policy makers to address the losses in energy usage have never been a greater imperative to human sustainability. Disruptive innovation is a meager hope to offset human dependence on practices which will be eventually be condemned as unsustainable. The developments that occur in the next five years are critical to our climate health health and our overall quality of life on the long term. It is are fear that corporate responsibility be looked over in exchange for the satisfaction of comsumer demands. In order to thrive as a people a firm understanding of permaculture must be used to heed the triple the triplebottom line.

How do consumers make make a didference? They start by becoming aware that every purchase holds voting power. Decide to rely on each other for proliferation, and big pharmacy companies, big oil, big banking, and corporate agriculture are powerless to intervene.

Dear Prof. Marco & Dear Mr. Timothy: your contributions have in-depth analysis to the prevailing situation & what are the expectations. In my opinion, politics dictates the direction of the trends of Energy Usage& this comes before economics & technology. Of course, it is the politics of the powerful state(s).

Interesting read regarding lawsuits against a large algae corporation called Cell Tech in the 70s and 80s.

http://www.mlmwatch.org/05FDA/kclabs.html

Thanks  Dr. Timothy for the interesting "algae trial story of 1986" with the magical "manna" in them !!

The Kollmans lost  when the judge in the case agreed with FDA that the products from blue-green algae should not be allowed on the market. That was in 1986, but now the health benefits of blue-green algae are proven.

 They can be used as food supplements (besides their value as sources of chemicals &  sources of energy). 

May be the investment in algae is a recipe for "become rich quick".

Some wonderful answers......

Talking about harvest, you might find this paper interesting...

And obviously there are Macroalgae - harvest is much easier but you get carbohydrates not oi, so ethanol rather then biodiesel.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960852416317102

Article Algae as a sustainable energy source for biofuel production ...

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f14/algae_webinar.pdf

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/519513/

https://www.esmap.org/sites/default/files/esmap-files/ESMAP%20IFC%20RE%20Training%20VTT%20Hytonen_Small1.pdf

Article Microalgae as Sustainable Renewable Energy Feedstock for Bio...

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/aree.2017.14.issue-1/aree-2017-0004/aree-2017-0004.xml

http://www.ajer.org/papers/v3(3)/ZQ33330338.pdf

Good