PNNL publication Identifies Promising Locales for Algae Projects
The Algae Biomass Organization, the trade association for the algae industry, lauded a new publication from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in partnership with Sapphire Energy, “Siting Algae Cultivation Facilities for Biofuel Production in the United States: Trade-Offs between Growth Rate, Site Constructability, Water Availability, and Infrastructure,” in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The publication highlights a new process for rigorously identifying and evaluating sites for commercial algae production facilities.
“Effectively siting algae cultivation facilities for commercial biofuel production is critical to the success of every commercial algae project,” said Margaret McCormick, chair of the ABO and CEO of algae company Matrix Genetics. “The biology is so complex, existing ‘off-the-shelf’ measurement tools fall short. Because this analysis considers numerous variables along with real-world algae cultivation data, it offers project developers a much more complete and rigorous evaluation of sites.”
