How Slime Will Save the World

by Ruth Kassinger (Boston Globe) ... We’ve turned algae into killers. But we can change their future and ours. We can harness them to help save the environment we’ve been ravaging. AFTER THE OPEC oil embargo of the mid-1970s caused gas shortages and price hikes, government-funded biologists and engineers across the country began to study an unlikely alternative: algae fuel.

The environmental benefits were clear. Algae pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere because they need it to grow, and that makes them a nearly carbon-neutral source of fuel.

By 2012, algae fuel was powering US Navy planes and ships, UPS delivery trucks, and other vehicles, in demonstration projects. It was far too expensive, at roughly $8 per gallon, but everyone understood that the technologies involved were still at an embryonic stage.

A year later, though, with the advent of fracking, petroleum supplies went up and the price of fossil oil began a precipitous fall to $30 per barrel. Some algae oil companies managed to survive by pivoting to high-value products like cosmetics and cooking oil. But others went out of business. The industry died before its promise could truly be assessed.

Why? For one, new technologies like CRISPR have the potential to improve algae’s ability to create and store oil, use sunlight more efficiently, and tolerate varied growing conditions.

“Algae oil is all a matter of economics,” explains Phillip Savage, head of chemical engineering at Penn State. In other words, it’s not a question of whether it can be done, but whether it can be done at a price competitive with fossil oil.

Electric vehicles may obviate the need for an environmentally friendly liquid fuel for cars and trucks (if the electricity they use is generated by renewable sources). But airliners will not be flying on electric batteries anytime soon. And if the aviation sector were a country, it would be the world’s seventh-largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions. Supplementing or replacing jet fuel alone with algae fuel would be valuable.

If we actively pursued competitively priced algae oil, how soon could we get there? Stephen Mayfield, codirector of the California Center for Algae Biotechnology and professor at the University of California, San Diego, told me it would take 10 years and $10 billion.

Sound like too much time and money? Let’s assume it takes twice as long and twice the funds. That still looks like a good investment, measured against the broader cost of climate change, which is projected to be between $54 trillion (according to the UN Governmental Panel on Climate Change) and $69 trillion (according to Moody’s Analytics) by 2100.

Seaweeds, known as macroalgae, can also make a difference in fighting climate change.

About 10 years ago, two scientists, Robert Kinley and Rocky de Nys at James Cook University in Australia, discovered that adding a soupçon of a seaweed called Asparagopsis taxiformis — a lovely pink, fernlike seaweed — to sheep’s feed reduces their belches by 85 percent. Recently, researchers at the University of California, Davis, proved that the seaweed works in cows, too.

The methane burps of our 1.5 billion sheep, cows, and goats account for about 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Since algae draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they serve as important “carbon sinks,” even more powerful than our largest forests. READ MORE

Excerpt from Miami Herald: Now, the Corps is talking about a plan to create a fleet of mobile skimming systems to be deployed on the lake and in strategic canals.

“We are very interested in working quickly to find a solution we can scale and deploy strategically at the right times,’’ said Martin Page, a lead Corps researcher on the project. The experiment is slated to last three years but already there are plans to start turning green gunk into biofuel next year, he said.

“There’s been an increase in blooms not only here but all over the country, so we hope we can get this technology ready for use as soon as possible.’’

Skimmers and filtration systems to clean up algae and extract nutrients to be used as fertilizers aren’t new. The Corps believes this technology can remove and process large quantities of algae at a faster speed. The contraption is easier to move around, and it can be installed on barges to cover larger areas. It’s also more efficient at collecting the algae that will be repurposed into fuel and a type of foam that can be shaped into everything from the shock-absorbing pellets inside the soles of Adidas running shoes to surfboard traction pads sold by Kelly Slater.

The Corps’ project, called HABITATS, is not a definitive solution that will miraculously purify the lake. Limiting nutrients is a big part of the puzzle that would improve the health of Lake Okeechobee and other water bodies in Florida, scientists have said. Still, conditions that make blooms worse can’t be altered with a skimmer: Warming waters and heavier rainfall due to climate change are here to stay, and climate experts have warned that blooms will worsen as the planet heats up.

That’s why the Corps and contractors want to move fast on HABITATS, said Dan Levy, vice president at AECOM, the Los Angeles-based engineering firm working on the project. The algae cleanup and processing system will help create a sustainable future around Lake Okeechobee as nutrients will be removed from the water to supply industries around it as growth will inevitably continue, he added. READ MORE