Has a sewage farm just outside the New Zealand city of Blenheim provided a solution to the world's energy shortages? Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, a local start-up, has patented a process to extract biofuel from sewage, and last year the country's minister for energy, David Parker, roadtested a car run on the oil of microscopic algae.

"Wild algae is one of the ubiquitous units of nature," says Nick Gerritsen, a partner in the firm. "If you leave a bucket of water outside, the water will turn green as it is settled by wild algae. We realised very early that we needed to create a model that took advantage of wild algae feedstocks."

The challenge was to catch what he calls "the little blighters", the algae that contain oils or lipids, in the work's outflow pipe, a cleansing process known as bio-remediation. In May 2006, the company produced what it claimed was "the first biodiesel crude from wild algae". The process is secret, although oil was extracted from algae that had been separated from water, which Aquaflow wants to leave clean enough to drink.

Self-sufficient

Aquaflow first had to pass the energy balance test, creating a fuel that produced at least as much energy as went into creating it. The company went from pond scum to biodiesel in just over a year and says its fuel is suitable for domestic use and transport. Furthermore, it claims its technology fits "on the back of a truck", and is cheap enough to be adopted anywhere. "Our aim is to enable communities to use their wild algae feedstock and become as self-sufficient as they can," says Gerritsen.

Faith in algae to provide energy has spread. Last month, Shell announced it had formed a joint venture with HR Biopetroleum that will construct a demonstration plant to harvest algae they claim can double their mass several times a day, providing 15 times more oil per hectare than alternatives such as rape.

"Algae have great potential as a sustainable feedstock for production of diesel-type fuels, with a very small C02 footprint," says Graeme Sweeney, Shell's executive vice-president of future fuels and carbon, but admits the commercial potential of the scheme is yet to be proved.

Meanwhile, the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative, an alliance of aircraft manufacturers, industry organisations and entrepreneurs, is seeking a biojet fuel that could come from algae.

Last month, a San Francisco "algae summit" drew more than 300 delegates. One participant was Kelly Ogilvie, co-founder of Seattle firm Blue Marble Energy, which plans to harvest wild algae from sewage farms, lakes and rivers, mining ponds and algae blooms caused by pollution. It says its method is "low cost" and "low tech".

Unlike corn, soya beans, rapeseed and sugar cane - unsustainable monocultures that threaten food production already jeopardised by climate change - algae thrive in shallow, brackish water. Like all plants, they convert sunlight into energy and voraciously consume CO2.

Algae also emit CO2, but this can be offset by injecting nutrient rich CO2 emissions into algae-rich water. No one knows how much CO2 could be absorbed but Gerritsen believes it could be "quite significant". Best of all, he says, algae can double their mass in hours.

And they need less space than other biofuels. While corn produces 60 or so gallons of ethanol an acre annually, algae can provide up to 10,000 gallons of biofuel, says Dave Daggett, research chief at Boeing.

However, getting there is a challenge. "There are hurdles throughout the process stream," says Eric Jarvis, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The US company, funded by energy company Chevron, has resumed work on identifying strains of algae likely to produce abundant lipid oils.

"You have to find an algae strain that thrives in your particular conditions. It must divide at a reasonable rate and produce oil. These things are tough. Then you need to separate the algae from water and extract oil from the paste. Once you have lipid oil, you have to create a fuel that passes specification tests," Jarvis adds.

Those who advocate algae monoculture believe ponds or bioreactors, closed systems that manipulate growing conditions, will do the trick eventually. But wild algae believers reject both methods as costly and unproductive.

"If the future of biofuels is algae, and I believe it is, you're never going to get enough volume in bioreactors or ponds," says Ogilvie. "It has to be something with greater volume." He says the best approach is to mimic nature by creating algae farms, or by harvesting algae blooms. "Why try to out-engineer nature?" he asks.

"It could be done really cheaply if people would shift their paradigm," says Ogilvie. "There has to be a rethinking of how we interact with the environment. Can you clean up the environment? Can you make money and energy doing so?

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Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder came to town Wednesday, Oct. 15, to be briefed by members of the Marshall Saline Development Corporation on the planning of the EcoAlgae plant.

"We feel really good about where the project is today from where it was three months ago," said Roy Hunter, executive director of MSDC.

Hunter called the project "a very costly enterprise. We're looking at $170 million plus to build the ethanol, biodiesel and biogas and all the other components that go in to make a green energy project."

The future site for the EcoAlgae plant has still not been determined, said Hunter, though progress on the matter is being made.

