Image Source: Cornell Initiative for Sustainable Bioenergy Crops
Sapphire’s Breakthrough Processing Technology Unlocks Value in Cyanobacteria for Energy
Sapphire Energy -- press article -- Feb. 29, 2012
San Diego, CA -- Sapphire Energy, Inc., one of the world leaders in algae-based crude oil production, today announced it has entered into a licensing agreement with Earthrise Nutritionals LLC, a producer of spirulina and spirulina- based products for over 25 years. Sapphire Energy will integrate Earthrise Nutritionals’ spirulina strain into its growing inventory of cyanobacteria and algae strains for algae-to-energy production. As a result of this agreement, Sapphire Energy significantly improves its operational efficiency by expanding the range of strain choices available for producing Sapphire Energy’s Green Crude -- a drop-in replacement for petroleum-based crude oil -- that can be refined into diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline.
With Sapphire Energy’s proprietary processing technology, the ability to utilize spirulina, also known as "blue-green algae" or "cyanobacteria,” for green crude production is now possible for the first time. This is due to the company’s invention of new methods for processing different strains of algae and cyanobacteria that result in significantly higher oil yields than previously achievable. Until now, spirulina, has been used primarily for making nutraceuticals, such as dietary supplements, and food products. Adding Earthrise's prokaryotic strain (cyanobacteria) to Sapphire's own inventory of prokaryotic and eukaryotic (green algae) strains will enable Sapphire to produce fuel more efficiently at its Integrated Algal BioRefinery (IABR), now under construction in New Mexico.
[...]
About Sapphire Energy
San Diego-based Sapphire Energy is pioneering an entirely new industry -- Green Crude Production – with the potential to profoundly change America’s energy and petrochemical landscape for the better. Sapphire’s products and processes in this category differ significantly from other forms of biofuel because they are made solely from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae and cyanobacteria), using sunlight and CO2 as their feedstock; are not dependent on food crops or valuable farmland; do not use potable water; do not result in biodiesel or ethanol; enhance and replace petroleum-based products; are compatible with existing infrastructure; and are low carbon, renewable and scalable. Sapphire has an R&D facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is currently building the first Integrated Algal BioRefinery in Columbus, New Mexico.
Green Crude --
Tom Udall US Senator (D-NM)
link to video
Uploaded by KRWGnews on Aug 17, 2010
08.18.10 (LAS CRUCES) - Las Cruces is a hot bed of algae activity. As KRWG's Jared Andersen reports, employees at the Sapphire Energy research facility work 7 days a week in an attempt to create, "green crude".
partial transcript:
... the fuel, once we extract the lipids and oils from the algae, is chemically indistinguishable from jet fuel, diesel fuel, gasoline. It is not a blend. It is not an equivalent. It is chemically identical.
In this case you have a fuel that can go in the same pipelines, an be used in the same engines. So we have the infrastructure out there already.
... Growing algae offsets vehicle emissions.
Bryn Davis, project manager:
The process of growing algae captures carbon. So we are much more Carbon-efficient, and very productive -- about 70% less on a life-cycle basis on carbon.
... seeing this fuel at a gas station -- were about 7 to 9 years out.
Image Source: Algae Biofuel -- Course Description, Technology Ed
Why Algae?
sapphireenergy.com
[...]
Algae is one of nature′s most prolific and efficient photosynthetic plants; in fact, it is the source of the earth′s crude oil when algae bloomed millions of years ago. Nearly all of algae′s energy is concentrated in the chloroplast -- the engine that turns sunlight and CO2 into organic carbon, resulting in oils easily refined into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Further, algae has a short growing cycle and does not require arable land or potable water. Algae′s number one nutrient source is CO2, consuming 13 to 14 kg of CO2 per gallon of green crude.
Algae can be grown quickly in salt water in the desert.
Even the "private sector" has bet big on this updated accelerated way to make
cleaner "fossil fuels" ...
Bill Gates Invests in Algae-Based Biofuels
by Michael Graham Richard, treehugger.com -- Sep 17, 2008
Bill Gates' Cascade Investment is putting money in Sapphire Energy, one more firm (see 15 Algae Biofuels Startups to Watch) trying to make second generation biofuels out of algae. The company announced that it has raised more than $100 million. Not bad for a 1-year old company.
"The San Diego-based company hopes to make commercial amounts of the fuel in three to five years for a cost of $50 to $80 per barrel. Sapphire selects and genetically modifies algae to maximize their internal production of lipids, or fats and then squeezes that from algae. It says the oil can be used in refineries like normal crude."
[...]
Even some in the "public sector" have started to take the promise of biofuels much more seriously ...
Algae: Fuel of the Future?
Maybe, but not because of government subsidies.
by Nash Keune, nationalreview.com -- March 8, 2012
President Obama’s latest renewable-energy fixation is algae. During a speech at the University of Miami, he touted his administration’s $24 million investment in the fuel, saying, “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.”
In 2010, the DOE awarded $6 million to Arizona State University for the creation of the Sustainable Algal Biofuels Consortium (SABC), $9 million to the University of California, San Diego for the creation of the Consortium for Algal Biofuels Commercialization (CABC), and $9 million to Cellana LLC Consortium in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
[...]
There are some substantial advantages to algae fuels compared with other renewable sources, especially corn. Some researchers estimate that the algae would consume as much carbon dioxide in the course of their normal life processes as burning their fuel would produce, making the technology carbon neutral. Unlike corn-based fuels, algae fuels would be able to mix freely with fossil fuels, meaning they could be transported in the existing infrastructure. Algae could produce ten times as much fuel per acre as corn, and it could be cultivated in the desert. One of the main problems with corn-based ethanol is that it requires the use of farmland that would otherwise be used for growing food, increasing the cost of grain globally [...]
And politicizing algae research may have a disastrous effect on the research itself. It could “force responsible private-sector money out of the effort, lure irresponsible rent-seekers into the process, and make funding of it an unreliable political football,” following a pattern that Green has described as the “green kiss of death.”
[...]
Ahh yes politics and political footballs ... the means by which the most promising clean energy ideas ... end up just another
discarded we-don't-have-time-for-that blueprint
... cast aside by the Bulldozer that is Big Oil.
Afterall it is still their world afterall ... at least until we elect the people who will fight the good fight, to take our planet back from them ....