Biodiesel from Pond Scum

I should never trust things I see on local TV. Or maybe, sometimes, I should. Last night I saw my old alma mater, Utah State University, unveil an ambitious plan to build a large scale production facility to convert pond scum into biodiesel. I wondered, Is this the next big Utah embarressment in the wake of the cold fusion debacle in 1989? Or is this really a possibility? Being a biodeisel skeptic. I thought I'd at least air this, and maybe do a Google search and a Google blog search to see what I might find. Here is the TV feed:

Pond Scum Offers Promise for Biodiesel, Ed Yeates, KSL.com: …Utah State University researchers are looking at biodiesel fuel made from pond scum. That's right, the green, slimy stuff that grows virtually anywhere appears to produce as good, if not a better, quality biodiesel fuel than soybeans.

Lance Seefeldt , USU Biofuels Program: "For soybeans, you get about 48 gallons per acre. And right now, the idea is for algae, we could get about 10-thousand gallons of oil per acre. So you can see it's about 200 times more oil per acre compared to soybeans."

Instead of prime agricultural land needed for soybeans or corn, pond scum can be grown rapidly on meshes or grids inside huge structures, fed by rooftop solar dishes. It's not a refinery, but a bioreactor.

Bright light comes through fiber optics from one single solar dish on the roof of the lab. Now, imagine what thousands of dishes could do in a massive bioreactor. Bioreactors built not on productive farmland, but on remote desert soils with thousands of grids inside growing the pond scum from solar energy.

"For every square meter of parabolic dish, we can illuminate 10 square meters of algae surface."

Byard Wood, USU Biofuels Program: "We're talking about thousands of acres with these kinds of bioreactors to produce in quantity the amount of liquid fuel that we need to make an impact."

From prototypes, to a fuel, to the pump, the technology appears so promising it's got the backing of the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative to the tune of six million dollars in seed money.

The first large experimental facility would be built in Utah. USU expects pond scum biodiesel fuels could become cost competitive by 2009.

In his "How the World Works" column, Salon's Andrew Leonard had this to say on biodiesel in late 2005:

Pond Scum to the Rescue, Andrew Leonard, 12/16/2005…Ethanol from corn, and biodiesel from soybean or French fry grease are two fairly well-known [biodiesel] examples. I started looking into federal funding of this kind of research this morning, because I'd gotten curious about a comment a reader made about algae in a response to my earlier post about biodiesel and tropical forests. (Incidentally, Grist Magazine has an excellent article up today about how Brazil is kicking ass on the biodiesel production front.)

I've had a soft spot for algae ever since one of my first stories for Salon, an investigation into the mysterious "super-food" blue green algae harvested from Klamath Lake in southern Oregon. My reader was telling me that algae could be converted to biodiesel at far greater efficiencies than soybean or palm oil. Algae? Pond scum to the rescue? Could it be?

Turns out there are some promising hints that algae could be a fantastic source of biodiesel. In a paper last updated in 2004, Michael Briggs, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire, lays out an ambitious goal for replacing all petrochemical fuels consumed for transportation in the U.S. from algae-derived biodiesel. Fast growing and containing high concentrations of oil, certain species of algae, writes Briggs, would require far less land than crops like corn or soybeans. Even better, from a holistic point of view, algae could be farmed using sewage effluents as nutrients! In cryptic comments posted at a biodiesel forum hosted by Briggs, the UNH scientist notes that his university is developing a proprietary conversion technique that should start being deployed in the next couple of years.

More from Briggs and others here, in a Dec. 27, 2006 update on Biodiesel from Pond Scum from CNET.com

{Update 1/23/07} See also: As Corn Ethanol Threatens, Algae Makes Promises: … Lester Brown, the highly respected President of the Earth Policy Institute, has essentially requested a cessation on further development of ethanol plants, …

Comments

[David]

Interesting Dave, I hadn't heard about that before. The claims sound impressive (too impressive?) so will be interesting to see how it develops.

[Dave Iverson]

"claims sound impressive (too impressive?)"

I agree. I am fearful that this, like so many other seemingly interesting explorations into biodiesel will prove too energy expensive when "full cycle costing" is applied. In our system, (particularly here in the U.S.?) it proves too easy to work the system for personal financial advantage and shift the costs (environmental, financial, ...) to others.

This particular scheme requires a bunch of investment (and maintenance costs) in greenhouses and other equipment, not to mention the considerable costs (in terms of energy..., maybe?) in harvesting the "scum" and then turning it into useable fuel. At least we might get a bit more info on this if the facility is actually built.

[don simmers]

since pond scum is not ever going to be a reality on the market or ever cheaper than diesel fuel why don't you just tell me how to make it?that way maybe someone can use it.

[peliportti]

Bio diesel is the new energy star, the name is a general one for a variety of ester-based oxygenated fuels made from soybean oil or other vegetable oils or animal fats