Oozing Power

Sydney Morning Herald
Friday 3/4/2009 Page: 18

As fuel prices have continued to spike during the past year, the hunt for renewable energy sources has intensified. In the drive to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, the race to create a commercially viable biofuel continues. At the cutting edge of this research is a fuel derived from algae. Karne de Boer, who recently completed a PhD on biofuels at Murdoch University says algal biodiesel has received intense international interest.

"The reason why everyone is excited about algae is because you don't need good land for it," he says. "You can grow it in the desert or wherever there is salt water. That is why everyone in the world is trying to crack algae." biodiesels, which can be used as a direct replacement for normal diesel, can be made from any feed stocks that oil can be extracted from. "From beef feed and canola oil to tap grease in Chinese restaurants or coffee beans," he says.

Much biodiesel research has centred on feed stocks such as canola, palm and soya bean oils, but these crops need vast tracts of fertile land that compete with food sources. Monash University biology professor John Beardall has been involved in the science of alternative fuels and biodiesels for years.

"The Brazilians have been producing vast amounts of fuel from sugar cane and have been running a lot of cars on that for 20 years or so and they've been doing that quite successfully," he says. "I think with recent events and rising oil prices and so on people have got very much more interested in alternative fuel sources. "The real problem with these other biofuels ... is that if they are based on terrestrial plants - plants that grow on land - they are going to compete with crop plants.

We have to grow food for ourselves, we have to grow wheat, we have to grow rice - all of those types of crops - so we can't afford to use that valuable land to grow biofuels because ... you are going to restrict your capacity to produce enough food to keep the human race going. That is what has led a number of people to the potential for algae for biofuels.

"Algae can grow more or less anywhere there is enough light and enough water. You can grow them in anything from fresh water to sea water and even recycled sewage water," Beardall says. "There is a lot of hype floating around about algal biofuels. There was a flurry over the last five to 10 years of companies that set themselves up as venture capitalists.

People got really excited and put a lot of money in but they didn't really do it properly." Beardall says more research is needed to get systematic and consistent yields from the multiplication of al-al cells. "It probably needs another 10 years or so of good hard research where you've got to the stage where we've got a reliable and significant algal biodiesel industry," he says.

Beardall is overseeing the research of honours student Marcus O'Mullane at Monash University in a year-long project to test various algal species for their potential for biodiesel production. "I've collected water samples from five or six locations and from those samples I've isolated several algal species. All of these species are related to common seaweeds but in microscopic forms," O'Mullane says.

"I'm testing these species for their attributes for their suitability for large-scale oil production. I'm looking for things that grow quickly and produce oil." A significant environmental advantage of algal biodiesel is that algae consumes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis, so it not only reduces carbon dioxide by displacing the use of fossil fuel carbon, it also reduces carbon in the atmosphere, O'Mullane says. He is investigating two prototypes for how the algae might be reproduced on a large scale.

One cost-effective model involves propagating the algae in long, narrow open ponds up to 20 centimetres deep that have water flowing through them. The more expensive, but also more efficient, option is a photobioreactor, an enclosed and controllable environment, he says. But both models have promising potential for algae as the feed-stock source to produce algal biodiesel.

'Algae only needs about 2% to 3% of the ]and required by terrestrial-based crops to produce an equivalent amount of oil. People are really looking at it and excited about trying to make it work in Australia," O'Mullane says. Much of the infertile land in the Australian deserts could be used for algal biodiesel production. Researchers are racing to find a model that can be commercialised. "It's going to be very, very lucrative for whoever works this out," he says.

Biomax Fuels is one Australian comp any working with a Federal Government renewable development initiative grant with a view to the commercialisation of algal biodiesel. Ian Ohnstead is a project engineer with Biomax Fuels, working in the laboratory and out in the field to fine-tune production processes.

"We are working quite hard towards that. In terms of our current thinking we believe it's probably two to five years away," he says. "There are a lot of companies around the world now working on it." Biomax Fuels has established a prototype algal biodiesel plant at International Power in Hazelwood, in Victoria's Latrobe Valley. "Australia is quite well placed, particularly because of our geographical location but also that relates to available land mass and sunlight and meteorological conditions that are good for algae growth," he says.

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