Spring Algae Bloom: an inside look at the DOE's new algal fuels consortium, the NAABB.
It was a cold Wednesday afternoon in January when the news came through that a consortium called the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts had received a $44 million grant from the Department of Energy. Another group called the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium had won the other. In all, DOE said it would invest $80 million in a consortia approach to solving technical challenges such as outlined in the Algal Biomass Roadmap process, commenced in late 2008.
2009-10 had been a cold winter; for many the winter would turn colder still, until it seemed as if Washington DC would be buried in snow as deep as the paperwork. But the news of the grants took some of the chill and gloom out of a winter’s day otherwise livened by the opening of the Cobalt pilot in California and news that PetroAlgae had signed a master license for Egypt and Morocco.
Here is the announcement as it arrived over the newswires:
Led by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (St. Louis, MO), NAABB will develop a systems approach for sustainable commercialization of algal biofuel (such as renewable gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel) and bioproducts. NAABB will integrate resources from companies, universities, and national laboratories to overcome the critical barriers of cost, resource use and efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, and commercial viability. It will develop and demonstrate the science and technology necessary to significantly increase production of algal biomass and lipids, efficiently harvest and extract algae and algal products, and establish valuable certified co-products that scale with renewable fuel production. Co-products include animal feed, industrial feedstocks, and additional energy generation. Multiple test sites will cover diverse environmental regions to facilitate broad deployment.
Partners are: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Arizona, Brooklyn College, Colorado State University, New Mexico State University, Texas AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University System, University of California Los Angeles, University of California San Diego, University of Washington, Washington University in St. Louis, Washington State University, AXI, Catilin, Diversified Energy, Eldorado Biofuels, Genifuel, HR BioPetroleum, Inventure, Kai BioEnergy, Palmer Labs, Solix Biofuels, Targeted Growth, Terrabon, UOP.
The huge number of partners and the scope of the work seeming daunting — who would get such a large group to work together effectively, and on a three-year timeline instead of the more elongated timelines sometimes associated with the national labs and academia. Algal research pioneer Dr. Richard Sayre at the the Donald Danforth Center in St. Louis, who is leading science for the project, quickly identified Dr. Jose Olivares at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as the principal investigator and driving force behind the consortium.
Los Alamos hasn’t been as much in the headlines on algal development as, say, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — but a partnership with algal pioneer Solix Biofuels had been announced only the previous day, in which Solix said that it would incorporate LANL sound-wave technology to optimize algal growth.
According to a report last September in Earth2Tech at the time of the initial R&D agreement between LANL and Solix, “Los Alamos’ acoustic-focusing technology generates ultrasonic fields that concentrate algal cells into a dense sludge and extract oil. Solix hopes that combining the concentration and extraction steps into one process will eliminate the need for centrifuges and solvents (traditional extraction methods) — and at the same time, significantly cut the cost of producing the biofuel.”
When the news was announced by DOE — it came via a press release and little fanfare or advance preparation. In fact, DOE is famously tight-lipped about grants — and applicants are generally reluctant to share details publicly for fear of upsetting the grant review process.
Like a lot of people, the Digest is highly curious about how exactly the consortia came together, what it aims to achieve, how the DOE process worked, and what innovations we might expect from the team over the next few years. We spoke this week with Dr. Olivares at LANL to learn more about the mysterious workings of the DOE grant process, and the goals and timelines for the consortium.
Digest: How did the consortium come together. What was the basic approach?
JO: “It’s the first time I’ve put a consortium of this size together. You learn as you go. We had several principles. One, inclusiveness, to make sure you had a broad perspective, from the national labs, academia and industry. Two, understanding the algae value chain as best as we could, and making sure we had good organizations in each area. The third, I think may be the one that made us click, was being transparent and being supportive. Not coming in with “mine is better than yours” but how could we build this together. When it came to the hard decisions, it made it possible to have an attitude that the “best outcome” was important. That helped.
Digest: How did the process work?
JO: Our approach was very regional at first, how do we bring the southwestern united states to a primary focal point. We have great universities, three national labs and a number of algae companies in this region. As we developed the vision and looked at the entire value chain, what we ended up with was a truly national organization.
We built the consortium in a very academic way. We searched out institutions with biofuel capabilities, asked them to submit proposals with projects and budgets. When we added it all up, we had $120 million, and we had to bring it down to $50 million. A lot of folks were left out – that part of the process can consume a loose organization if not done with transparency.
In one of two instances we had to take an institution out completely, when they were not a team player and were undermining the health of the team. Some groups wanted to hoard everything and it undermined the discussions. It was negative and had to be taken out quickly.
Digest: How did the decisions about ‘paring down’ take place? What were some of the projects eliminated, and why?
