Memo to microalgae, frankencritters and biovarmints: Aloha Means I Love You

Hawaii goes all in on microalgae to provide fuel, food, fiber and power to grow its energy-starved Mid-Pacific economy and fit its environmental values

In Hawaii, Governor Neil Abercrombie spends a great deal of time talking about his administration’s ambitious plan for “A New Day in Hawaii,” outlining his goal for Hawaii to “invest in education, by restoring public confidence, by taking control of our own destiny.” He admonishes those who will listen that, in Hawaii, “the life of this land is perpetuated in righteousness,” a sentiment that does not entirely originate with the 1999 film Johnny Tsunami but in fact is the state motto, Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ‘Aina i ka Pono.

“Pono attitude” is not the only driver for renewal, and renewables, in Hawaii. There’s also the awesome dependence on imported energy for the economy to survive, since Hawaii has no fossil fuel resources of its own. Not to mention the highest electric rates in the civilized world. And a large military presence that is, to say the least, eyeing a future dependent on fuel picks ups at say, terminals going through the yin and yang of the Arab Spring, with considerable disquiet.

All of which generates a tremendous amount of interest across the range of renewables – for in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass, Hawaii has a compelling story. The island state, for example, ranks second in the nation in installed solar capacity per capita.

But energy security is not, on the whole, built on electric power – because it is not generally imported. The dependency is on oil, which not only supplies 97 percent of road transport energy but 68 percent of power generation. which brings us to the platform which so many Hawaiians are investing, working and counting on, and that is micro algae.

Replacing around 325 trillion BTUs of energy produced from petroleum, you see, is no simple thing. The argument for the focus on microalgae, even in its infancy, is the difficulty in producing enough energy via other crop platforms on Hawaii’s limited available land.

For example, replacing all petroleum oil with, say, soybean oil, would take around 41 million acres, or an area six times the size of the entire land mass of the state.

Ooops.

Now, with micro algae at 5000 gallons per acre, which is generally given as the upper limit reasonable target these days, you can replace half the petroleum with around 400 square miles of Hawaiian algal farm. Daunting, but more in the ballpark of reasonable expectations – with a shift from oil-burning generators to solar, wind and geo – and some energy efficiency pickups, the overall picture looks a little better.

Well, let’s be realistic. It would be a miracle if Hawaii can shift its base entirely over to renewables, even by 2050. But they appear determined to try.

So – that’s one of the primary reasons why — if LaJolla, CA is home to algae’s Rodeo Drive, where Synthetic Genomics, UCSD, Sapphire Energy and General Atomics can be found practically next door to each other along North Torrey Pines Drive—then Hawaii is microalgae’s most important outlet malls – home to established farms like EarthRise and CyanoTech, and the increasingly interesting pilot and demonstration projects of Phycal, Cellana, and General Atomics.

Let’s look at some projects and the progress.

More about Phycal

In July 2010, Phycal (received its foundational $24 million DOE grant, for $development of an integrated system designed to produce liquid biocrude fuel from microalgae cultivated with captured CO2.  The algal biocrude is to designed be blended with other fuels for power generation or processed into a variety of renewable drop-in replacement fuels such as jet fuel and biodiesel.

In its project plan, Phycal aims to design, build, and operate a CO2-to-algae-to-biofuels facility at a nominal thirty acre site in Central O’ahu (near Wahiawa and Kapolei), Hawaii.  Hawaii Electric Company will qualify the biocrude for boiler use, and Tesoro will supply CO2 and evaluate fuel products.

Phycal had been in Hawaii for a while. In May 2010, the company signed with engineering, procurement, and construction management firm SSOE Group to perform preliminary engineering design for the company’s new 40-acre pilot algae farm in Central Oahu, Hawaii. Phycal had been competitively selected by the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to receive $3 million in funding in Phase One to complete its feasibility plan, obtain the necessary Federal, State and County permitting, and to perform necessary environmental reviews.

It’s technology is unique. In an otherwise bitter algal battle between open pounds and closed systems, Phycal is a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n roll.

