FINCAS ACUATICAS BIOENERGIA

Algae Systems making waves

March 3, 2015
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

Algae Systems’ processing plant in Daphne, Alabama. Image courtesy of Algae Systems

on Willmott writes in Huffington Post about Nevada-based Algae Systems, which has built a test plant on Alabama’s Mobile Bay to not only turn algae into diesel fuel but also to extract potable water out of sewage and manufacture fertilizer.

The company grows indigenous algae in a nursery and scales it up in a greenhouse. Then it’s transferred to big floating bioreactor bags offshore (think OMEGA) where it consumes CO2 from the atmosphere and nutrients – including nitrogen and phosphate – from the disinfected household wastewater in which it is bathing. Wave action does the required mixing, and the water temperature is just right for the process. After a few days the algae’s finished eating, and it’s harvested and de-watered.

Algae grows inside large floating bags that take advantage of wave action and the ambient water temperature. Image courtesy of Algae Systems

Next it undergoes hydrothermal liquefaction, a process that cooks the algae under extreme pressure at 550 degrees Fahrenheit, yielding a liquid not unlike crude oil right out of the well. That liquid is sent to a lab, where hydrogen is added, and the result is a hydrocarbon fuel. The bottom line: carbon-negative wastewater treatment, alternative fuel, and useful byproducts.

It will likely cost Algae Systems up to $100 million to get its plant up to scale, but its business plan includes charging cities for wastewater treatment, selling the potable water it creates, and selling the potentially valuable renewable fuel credits that the EPA offers to low-carbon biofuel producers.