Alternative Fuel: Algae Anyone?

Algae, Anyone?

When Dr Rudolf Diesel built the first diesel motor in Germany in 1886, the fuel he used to power the engine was from pressed peanuts. His vision: grow plants to make fuel oil to make power. Over one hundred years later, and now at the end of cheap fossil fuel, that vision is becoming reality.

Dr Keith Klein, Professor of Industrial Technology at Sul Ross State University is part of that new energy reality.

After receiving a small research grant in 2003, Dr Klein began working on ways to convert energy from the sun. It started with a solar roof system and has evolved, with the help of a couple of more research grants, to a self-contained “sunlight collection system that processes and transports sunlight for the more efficient production of fuel and food with minimal water use.”

Dr Klein stood next to a giant steel structure on the wings of the IT building at the Sul Ross campus and held a stainless steel panel toward the mid-day sun. “Can you feel that?” he asked.

I jerked my arm back.

“Concentrated light,” he said. “Imagine thirty-seven suns of concentrated light.”

Ken Bairlipp, a collaborator on the project and former aviator and FAA flight instructor, stood to the side. “The French are already melting steel with the sun,” he said.

Klein leans against one of the twelve foot diameter parabola wheels that are secured to the ends of the thirty foot steel structure. “These hold the reflector panels. We can concentrate the reflection of each panel into one single beam of light.”

Klein swings his arm slowly across the sky. “A computer triggers two electric motors to swing the parabola, allowing the panels to follow the sun for maximum energy reflection”

“We direct the concentrated light to a single point and then refract it,” Bairlipp said.

This is where the algae comes in.

Plants use only the blue and red frequencies of light’s spectrum. Klein and Bairlipp plan to split the light and send the blue and red to a tube that contains a slurry of water and algae. The concentrated blue and red light turbo-charge the photosynthesis process creating a super-growth medium inside the sealed slurry tubes .The result: Tons of rich green algae.

So what?

“When the lipids are squeezed out of particular types of algae they can produce fifty per cent of their mass in vegetable oil,” Klein said.

Dr Diesel would be happy.

But its not over yet. The infrared light and the green light that were not used in the photosynthesis process are directed to other sources: the green light is sent to solar cells and the infrared heat boils water, both generating electricity. Each then can be used to power the computer and electric parabola motors making the system self-sufficient.

I want one in my back yard.

“How much?” I asked.

“We’ve got $1800 in it so far,” Klein said.

To feed the algae, CO2 and nutrients such as carbon, phosphates and other fertilizers are injected into the slurry pipeline, the growing medium.

“A lot of research is being done to find ways to use and recycle sewage and animal waste,” Bairlipp said. “We’re thinking, why not have one of these next to a sewage treatment plant or a feed lot.”

“Everything algae needs is in crap,” Klein said.

“The bio-gas released from the anaerobic digestion of sewage is 40-60 per cent methane,” Bairlipp said.

“You can run generators off methane and take CO2 out of the exhaust,” Klein said. “Algae requires a lot of CO2.”

The sun is straight over head now and there’s no wind. It’s hot and bright. We walk toward the building.

“One of my students asked, ‘What happens if it doesn’t work?’” Klein said, standing in the shade. “I told him, ‘That’s why we call it research.’”