JO: Many of the academic institutions had very strong algal biology programs, we had a three to one capacity in algal biology in terms of what we had compared to what we ultimately needed. For example, we had several nice proposals to develop capabilities for protein engineering in algae — we had a lot of interest in that here at Los Alamos National Lab. But we saw that these technologies were too far away in terms of commercial potential to make a huge impact in the near future, and our goal was not incremental innovation over the next three years.
Digest: How did you select the industry partners?
JO: In terms of academia, we were very strong upstream with algal biology and cultivation, not as strong in downstream, especially in areas such as development of conversion to biofuels. That’s where our industry partners and PNNL were generally focused. It’s the old story – R&D often comes with a big R and a little D for academia, and the other way around for industry, with the national labs somewhere in between. Maybe that’s the way it has to happen.
Digest: How did you interface with the DOE during the period of development, and the application?
JO: From a policy perspective we had been aware of what was coming down from our participation with DOE in the Algal Biomass Roadmap Workshop in December 2008. That greatly helped develop our vision – at least myself and some others – and it educated me on the complexity of the industry. There were quite a few hurdles. For us, our approach was hands off to the DOE – we see each other at conferences, and I went to the DOE for their conference in May or June, but after the proposal call came out, we had very little communication with DOE. We were trying not to market ourselves but position ourselves as players in the national pipeline. Our goal was keeping the consortium on track — and occasionally I would hear of other consortia who were falling apart over minor issues. For their part, DOE stayed out of the picture and it let us do what we needed to do.
Digest: The grant was for $44 million over three years, and there was a strong cost sharing element. Tell us about that.
JO: In all, we have $19 million in cost shares. This includes $7.6 million from academia and $11.6 million from industry. Overall we brought 31 percent, well over the 20 percent minimum.
Digest: Tell us about your timelines for getting to work.
JO: We originally applied for a $49 million grant and the Secretary awarded $44 million, so we are negotiating right now with the DOE and looking at our plan. April 15th is our official kick off meeting, but the authorization to start work should be around April 1st. Some institutions are held up a bit more because they have environmental reviews to complete as well as in some cases some budgetary issues. Also one or two institutions have components that need to be locked down – such as a test bed – that we don’t yet have. One of the major parts is developing a co-product for animal feed – that’s held up a little because for DOE-EERE this is the first time they have experienced a NEPA review on animal testing and they are not as familiar with that. We’re helping them with that process.
Digest: What are your targets?
JO: We have very ambitious targets, which can be viewed here. We didn’t promise DOE that all of these would be met within the three-year time frame. But our attitude was, if we’re going to make the industry viable we have to have these targets. That impressed DOE, I think.
Digest: Take us through your deliverables.
JO: In algal biology, our goals include developing new strains with qualities such as resistance to predators, and very high yields in biomass and lipid production. In cultivation area, we are studying the process of scale up, with four test beds with different levels of capacity. In harvesting and oil extract, we are starting with five technologies and hop to focus down to one or two for harvesting the algae in a very energy efficient manner, and that are very cost effective.In conversion, there are six different technologies we’ve chosen to take on and we are investigating biodiesel, gasoline and jet fuel. In co-products, we are very interested in developing a high value, high nutrient animal feed.
Digest: Other goals?
JO: Sustainability and understanding the use of CO2 and other nutrients. In sustainability, we are especially focused on the utilization of resources, for example land and water resources and using residue waters such as water waste from oil fields. The second is CO2. Plus, we are carefully examining the economic inputs and outputs; especially the energy costs, such as location and transportation inputs and outputs, moving water and transporting fuel.
Digest: There are four test sites you mentioned. Where are they?
JO: The Texas A&M AgriLife in Pecos TX – they are part of the General Atomics DARPA project also so they are well advanced in developing a site. Solix, the Durango, Colorado site. A new site that the University of Arizona is putting together near a coal-fired power plant in the Tucson area. Also, Sequim Labs – the sea bed lab of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Plus, HR Biopetroleum is setting up a major site in Hawaii that we may be able to utilize in terms of how our work integrates with an actual large scale facility.
Digest: Who will own the intellectual property that comes from the consortium’s work?
JO: The consortium is not a legal entity – all of the technologies will be owned by the partner that invents them. We have an IP management agreement that says if you develop it, you own it, but grants a non-commercial license for each partner to exercise these technologies to do our work. In terms of commercial use, each member has a first look right at technologies, of 30-60 days, to determine whether to license from the organization that owns it. After that, the owner can shop the technologies elsewhere if they like. It’s a nice agreement, everyone has signed it — its a major contribution in how we play together.
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[...] usually destroys concentration, but turns out that a team from the Los Alamos National Laboratory went the other way on that. According to reports that came out at the time Solix signed a research agreement with LANL, “Los [...]