Summary: After two years\’ work on a business plan, a corporation was formed to cultivate algae for its oil. The pledged funding never materialized, but Ron Brown was able to develop a practical process to grow algae for its oil. This company is out of business, so a new company was formed to continue where the other company had left off.

In 2007, Ron Brown became interested in biodiesel. He quickly realized that waste vegetable oil would not be a reliable feedstock for biodiesel for very long, seized on algae as a practical alternative, and started writing a business plan.

In 2009, Aquatic Resource Farming, Inc. was formed with the intention of developing a practical process for cultivating algae, so its oil could be used as a feedstock for biodiesel. Cristina Herrera was CEO and CFO.

Edward Demiraiakian was Vice President, and Ron was CTO. Dennis Brown was COO. $80,000.00 in funding was pledged by Cristina and Ed.

Ron was supposed to finish construction of the bioreactor he was building, take out a provisional patent on it, and assign the patent rights to the company. The bioreactor was finished and patented, and rights were signed over, but the money never materialized. In spite of the lack of funds, Ron was able to overcome the technical challenges involved in growing algae for its oil.

This was done by adopting a backyard tinkerer mindset and relying heavily on tightwad engineering to make things happen.
Chlorella vulgaris was the species of algae selected for these trials, and it behaved very well. It is extremely hardy and crash-resistant, especially if you get it off to a good start, making sure that it has adequate nutrients (N-P-K, and 1 pound of sugar per day for the first five days).

The bioreactor that Ron designed and built was far too elaborate. It worked the first time, but it turns out that it was not necessary after the first time. Once a culture has been started in a raceway, a sample of dense culture can be saved in a refrigerator for later use. Five gallons were used to start 300-gallon batches. Another option is to harvest a kilo or two of algae paste from the raceway to use as starter. 5 gallons of dense culture or a kilo or 2 of algae paste serve equally well to start a new culture of this size. These simply need to be removed from an existing culture and saved at 4 degrees Centigrade in a refrigerator. Freezing is not necessary or desirable.

One unanticipated problem was caused by the bioreactor\’s similarity in design to a solar water heater. Without some kind of cooling, the temperatures inside the bioreactor began to exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This is too hot, and can kill the algae. What was done was to recirculate the culture through a coil of plastic tubing that was immersed in the water of an evaporative cooler.

This dropped the temperature of the culture by about 30 degrees. It is necessary to incubate the slants received from a type culture organization, in order to have enough starter for the first batch. Some kind of incubator is needed for the first batch, but something simple like a 5-gallon carboy with a bubbler stone should suffice. The original thinking about bioreactors was that algae are very frail, and need to be pampered and protected as much as possible in order to survive. Ron\’s experience couldn\’t have been farther from this early misconception.

Chlorella was found to be hardy and crash resistant, provided the batch is given a good start. It is true that there was one culture crash early on, but it was discovered that if a large enough inoculum is used, and if the batch is given nutrition that is as complete as possible in the early days, growing the algae is pretty trouble-free.

A 10 square meter raceway was built out of steel- reinforced concrete, at a cost of about $300.00. It worked really well. The paddlewheel assembly was made from a swamp cooler motor, a couple of pulleys, two pillow blocks, a steel shaft, and some sheet acrylic. The motor had to be replaced after a year of continuous operation. The algae was fed one pound per day of 8-8-8 N-P-K fertilizer and either molasses or sugar for the first five days. Sometimes, in the batches that lasted longest, when nutrient depletion was experienced, they would be fed for another 5 days towards the end of the batch. The raceway had no problems with high temperatures as experienced with the bioreactor.

The solution struck upon for harvesting the algae out of the water was centrifugation, using two cream separators from Ukraine purchased through eBay for $135.00 apiece. This is not the ideal harvesting solution, since it is labor- and energy-intensive, but it works. The next step was to dry the algae paste in the sun. For this, the algae paste was simply exposed to the sun. After a day or two, it was be really dry. The last step was to extract the oil from the dried
algae. To accomplish this, a hand-operated screw expeller press was purchased from Rajkumar Agro Engineers in India for about $100.00. There was some initial difficulty with the process because the algae paste was too dry (the pressure was so great that it broke the end cap). The dried algae paste needs to have about 7% moisture in order for the process to work properly. Great pressure is created in the pressing chamber, which converts this moisture into steam. The steam pushes the crush cake out of the expeller head, and pushes the oil back to the oil slit. The crushing process has a fairly steep learning curve, and may not be as straighforward as it first appears. However, it can be made to serve.
Here is a brief summary of Ron\’s accomplishments in this adventure: Algae was incubated from a single slant to 30 liters of inoculum. After the batch was seeded, it was grown successfully to harvest. The algae was extracted from the water by centrifugation, yielding algae paste. Oil was extracted from the dried algae paste on a small scale. There are probably better approaches that could be used, but these solutions have the practical advantage that they actually work.

Aquatic Resource Farming is out of business. As nondisclosure agreements and covenants not to compete were not required of anybody, Ron decided to form Biofuel Development Company to carry on with the next step, which is to set up a pilot plant to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of this process. Such a facility will require 1/10th of an acre.

A larger raceway will need to be built, measuring 6 feet by 360 feet by 18 inches deep. These measurements will provide 400 square meters of illuminated area. For cold weather operation, two solar water heaters will be used. To increase productivity, two CO2 collectors, based on Patrick Ward\’s design, will be built. The strain to be cultivated is Chlorella vulgaris.

In addition, a smaller raceway will be built, having 10 square meters of illuminated area. This will serve as a \’breeder\’ pond to provide inoculum for the larger raceway. 300 gallons of dense culture should be a good starter batch for the larger pond. A tubular centrifuge with throughput capacity of 500 kilos per hour will be used for harvesting. Three solar desiccators will be built, using the Appalachian State University design. A screw expeller press specifically designed for extracting oil from algae will be purchased from David Gair.

1.5 gallons per day of oil must be produced, at a cost of less than $2.00 per gallon to establish the commercial feasibility of the process. The first goal involves producing 50 grams per square meter per day of algae, which is easily achievable. The second goal con only be accomplished by spending very little money on it. There are three important trends in algae cultivation to bear in mind when considering this kind of project:

1) Yield has increased. The highest daily yield of the Aquatic Species Program of NREL was 50 grams per square meter per day. Two years ago, the average daily yield was between 17 and 25 grams per square meter per day. Recently, the use of mixotrophic growth in Chlorella has yielded over 100 grams per square meter per day. Increases in yield lower the amount of investment required in physical plant and labor costs.

2) Production costs are declining. A couple of years ago, commercial production costs were around $5,000 per ton, or $55 per kilo. In a recent study, production cost estimates ranged from 4-300 dollars per kilo. In a more recent study, the range is 75 cents to $17.25 per kilo.

3) Peak oil has not gone away. As oil fields all over the world move past peak output, production will fall. Increasing demand insures higher prices for oil. This is bad news for the economy, but good news for rhe algae industry .

Author Bio: Ron Brown is a retired Hotel Night Auditor, part-time small business owner, inventor, Fine Art Photographer, Author, founding director and Secretary-Treasurer of a church, former Chief technical Officer of an algae company,and Radio talkshow guest.>br? Click Here for More Information>

Category: Business
Keywords: biofuel,alternative energy,algae,algae oil,alternative fuel,biodiesel,oil-from-algae