Turning China’s Algae into Energy
Thursday, October 9, 2008 4:04For China, algae blooms are an issue they have been dealing with for a long time. In the last 2 years, there has been international coverage of blooms in Wuxi (China’s 3rd largest lake) and Qingdao (right before the Olympics), but the problem is much larger and has a longer history.
When covering the issues last year, I began looking at biomass applications that would use algae, but everything I saw kept telling me that the algae that China is constantly fighting is not the same breed – of the right strain – as the type needed to create energy.
Two article this week may change that, and there may now be firms who are able to use the pond scum of China and turn it into something useful.
the first comes from Earth2Tech who are reporting PetroSun to Make Algae Fuel in China.
plans to establish an algae farm in China that will produce algae to be converted into biofuels. The company says it has an agreement with the Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Technology Development Co., which will commit $40 million to fund the initial construction of the farm. The profits of the venture will be split between PetroSun’s China subsidiary and Shanghai Jun Ya Yan Tech.
The next post, 15 Algae Startups Bringing Pond Scum to Fuel Tanks, is an older post from Earth2Tech that lists 15 different firms who are working on various common algae conversions
despite the fact that algae-to-biofuel startups have been taking their sweet time bringing a pond scum fuel product to market, some inroads have been made recently
Where this will get interesting, and perhaps exciting, is if firms are able to capture the algae blooms that China is normally producing and convert that into energy.
Rob Earley says:
October 18th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
This is a really interesting entry that I didn’t see before. Given the lack of success at commercial production of algae for fuel, it will be great to see if some companies here can figure out how to use naturally occurring algae and economically convert it to fuel.
One of the economic risks facing many biofuel plants is the seasonality of their feedstock. If algae is only multiplying during the warm/long-day times of the year, what will they do during the other times?
They also face the (remote) risk that government and agriculture manages to clean up fertilizer use, thus reducing algae growth.
Anyway, good luck to them, I can’t wait to see their fuel chain analyses!
Rich says:
October 21st, 2008 at 9:08 am
Rob –
Here is an update to the article above
I think this says it all is: