Lauren Said-Moorhouse | Chief Editor

Algae has the potential to be converted into biodiesel and in use by society within ten years. Image: CSIRO

Australia’s top researchers are leading the charge to find an alternative to the oil crisis with a solution that would make Mother Earth herself proud.

Experts in the field of biological sciences and engineering are currently conducting intense examinations of various strains of algae to create a form of biodiesel. One such specialist is Dr Jian Qin who is also a senior lecturer in Aquaculture at Flinders University in South Australia.

“We are working on the conditions for mass culture of the oil producing algae. We have been doing this for more than five years,” he says.

“It’s very exciting for two reasons. The first is because of the long term oil shortage. Secondly, algae provides what we call it; the second generation which is more advantageous. Also, algae grows very fast.”

Leading expert Professor Michael Borowitzska, a Marine phycologist at Western Australia’s Murdoch University, has been researching algae as a biofuel for over 25 years. Professor Borowitzska is also part of the team that constructed the Dunaliella salina plant at Hutt Lagoon in Western Australia, the largest microalgae production plant in the world.

Speaking previously to Science Network Western Australia, he says, “I started looking at algae during the last big oil crisis in 1980 when oil was $80 a barrel, but then the oil price dropped and people lost interest. Now lots of people are rediscovering the wheel, suddenly the oil price is making algae biodiesel feasible.

“Their [algae’s] suitability depends on how much oil they produce, the sort of environment they grow in and their suitability for large-scale culture. What we have done is isolate some species that are particularly good for biofuel in saline conditions. You need a lot of salty water to grow the algae, lots of sunshine and as little rain as possible. In WA we have all three.”

Australia’s national science agency, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is also working hard on enhancing algae biofuel technology and understanding. In reaction to Australia’s major research challenges and opportunities, nine departments were established at CSIRO including the Energy Transformed Flagship.

“The Flagship was set up to look at all forms of fuel and energy in order to make sure that in the future in Australia, we didn’t have any problems when oil, gas and coal started to get more expensive or harder to get. And also taking into account the increasing greenhouse gas emissions being put into the air,” says Flagship researcher, Peter Campbell.

Dr Campbell is part of the team, headed up by CSIRO Energy Transformed researcher Dr Tom Beer, that discovered new potential for algal biofuel whilst conducting research into the life-cycle analysis of the benefits of algal biodiesel.

In a statement released by the CSIRO, Dr Beer said, “Our research has shown that under ideal conditions it is possible to produce algal biodiesel at a lower cost and with less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil diesel.

“The greenhouse gas reductions are the result of avoiding the use of a fossil resource for fuel production, capturing methane produced by the processed algae to generate energy and taking into account the potential greenhouse gas offsets from industry.”

“Making biodiesel from algae removes the issue of competing land use because the facilities would not be established on land that might otherwise be used to grow food and the algal farm has a very low environmental impact in comparison to crops that are grown for biodiesel,” said Dr Beer.

Explaining a simplified version of the process change from algae into biodiesel, Dr Campbell says, “You can have a number of different ways of growing the algae in the first place. The easiest is basically to make a hole in the ground next to the ocean and grow a species that likes lots of salt water and then use salt water from the ocean to grow it in. Then what you do, is provide a small amount of fertilisers and if you want to grow it, really a source of carbon dioxide. Once you’ve got the concentration high enough, you can use other devices to concentrate the algae a bit further to the point where you can use conventional machinery to kind of squash it and get all the oil out.

“Once you have the oil you can use conventional means for turning it into biodiesel, just like with canola oil by adding a catalyst of potassium hydroxide and a few other things. You end up with a fuel that is very similar to diesel.”

But is algal biofuel a viable solution to sustainable transport options? Dr Campbell believes it could be.

“Potentially yes. At the moment, nobody has been able to produce commercial levels of algae at a price cheap enough to compete with normal diesel and also it will take several years to scale it up to a point where it would be able to provide a decent amount of Australia’s current fuel usage.”

