Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels Teaming Up in Texas
Filed Under: green automotive technology, Green Technology on July 22, 2009
Dow Chemical has announced it’s teaming up with Algenol Biofuels to build and run a pilot-scale algae fuels biorefinery for ethanol in Freeport, Texas. Other participants include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Georiga Institute of Technology, and Membrane Technology & Research to give expertise and scientific testing to the project.
Algenol, for its part, has submitted a formal request to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for financial support to help fund the pilot project. The grant approval is key to the project moving forward.
Dow will be providing the land as well as the development of advanced materials for the specialty needs of the project, such as photobioreactor films and water treatment solutions. A nearby Dow manufacturing facility will also contribute CO2 from its emissions.
Part of the plan is to scale the ethanol production to fit a CO2-producing facility like a factory or a power plant and utilize the CO2 for both the algae production and the biorefinery’s processing. Algenol has a process they’ve been developing in the lab for this as well as their Direct to Ethanol technology.
This process links algae’s sugar production with photosynthesis and enzymes to produce a high-sugar oil product that can be more easily converted to ethanol. The algae that Algenol has metabolically enhanced can produce the ethanol while resisting high temperatures, salinity, and the high ethanol levels naturally occurring in the algal oils themselves. These have all been barriers to commercial scale production of algae-based ethanol.
Algenol expects to have their production capability (of the algae) up to 10,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year by the end of 2009. That compares to corn’s whopping 400 gallons per acre/year. Algenol thinks that, in the not-too-distant future, it may be possible to double that 10,000 gallons, given the right circumstances.
Algenol is also working on other strains of algae to produce higher-carbon oils which could be used to make plastics and polymers, something that Dow is also very interested in.
