Are Algae Biofuels a Realistic Alternative to Petroleum?
By Ian Branam | Scientific American – 6 hrs ago
Researchers at
the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
have found that nearly 14 percent of land in the continental United
States, or roughly the combined area of Texas and New Mexico, could be
used for converting algae to transportation fuels.
In 2008, the
U.S. Department of Energy estimated
that for algae fuel to replace all the petroleum fuel in the U.S., it
would require about 30,000 square kilometers of land, or about half the
land area of South Carolina. Therefore, this finding illustrates the
potential of algae-based fuels, and for that matter, the potential any
alternative energy source that requires vast amounts of land.
"Our main driver was to look at how much land would be available for installing large algae pond systems," said Dr.
Erik Venteris, a spatial modeling engineer at the
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the lead investigator of the study.
Algae pond facilities require between 1,000 and 1,200 acres of land for
one facility, said Venteris. The facilities he envisions would hold up
to one million gallons of
algae biodiesel per facility.
Where the 14 percent of available land is located is a major concern,
however, according to Dr. Richard Nelson, a professor in the Center for
Sustainable Energy at Kansas State University. This number includes
low-slope, non-protected land. Much of the desert land in Arizona and
other parts of the southwest are flat and available, but the amount of
infrastructure and resources available in these areas remains a
question mark.
Venteris's study took into account not only areas that were currently
available with a low-slope, but also areas that would be cheap to
purchase from their current owners.
"The first candidates that I think about are where we have
agricultural land that is no longer productive," said Dr.
Stephen Mayfield, the director of the University of California, San Diego's Algae Center for Biotechnology.
Mayfield said there is tons of agricultural land sitting idle because
it has been "salted out" of production. These unproductive lands would
be more valuable holding algae facilities, and
Mayfield
cites California's Imperial Valley as a good site for algae ponds
since its only current use is storing agricultural runoff, and algae
can grow in both ocean and wastewater. However, lands in California
have some of the highest prices of acquisition, according to Venteris's
study.
The cheapest land that Venteris found was the arid lands in the West,
but two types of land stood out to him as good contenders for algae
biofuel facilities: marginal croplands and southern woodlands.
Marginal croplands, or lands that netted the least amount of profit,
are useful because the owners have a high incentive to sell their land.
Also, this land has been used for agriculture and should share similar
climate and resource characteristics that would promote algae growth.
Southern woodlands have relatively cheap wood, flat land, and plenty of
water and soil resources, but backlash from environmental groups is a
major concern with using these lands since it would require cutting
down trees.
Venteris emphasized the use of marginal croplands before woodlands, and
Mayfield believes that woodlands should not be considered until other
options have been exhausted. Mayfield believes that the algae
facilities should first be constructed in places that already have the
optimal climate conditions, resources, cost, and infrastructure. The
U.S. has CO
2 pipelines across the country, so Mayfield
believes it would be "trivial" to build pipelines once algae-based
fuels become more prominent.
Finding a market for biodiesel is another issue. If algae-based
transportation fuels were offered at service stations today, the cost
would be quite expensive making it a less attractive option than
petroleum fuels.
Nelson said the current market for algae fuels exists in places that
don't have a large gasoline market, and once a larger market is found,
the algae fuel industry still has to find a way to partner with the
petroleum industry so that it can sell its fuel.
Despite the challenges, Mayfield remains optimistic.
"There was no petroleum industry in 1900," said Mayfield, "we needed energy, so we built it."
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