Algal biofuels could potentially be used in normal diesel engines with little or no modification. The problem is harvesting enough to make it commercially viable.

Dr Campbell says, “The average family car in Australia drives about 15,000 km per year and requires 11 L/100km, but that’s on ULP [unleaded petrol], and is for a car a few years old. Modern diesel cars are a bit more efficient so they only require about 7 L/100km. So if you have a modern diesel family car you need about 1050 litres of fuel per year.”

“A hectare of algal ponds could provide enough fuel for 20-21 vehicles. However, this is just for the ponds; you need about 25% more land for processing equipment, roads, buildings, etc. So a hectare of land would give you enough fuel for 16-17 Australian modern diesel vehicles, only about 10 older vehicles, though.”

With 10,000 square metres in a hectare, a regular new diesel car would need an estimated 600 square metres of area in order to provide fuel for it. This is approximately the size of a large house block.

So perhaps the technology isn’t quite ready for us to start creating algal biofuel in our backyards.

The CSIRO Energy Transformed flagship is currently working on ways of moving forwards for the technology considering costs and benefits of generating algal biodiesel.

“We are part of the algal fuel consortium along with industry and universities. And we are basically working together to create some medium scale algae farms and trial out a number of different technologies and see where we can go from there,” says Dr Campbell.

“In the flagship, what we eventually see if for most of the vehicles in Australia to eventually be run on electricity. However, there will be a changeover period in between. What we need to find is a fuel that basically doesn’t compete with food…That’s where we see biodiesel as being a possibility.”

With the trial only currently in the set-up process, it could be several years before we see any developments. But that doesn’t mean to say that academics in the field aren’t excited.

Tony Vassallo, a professor from the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and part of The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering, says, “It’s a great future potential and we should be involved.

“The interesting thing about it is it doesn’t really require cropping, like land cultivation so it can be carried out above ground. It doesn’t have to take up huge amounts of water and other nutrients so it has an attraction for us in Australia as you can use quite degraded land to generate it.”

In a similar vein, Executive director of Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster at the University of Technology Sydney, Associate Professor Peter Ralph says, “There is a whole range or research going into selecting and identifying the best alga that makes the most with it and the greatest amount of oil in the production. That’s where the cutting edge is.”

“It’s getting the photosystems optimised and getting the algae to produce an alcohol-derived, ethanol-derived oil. If we can get that happening, it will work.”

Associate Professor Ralph also agrees that algal biodiesel could be a worthwhile stepping stone into the electrification of vehicles.

“We could have algal biofuel as an interim, not as a long-term permanent solution which could happen in the next ten years. But not quicker than that.
“By that stage, a lot of other technologies, like electricity generation will be more mature and transport could be electrified.”

But Australia isn’t the only country working on algal biofuel technology. In the United States a monopoly of companies and universities are working hard to make the research viable.

In September, a modified Toyota Prius nicknamed The Algaeus conducted a 10-day roadtrip of over 6000 kilometres from San Francisco to New York using an algae biofuel provided by Sapphire Energy.

Jason Pyle, Sapphire Energy’s chief executive said, “America has the opportunity to usher in a new, prosperous green age by moving from ‘black’ to ‘green’ crude while bettering the environment and solidifying energy security.”

The trip coincided with the premiere of the ecological film FUEL, which features The Algaeus.

But that isn’t to say that Australia is behind in its research.

Associate Professor Ralph says, “Every country around the globe is still looking for the right alga, the right way to manipulate it, the right way to scale up and to have the efficiency of scale to work.

“I think Australia is putting a huge amount of money into it and it’s being centralised in a few areas. They’ve got an awful lot of activity in Adelaide. Government investments, CSIRO investments and also South Australia and Western Australia have always had a long history in algal culture. So its not surprising that that’s the Australian hub of that research.”

So the future might be green and slimy and come in the form of algal biodiesel but as Associate Professor Ralph says, “The optimal alga just doesn’t exist yet.”