Algae Biofuel From Aquaflow Bionomic  

The Energy Blog has a roundup of algae based biofuel news, focusing on NZ company Aquaflow Bionomic - Aquaflow Algae.

Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation (ABC), Melbourne, New Zealand, states on its website: The world is expected to move from the cultivation of corn and sugar cane for energy purposes to the cultivation of marine algae. Aquaflow has set itself the objective to be the first company in the world to economically produce biofuel from wild algae harvested from open-air environments, to market it, and meet the challenge of increasing demand.

They are trying to simplify the algae to biooil process used by most others in the field by collecting wild algae growing in open-air sludge ponds and waste streams.

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, and Aquaflow have signed a memorandum of understanding to convert wild algae into fuel products using UOP’s processes and to develop a carbon dioxide sequestration storage model for Aquaflow’s algal oil production facilities.

The companies will also study the feasibility of sequestering carbon dioxide from a refinery or power plant and adding it to wastewater streams in an effort to boost the productivity of the wild algae population.

Aquaflow currently sources its wild algae from oxidation ponds in Marlborough, New Zealand. It doesn’t add carbon dioxide to the wastewater. “We have now achieved commercial scale continuous harvesting of tonnes of wild algae at the Marlborough oxidation ponds so we can take the step up to commercial scale production of biocrude,” said Aquaflow chairman, Barrie Leay in March.

In September Aquaflow announced it had produced the world’s first of green-crude, a crude-oil equivalent, from wild algae.

ABC harvests algae directly from the settling ponds of standard Effluent Management Systems and other nutrient-rich water. The process can be used in many industries that produce a waste stream, including the transport, dairy, meat and paper industries.

The two-step process firstly optimises the ponds' productive capacity, and secondly, determines the most efficient and economic way of harvesting the pond algae. Algae are provided with full opportunity to exploit the nutrients available in the settling ponds, thereby cleaning up the water. The algae are then harvested to remove the remaining contaminant. A last stage of bio-remediation, still in development, will ensure that the water discharge from the process exceeds acceptable quality standards.

Leay further commented, “An extraordinarily beneficial by-product of the Aquaflow process is potentially releasing a clean water resource of millions of litres of clean water - to be recycled and available for use in irrigation, industrial washing, cooling, and so on.”

The United States Department of Energy estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (40,000 square kilometers), which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland, or 1.3 Belgiums. This is less than 1/7th the area of corn harvested in the United States in 2000.