Many of you have expressed interest in our algae biofuels program, and my inbox is filled with thoughtful comments regarding this important potential source of energy. Because of your level of interest, I’ve invited Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, to dive a little deeper into the subject for us. Emil is the expert on our algae biofuels program, and he can address some of your questions and give an update on our progress thus far. – Ken
In the nearly two years since we first announced our alliance with Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI), we’ve made good progress in our research aimed at developing next-generation biofuels from photosynthetic algae.
Basically, we are working to identify and develop strains of algae that could produce refinery feedstocks for the production of transportation fuels. We also need to design and engineer the systems to do this at scale. It’s a big program, and it will take time: We expect to spend more than $600 million on the program over the next decade, if the research and development milestones we’ve identified are met.
In July 2010, we took a significant step forward in our research program with the opening of a greenhouse facility at SGI’s headquarters in La Jolla, Calif. The greenhouse is enabling the next level of research and testing, and it complements ongoing work in the laboratory, allowing us to grow algae in an environment that better reflects real-world conditions.
I’m often asked exactly what type of fuel we’re talking about. As far as products to expect from this program, our intent is to make hydrocarbons that look a lot like today’s transportation fuels. Here’s how we envision this working:
We know that certain types of algae produce bio-oils. The challenge is to find and develop the algae strains, and the production systems, that can produce bio-oils at scale with an attractive economic return. The ultimate goal is to have algae bio-oils processed in our refineries to supplement supplies of conventional gasoline, diesel, aviation fuels, and marine fuels.
These fuels would meet the same specifications as today’s products derived from petroleum. This is important because it helps ensure the biofuels are compatible with existing transportation technology and infrastructure.
How big could this be? At this stage, it is impossible to predict what percentage of global transportation demand could be met with algae biofuels. But our intent is to make algae an economically attractive and competitive source of fuel for transportation. If we can achieve that goal, the market demand should lead to increased use.
Another question I often get is why we decided to invest in algae versus other biofuels, such as corn-based or sugar-cane-based ethanol. One reason is that algae can be grown using land or water that is unsuitable for plant or food production. In other words, unlike many other biofuels, algae biofuels do not compete with the food supply. Algae can yield more biofuel per acre than plant-based biofuels – currently 2,000 gallons of fuel per acre, per year. That’s almost five times more fuel per acre than sugar cane and almost 10 times more fuel per acre than corn.
The fact that algae production won’t compete for freshwater resources is also a key part in the decision. We want to use salt water or brackish water to make the best use of the natural environment for the algae – there are a lot of places in the world where sunlight, salt water, and carbon-dioxide are in abundance.
And, algae consume CO2 as they grow, so algae biofuels could help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
While algae could offer great potential as a transportation fuel, there are a number of challenges before us. First, there are more than 20,000 algae strains. We need to learn which of these strains can achieve the greatest production of bio-oils at the lowest cost.
Second, as we make advancements on selecting the right strains, we also need to test them in several production systems. That could be an open bioreactor (a pond) or a closed bioreactor (typically transparent tubes or something similar). Each has pros and cons, and at this point we don’t know which will work best. Integrating biology and engineering is the key.
If we do find the right strains and identify the right production system, there’s still another challenge ahead – scaling up the production process. It will take large, integrated systems to combine all these steps into a full scale, economic operation to produce, upgrade and commercialize biofuels from algae.
These challenges are significant, and overcoming them will take a considerable investment of time, money and scientific expertise. But we believe it’s an effort worth making, particularly given algae’s potential to help enhance the world’s transportation fuel supply and assist in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
So, there’s still a lot of work ahead. The good news is that we’re making progress. Since ExxonMobil and SGI announced the program in 2009, researchers have isolated and engineered a large number of candidate algal strains and developed growth conditions under which these strains could be made more productive. We’ve identified and tested some of the preferred design characteristics of the different production systems. And we’ve begun life cycle and sustainability studies to assess the impact of each step in the process on greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use.
The next major milestone in the program, expected later this year, is the opening of an outdoor test facility. Stay tuned – and please keep your questions and comments coming!
When I first heard Mike Dolan describe this project several years ago, my immediate thought was that this is exactly the sort of breakthrough research that Exxon should be pursuing. It’s based on a solid foundation of rapidly developing science, and is a potentially scalable and cost effective way to transition to a new generation of affordable transportation fuels.
You might want to consider doing more to make the technology-savvy public aware of the complexity and excitement of this type of research. For example, how do you manage uncertainty about the outcome of many individual initiatives in the context of a project portfolio? How do you plan for the inevitable disappointments and dead ends? How do you balance the cost of multiple parallel efforts with the risk of delays? What is the career path of an Exxon researcher on this project?
It might even be a good subject for a “Nova like” documentary. We need to encourage more public recognition of the adventure and value of corporate research of this quality. The news flow covers the latest gadget or social media app from Silicon Valley, but most people don’t realize that industry actually does… read more »
…large scale energy research without government funding or subsidized markets. The talented students in upcoming generations should know that science, engineering and business are careers that matter.
