Diversifying key for algae growers

COURTESY GREEN PLAINS
GROWING UP: Bioreactors are growing algae and using the CO2 from the Green Plains ethanol plant in Iowa.
COURTESY GREEN PLAINS GROWING UP: Bioreactors are growing algae and using the CO2 from the Green Plains ethanol plant in Iowa.

Before algae ever takes the petroleum out of gasoline, it may take the herring out of fish oil or the soy out of chicken feed.
Although the energy market remains the ultimate prize for algae producers, many across the country and in Rhode Island are taking advantage of the nonfuel uses of the little, green organism’s oils and proteins to raise capital and ramp up production.
In June, Portsmouth-based BioProcess Algae LLC announced an agreement to supply Swiss pharmaceutical company Bioseutica BV’s KD Pharma division with microalgal oils for conversion into concentrated Omega-3 fatty acid, a nutraceutical staple.
The deal is an example of how BioProcess Algae, which was spun off of Portsmouth dairy-waste purification company BioProcess H2O, is diversifying into markets outside of fuel.
“We are working on fuels, but we think it is a 10-year process to get to fuels that are competitive cost-wise,” said Tim Burns, CEO of BioProcess Algae. “This will help us get acres [of algae production] on the ground and then hopefully with scale, we can ride the cost-curve down.”
Although based in Rhode Island, BioProcess makes its algae at a grower-bioreactor outside a Green Plains Renewable Energy ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
The BioProcess facility has been running as a demonstration project at the plant since 2005 and in February broke ground on the first 5-acre, commercial-scale harvester.
Like other algae-producers, BioProcess captures the carbon dioxide that comes out of the ethanol-refining process and feeds it to hungry algae.
In addition to the ethanol plant, BioProcess also has an algae farm at an undisclosed oil refinery somewhere in the country and the technology can be employed at any facility that produces carbon dioxide, including steel and cement factories, Burns said.
As the algae industry has matured, Burns said it has become apparent just how large the nonfuel market for the organisms, which are high in protein and oils, could be going forward. “It is a great story of our potential to do more with less,” Burns said. “We are going to be a resources-constrained environment in food, feed and fuel. By 2025 there won’t be enough protein for humans and companion animals. This could provide an affordable replacement.”
In fish oil, algae is now stepping in for the small bait fish that have traditionally been ground up and turned into Omega-3 and the fish meal fed to larger species in aquaculture operations.
Their consumption of algae is what gives the small fish their oil content, Burns said, and making the products directly from the microorganisms is more efficient and takes pressure off of fish stocks.
What’s more, even when the oils are extracted from the algae, the remaining material can be used in other products.
Burns thinks the market for Omega-3 could reach 5 million to 10 million metric tons and is currently constrained by fish populations.
In addition to having the BioProcess Algae harvester at its ethanol plant, Green Plains Renewable Energy is also an investor and partner in the venture, which Burns said is essential, because raising capital from traditional sources for algae operations is difficult.
“It is extremely capital intensive,” said Julian Dash, the former director of Rhode Island’s Renewable Energy Fund, about the algae industry. “You see some projects with great promise and technology but to bring that concept to scale and commercialize it takes so much capital. Those companies find it hard to scale-up like computer or biotech startups. You see a lot of algae companies trying to diversify to keep the dream alive.”
Dash, who has formed a “clean-energy” consulting company since leaving the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, said algae operations also have come out on the short end of government green-energy stimulus programs that have ended up tilting toward wind and solar. One Rhode Island algae startup that did receive $250,000 in Renewable Energy Fund investment is Tomorrow Biofuels in Cranston.
Founded in 2007, Tomorrow Biofuels is directing its work at about 60 percent animal feed, 35 percent in biofuel and has just begun moving into Omega 3 and specialty products, said owner Larry Dressler.
The company is also looking for investment and hopes to build a 15- to 20-acre algae farm.
Dressler described the momentum behind algae-based biofuel as a “little slower than expected” but said use in animal feed has been even better than expected.
In addition to potential to partner with a large carbon dioxide producer, Dressler said his technology also has the potential to use the phosphates and nitrates that come out of wastewater treatment to feed algae.
“If the government starts regulating CO2 emissions, we will be in an even better position,” Dressler said.
Wendy Lucht, the Rhode Island coordinator of the federal Clean Cities program at the University of Rhode Island, said Tomorrow Biofuels is a good example of both the promise of algae and importance of diversification and patience in developing the technology.
“The promise is still there, and there are a lot of the projects still in a pilot stage,” Lucht said. “It is an up-and-coming fuel, but research and development is a long-term proposition. You need an economy of scale that is going to be competitive with petroleum.”
In Rhode Island, the temperate climate and small land area present barriers to the state becoming a massive algae-production area, but technologies developed here could very well lead the way to the algae industry of the future.
“We are so small, we are not a big agricultural community,” Lucht said. “I see us more as being a technology builder.” •

No posts to display