In completion of the project, Hunter said, 2000 algae ponds will be constructed across the county, with as many as 2,500 such ponds, eventually. Each pond would be one acre in size.

"If I were a betting man, I'd bet this was going to happen and it's going to happen in the next 90 days, but, things happen," Hunter said. "This project is in Saline County because something happened someplace else that brought Frank (Imo) here."

Imo is a farmer from Montgomery County and a partner in the EcoAlgae project.

This plant would be the first of its kind in the nation.

"It blows my mind to think that we might actually get it here," said Hunter. "I think that we've convinced Frank that this is where it needs to be, now it's just a matter of getting all the contracts in place."

He added, "Lieutenant Governor, whatever help you can give us would be immensely helpful."

Hunter estimated that 40 jobs will be created immediately, with up to 100 over the next two years.

"What a great time to be growing, and in renewable fuels, something that's going to be around for a long, long time," said Hunter. "And it's not the complete answer, but it is part of the answer."

Kinder mentioned he had been told by some of his rice-farmer friends that the waste stalk of rice, which was previously burned by farmers, has the densest cellulose structure in nature. Though rice is not widely grown in Missouri, it is commonly grown south of his home in Cape Girardeau.

"A lot of us think that, long term, this is more promising that corn ethanol," said Kinder.

Many waste products, including trash, are able to provide cellulosic ethanol, said Hunter. "It's an ideal project for agricultural communities."

"I'm not sure if this board I chair can do anything" to help the project along, said Kinder of the Missouri Development Finance Board, though he said he would look into the possibility.

Imo spoke of an organic fertilizer, called the Montana Micronutrient Booster, which he provided to the Midwest Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit organization, along with about 25 other organizations across the globe. MRI's findings were that the addition of MMB yielded a total of 300 percent of the algae's standard growth.

"It's nice to have these folks on board, saying that what Frank and his group have done is legitimate," said Hunter.

21 percent of the algae matter is oil, which can be turned into bio-diesel. Another 12 percent is carbohydrates, which can be made into ethanol. Yet another 50 percent is organic protein. Tyson has been involved in talks regarding the possibility of feeding hogs with this protein.

"The main thing algae feeds on is CO2, so we take the CO2 from the ethanol plant and pump it into the algae ponds. It's a closed-loop system, it's a negative carbon footprint," said Imo. "It's … what our country needs."

"We think it should be available to chickens, turkeys, everything," said Hunter. He added that it would relieve the current strain on corn.

"We need everyone around the state to be involved for it to be successful," said Hunter. "Lieutenant Governor Kinder has a tremendous number of contacts around the state. This is a very big package and involves a lot of people, and we don't want to have to repackage it every time we sell it."

"I am vitally concerned about jobs and economic development, and this is a promising project that can lead to both of those," said Kinder. "I want to be all over this in any way I can … I came to be briefed and give it a boost in whatever way I can."

During the meeting, the members of MSDC present also discussed with Kinder their desire to further develop the area at the intersection of Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 65.

Some of the problems mentioned include the need for a water tower and about three miles of piping for water service, which Hunter estimated would cost $750,000.

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CHAPEL HILL You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir" Or maybe its choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. Its probably cyanobacteria blue-green algae and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, it relishes the weather extremes that accompany global warming.

Hans Paerl, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences Professor and co-author of the Science paper, calls the algae the cockroach of lakes. Its everywhere and its hard to exterminate but when the sun comes up it doesnt scurry to a corner, its still there, and its growing, as thick as 3 feet in some areas.

The algae has been linked to digestive, neurological and skin diseases and fatal liver disease in humans. It costs municipal water systems many millions of dollars to treat in the United States alone. And though its more prevalent in developing countries, it grows on key bodies of water across the world, including Lake Victoria in Africa, the Baltic Sea, Lake Erie and bays of the Great Lakes, Floridas Lake Okeechobee and in the main reservoir for Raleigh, N.C.

This is a worldwide problem, said Paerl, Kenan Professor of marine and environmental sciences in UNCs College of Arts and Sciences.

Its long been known that nutrient runoff contributes to cyanobacterial growth. Now scientists can factor in temperature and global warming, said Paerl, who, with professor Jef Huisman from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, explains the new realization in Science paper.

As temperatures rise waters are more amenable to blooms, Paerl said.

The algae also thrive in wet, soggy ground in areas experiencing periodic floods, like the U.S. Midwest.

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