Venice to produce half its power from algae, as skeptics question algae economic viability, entrepreneurs claim breakthroughs on costs

The feasibility of algae as a biofuel feedstock is under scrutiny with three separate but related developments in the US and Italy. In Italy, the city of Venice has announced a 200 million euro project to capture “Sargassum muticum” and “Undaria pinnatifida” algae seaweed and generate 40 MW of power from algae biofuel. The proposed plant will supply up to half of the power needed by the ancient city, or supply power to docked ships in the harbor in addition to power for port facilities.  In addition, the Venice Authority said that they will cultivate microalgae using closed photobioreactors to generate more biomass for power generation.

In Ohio, AlgaeVenture Systems has released more data on their algae harvesting and dewatering system that they say will reduce dewatering costs by up to 99 percent compared to centrifuges. The company’s technology uses capillary effect, cohesion, absorption and transpiration pull – methods utilized by trees to move water from roots to treetop. “The process is counterintuitive,” CEO Ross Youngs said, “because with so much water and so little algae, it is natural to want to move the algae. But moving water instead is very efficient, and all water is recycled.”

Finally, Thomas Schueneman of Environmental News Network reported back from the Algae Biofuels Summit that just concluded in San Francisco with “A sobering assessment” that blogs and mainstream media are reporting “wild-eyed optimism and pure hype”. We’re not sure if this includes the Digest! He reported that “producing algae biofuel at a commercial scale is not a given, it will not be cheap or easy, and a lot more R&D needs to be done. Schueneman quoted Dr. John Bennemann as saying at the conference, “engineering studies do not conclude that we can or will actually be able to produce algal oil/biodiesel. They conclude that the R&D to develop such processes can be justified, at least until it can be demonstrated to be impossible.”

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