Everytime I hear the expression ‘algae fuel’ get mentioned in the press, an alarm bell inside my head goes off. This time, quite literally. The latest exciting algae development comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security.
The Lab’s award-winning laboratory sound-wave technology is helping Solix Biofuels, Inc. optimize production of algae-based fuel in a “cost-effective, scalable, and environmentally benign fashion – paving the way to lowering the carbon footprint of biofuel productionâ€, said LANL in a press statement.
Algae innards contain a high concentration of lipids, or oils. These lipids can be extracted by a relatively simple chemical process and concentrated into “biocrude†– or “green gold†– an alternative to crude oil that can be refined into biodiesel, gasoline, or even jet fuel.
Now, a bit of context in order to better grasp how algae works: In order to turn algae into transportation fuel, the tiny plant-like organisms first must be separated from their watery home and the growth medium used to sustain them. Current methods rely on giant centrifuges to separate liquids from algae solids. Centrifuges take a lot of power to operate, raising production costs and increasing the process’ overall carbon use. Moreover, standard fuel-conversion methods extract lipids from the algae using solvents that are potentially hazardous to humans and the environment, and costly to dispose of.
This is where Los Alamos’s acoustic-focusing technology (Los Alamos Acoustic Flow Cytometer, a 2007 R&D100 Award-winning technology, which uses sound waves ) can make a difference. The algae-water-growth-medium mixture is subjected to ultrasonic fields that concentrate the algal cells into a dense sludge. This combined separation and concentration method uses hundreds of times less power than centrifuges. The Lab’s lipid extraction and fractionation technique also avoids the need for costly, hazardous solvents.
Under the cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) between the Laboratory and Solix, Los Alamos bioscientist Greg Goddard and Solix’s cofounder and chief technology officer, Bryan Willson – an engineering professor at Colorado State University and founder of the university’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory – will develop by year end a working extraction prototype using the licensed acoustic-focusing technology at Solix headquarters in Fort Collins, Colorado. The technology then will be deployed to Solix’s Coyote Gulch Demonstration Facility near Durango, Colorado, for real-world production of lower-cost biofuel.
We will keep you posted about the outcome of this exciting cooperation.
