Yo ho ho 'n' a bottle o' scum

Engines may be powered by biofuel plundered from algae, brewer's CO2

Rachel Brand, Special To The Rocky

Friday, February 9, 2007

First came Fat Tire Amber. Then came Sunshine Wheat. New Belgium Brewing Co.'s latest liquid fuel will be based on pond scum.

The environmentally friendly microbrewery is working with a Fort Collins energy startup to make biodiesel fuel from algae, based partially on the beer maker's waste products.

Should the project succeed, it will prove that algae can produce 100 times more oil than soybeans. And that - environmentalists hope - will partly solve the world's energy problems.

"We were excited from the start," said New Belgium COO Jen Orgolini. "We said in that first meeting with them, 'We'll sell this to our board.' "

The biodiesel technology belongs to two-year-old Solix Biofuels, located just 500 yards from New Belgium in an old coal-fired power plant. The firm, in alliance with Colorado State University scientists, is working on algae-based biodiesel.

New Belgium, which features windmills on its six-packs, has a green-tinged history. In 1999, it was the first major U.S. company to buy 100 percent wind power. Three years later, it developed a system to generate methane from its wastewater. Now, its algae deal may allow it to sell carbon-dioxide emission credits on the open market - a payment for reducing its carbon footprint.

Solix hasn't produced one gallon of vehicle-ready fuel - yet. But company scientists are confident their idea will work - if they can get the algae to produce enough oil to grow quickly and within a cheap system.

"We know it works. The biology works. The algae grows," said Solix CEO Doug Henston. "But can you get them to grow and produce the way we want them to?"

Algae have been under scrutiny for years as a source of biofuels because they can be coaxed to produce lipids, or fats. As single-celled micro-organisms, they grow quickly, efficiently and productively. And because they are photosynthetic micro-organisms, they use plain old sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to grow.

In this case, New Belgium will supply the carbon dioxide - a byproduct of fermentation and boiler operations. The market potential for algae-based oil is large.

The United States consumes 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel fuel annually. At maximum, animal fats, rapeseed and soybean oil can generate 4 billion gallons, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

"If you were to take all the oil in the U.S. and convert it to biodiesel, you'd still only make a small dent in the diesel market," said Al Darzins, group manager of the National Bioenergy Center at NREL.

"The nice thing about algae is they have the potential of yielding about 10,000 gallons of oil per acre, whereas soybeans can produce 50 to 100 gallons per acre."

How it works

Lipid-producing algae are grown in a bioreactor that resembles an enormous, transparent plastic tube. Inside, the algae float in fluid. The system is injected with carbon dioxide, a byproduct of industrial factories. Rollers slowly squeeze the fluid through the tubes, keeping the algae in constant motion and allowing sunlight to reach all the plants. Within several weeks, the algae are harvested. Their oil is extracted, then refined into biodiesel fuel.

New Belgium's role

New Belgium Brewing Co. will provide the carbon dioxide to help Solix's algae grow. The brewery produces 5,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, a byproduct of fermentation and boiler operations. It will be piped into Solix's bioreactor. There, it will mix with water and sunshine to provide nutrients to algae, the fuel-producing organisms. These algae produce fats, and those fats are refined into biocrude and then biodiesel.Source: Solix Biofuels