As CEO Kevin Berner puts it, in their open ponds they do not try to grow lipid but skinny algae. The advantage? They get a faster growth rate and a lighter, easier dewatering step. After that step they are dewatered using standard industry technology, and concentrated by a factor of 50 to 80.

Then, uniquely, the algae are sent to a weird sort of microbial feedlot – called a heteorboost, where they are fed sugars in the dark, and get fat, fat, fat. By the time the heteroboost step is completed, they are 50-70 percent lipid of which 75 percent is tag.

“Compared to Sapphire Energy, says Berner, “we use much less acreage. Compared to Solazyme, we use much less sugar.”

So, where the sugar coming from? A high yield germ plasm of cassava, which they have been testing in Texas, and generating 23 metric tons of fresh root per acre in a 5-1/2 month growing season, compared to
the 20 tons per acre cassava per year generally recorded in Asia.

Fast growing little root, that one.

After that, they are able to extract high density products, for examples, leaves for animal feed that are consumed in Hawaii, and they produce biocrude which can be sold (and is contracted for) with Haawaii Electric, or can be upgraded with the UOP process into jet fuel.

Timelines? Now in a total $63M contract with DOE, Phycal is nearing groundbreaking on a  51-acre – cassava and algae farm – that ground breaking scheduled for between November and January.

More about Cellana

You might remember Cellana as the JV between Shell and HR Biopetroleum, until the two partners divorced  earlier this year.

In June 2010, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi announced the investment of up to $9 million for a Cellana-led research consortium based in Kailua-Kona. The consortium will examine large-scale production of fuels and feed from microalgae grown in seawater. Tasks include integrating new algal harvesting technologies with pilot-scale cultivation test beds, and developing marine microalgae as animal feed for the aquaculture industry.

One of its real advantages over, say, pure research labs, is that they have a 750,000 liter testing and demonstration facility already in place in Kona. The company says it is growing algae strains capable of producing up to 60 tons of biomass containing 3,800 gallons of algal oil per acre per year.

Cellana has also contracted with universities in the U.S. and Norway to test proteins from top candidate strains to replace fishmeal in aquaculture feed with excellent results to date.  It is currently producing 1.5 tons of algae per month at its demo plant at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority near Kona.

Like Phycal, they are aiming at algal biocrude oil, as well as algal biodiesel, plus oils, proteins & carbs, PUFAs, and pigments.

Today, Cellana is looking for $70 million to $90 million in venture capital to expand its algae-based biofuels plans to include fish food and nutraceuticals. Well, VP of Science and Technology Jeff Obbard confirmed that they are seeking $20-$50 million in Series A funding, as a more realistic funding target.

Obbard says progress on funding is solid. “We are in due diligence with another energy major,” he told the Digest, “and other companies involved with cosmetic and animal feed companies.”

The investment is for a 217-acre commercial facility on Maui that the company hopes to have up and running in the next four years. The project is sited on the Island of Maui near the Maalaea power plant, which is providing the CO2 off take. The project includes 8 modules by 10 hectares each, producing in total 12-15,.000 metric tons of algae per year.

 

More about General Atomics

Back in 2009, General Atomics was awarded a contract from DARPA to develop scalable processes for the cost-effective large-scale production of algae triglyceride oil and an algae-derived JP-8 jet fuel surrogate.

The contract has a total value of up to $43M if all phases of the development program are completed.
GA will lead a team of university and industrial partners that will examine all aspects of the algae to JP-8 production process. From a technical perspective, algae oil can be produced and converted to JP-8. The goal of this 36 month program is to reduce the cost of doing so to a level that will offer DOD an affordable, reliable long term supply of JP-8.

This will involve identifying key cost drivers and investigating multiple approaches to increasing productivity and reducing operating and/or capital costs. The program will address algae selection and growth; water, carbon dioxide and nutrient supply; algae harvesting; oil extraction; and conversion to JP-8 – all in the context of an overall JP-8 life-cycle cost model. The contract will conclude with a pre-pilot scale demonstration.