The outcome of research is inherently uncertain, but this is definitely a great project.
- John W. Hendricks
To Emil Jacobs:
I have read your comments above and think that most of the bioengineering information has become available in open literature. Have you looked at “A Realistic Technology and Engineering Assessment of Algae Biofuel Production.” by
T.J.Lundquist, I.C. Woertz, N.W.T. Quinn, and J.R. Benemann, October 2010. these authors take known technology developed over years of experience in raceway growth ponds, they adapt the technology to serve four different algae energy objectives and work through the economics of each case. They show that growing algae (Chlorella sp., for example) in metropolitan waste water, using CO2 from sludge combustion and from diesel engine exhaust is economically feasible at today’s oil prices of about $100/bbl.
If I were in your research group, I would bid to build a one hectare covered pond that could be sectioned for separate experiments authored by your researchers. The entire facility is completely feasible and is “shovel ready.” The one hectare facility can be easily scaled up by factors of ten or one hundred. You have to make arrangements with the municipal waste treatment facilities to use the liquid coming from their primary centrifuge (called centrate flow). This material has been shown… read more »
…to support algae growth. Several researchers report growth rates of 30 gm per square meter pond area per day is easily obtained.
The most difficult part of the biodiesel process is extraction of the lipid from the algae biomass. What has been your success with various extraction processes?
Thanks for the forum…
Lets keep in mind that when considering economic feasibility we shouldn’t compare cost of algae derived oil production to the $100/bbl or the $4 per gallon for petroleum products because all the evidence points to a $15/gallon “real cost” when also taking environmental impact into consideration. That’s more like a $400/bbl and at that price algae suddenly is more realistic. I say take the corn out of our food and put it in our cars.
I appreciate the emphasis on saltwater. If the research emphasis could be broadened to combined several industries, the cost of production could be mitigated, although yield might be lowered significantly requiring an even larger scale.
I proposed that we consider using the tertiary cooling from an industrial facility to produce desalination input water. The hyper-saline outflow can be input to both industrial salt production and open ponds for growing algae. Using halophilic algae like dunaliella salina makes open pond possible, and the husbandry has already been developed for beta carotin farms.
Indeed, periodically recovering salt from the growing ponds will result in production of a healthful form of pink sea salt, and beta carotin is but one bi-product of harvesting the algae. It is essential that all byproducts be profitably redeemed.
Combining industries like this increases scale profitably, reducing the cost of production. It is also essential that derivative industries, like petro-chemical and chloralkali, be included in development of a new fuel infrastructure.
Emil, I was glad to see that EXXON is committed to bio fuels. I was hoping to get some direction on how exxon would review a bio fuel project? if you could point me to the right person, I would certainly appreciate it.
Hi Ken:
I have four questions right off the top of my head:
1) Certain strains of algae are native to sewage systems, and it is my understanding that we currently kill them rather than utilize them. Is there any research being done in order to outsource your algae farms to sewage waste plants and then to later recover it for production purposes?
2) Algae is also being used in air pollution filtration systems at various factories, which seems to work as good, if not better than other air filters because of algae’s affinity for CO2 and other junk that is harmful to us humans. Same question, are you guys thinking in terms of outsourcing the algae for clean-up purposes in filtration systems and then reclaiming it for production?
3) What are your goals for secondary marketing of bi-products like glycerin, and the plant material? Will you be selling those to other companies who produce make-up, vitamins and other products?
4) Is algae the only thing you are working on in terms of alternative energy, or are you also developing other technologies to accommodate say solar vehicles, battery vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, alternative electric manufacturing processes that would be far safer than our current production facilitated… read more »
…by nuclear technology and etc?
I have been preaching the wonders of this little bugger for years!!! I am really excited to know that you guys have picked up on it too! This material is easy to grow, munches down on C02, releases oxygen back into the environment, has multiple bi-products, does not compete with food production, and is a very viable source of bio-fuel! Yet for all of this time, with the exception of a few vitamin companies, people have completely ignored it and done their best to actually kill it!!! Blue green algae is my friend, don’t kill my friend!!!
Looking forward to your answer,
Thanks
Michelle
Absolutely true but this method is to obtain results by scientific spear.
don’t hold your breath…the big oil companies won’t do anything to threaten their bottom line…in other words there will be NO bio fuels coming from this or any other big oil companies…it’s just a smoke screen to keep america addicted to petroleum.
The inanity of this comment astounds me.
ExxonMobil is developing an alternative fuel… do you think they would plan on just giving that away? Of course they won’t threaten their bottom line, they are a company responsible to their shareholders to generate money. If they can get this alternative fuel to production, it will be used to ADD revenue and sales to the existing Petroleum lines. If it turns out to be more viable, it may eventually even replace the petroleum products (though I doubt it in our lifetimes). Call it planning for the future, call it diversification. Unless you believe the “Cars 2″ conspiracy theory that ExxonMobil will create a biofuel simply to discredit biofuels.