Startling progress was reported in 2010, when the special assistant for energy at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said that “Darpa has achieved the base goal to date. Oil from algae is projected at $2 per gallon, headed towards $1 per gallon.”

At the time, Barbara McQuiston told The Guardian that the General Atomics and SAIC-led projects have been recording harvests at more than 1,000 gallons per acre and predicted that large-scale refining, at the 50 Mgy level, would commence as soon as 2013. DARPA is chasing a US military-based goal of obtaining half its fuel from renewable sources by 2016. In Afghanistan, if you could be able to create jet fuel from indigenous sources and rely on that, you’d not only be able to source energy for the military, but you’d also be able to leave an infrastructure that would be more sustainable,” McQuiston told the Guardian.

Well, people fell all over themselves laughing at the time. $2 per gallon – where is the algae? At those prices, GA could grow bigger than China, just selling algal oil. So could just about any kid selling algal oil at a roadside stand — airline industry execs would hunt them down like fowl in turkey shoot.

Funny thing though. Last week, at the Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit in Honolulu, GA’s program manager for heterotrophic algal biofuels, Amit Vasavada, confirmed that they had reached the $2 target. Ah, but with a catch that perhaps eluded the public at the time – GA hadn’t cracked the scale-up – it was all projected from the pilot scale, without a really robust design locked down for the scaled-up algal farm. That’s Phase three of the DARPA project – with Phase two including the push for $1 per gallon oil.

So, good news and bad news there. Good news, GA is pulling down some amazing results out of its pilot. Bad news, right now its still an exercise, rather than real-world.

But stay tuned.  The world of defense contracting, like boxing, is measured in rounds, which in turn are governed by technical readiness levels, or TRLs. In all, there are nine, and GA is blasting through them. They may be as far down the road as level six, by now.

The Bottom line: A scale-up paradise for bioenergy?

Hawaii has a lot going for it, as a place to scale up bioenergy projects.

1. A state that generates no energy from fossil fuels and must import its energy over vast distances;
2. A state dependent on a biofuels-hungry aviation industry not only for tourism, but inter-island travel for families and workers;
3. A state where the biofuels-hungry military, especially the market-leading US Navy, has a huge impact on energy demand and employment;
4. An abundance of water and sunshine that fosters the fast growth of feedstocks from eucalyptus to sugarcane to algae.
5. A state government that has advanced quickly in signing partnerships with DOE, USDA and DOD to foster the growth of bioenergy.

Oh, and there’s a lot going on in Hawaii that doesn’t involve microalgae. For example, Hawaii BioEnergy has struck a deal to supply eucalyptus-based biodiesel to HECO. Pacific Biodiesel, an organization known around the world for its commitment to biodiesel and sustainability, also has a HECO deal, for waste-oil based biodiesel.

Envergent Technologies, a JV of Ensyn and Honeywell’s UOP, just broke ground on an intergrated biorefinery in Kapolei that will utilize fast pyrolysis.  Aina Koa Pono is developing a large biodiesel project in the islands, and Big ISland Biodiesel is developing too, as is the Kauai Island Utility co-op. One of the leaders in the Gasification 2.0, ClearFuels, is Hawaii-based. Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company, and Hawaii Pure Plant Oil are working up projects. And the list goes on.

And, for sure, there’s a lot of microalgal development in Hawaii that doesn’t utilize the gene swapping, shuffling, stacking or constructing tools available in synthetic biology these days to make frankencritters out of biovarmints like e.coli, fungi, bacteria, or modified strains of microalgae. Phycal, for example, uses a non-modified strain of algae.

Bottom line, Hawaii has a vast array of projects utilizing a wide range of feedstocks, technologies and with a range of target fuels and products. The islands may be small, and the bio-varmints even smaller, but the consequences could be big. For sure, the Navy thinks so, and its hard to disagree with an organization that lists stealth, mobility, and a doctrine of overwhelming force among the assets in its wheelhouse.