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Energie-Trend: Luftfahrtindustrie setzt auf Algen
Verfasst von Autor Claudia Schneidereit, Editor Philippe Souidi am 12. June 2008 um 13:43 Uhr | In Business & Marketing, Energie
Der unaufhaltsame Anstieg des Ölpreises lässt die Luftfahrtindustrie händeringend nach Alternativen für fossile Kraftstoffe suchen. Nach Forschern und Regierungen haben nun auch Luftfahrtunternehmen den alternativen Energieträger Algen Biomasse für sich entdeckt.
TREND DESCRIPTION
Auf der Suche nach erneuerbaren Kraftstoffalternativen im Rahmen knapper fossiler Ressourcen scheint die Biomasse aus Algen zunehmend an Aufmerksamkeit zu gewinnen. Die Entwicklung effizienter Verfahren zur Produktion von Algen basiertem Treibstoff läuft auf Hochtouren, Start-Ups, die hier innovative Prozesse anbieten, werden nicht nur von Forschungseinrichtungen, sondern auch von der Automobilindustrie unterstützt. Das Klima ist gut, denn auch europäische Regierungen haben Algen als förderwürdig entdeckt und bei einem aktuellen Ölpreis von 133 US-$ pro Barrel zieht auch die Nachfrage nicht zuletzt aus Mangel an attraktiven Alternativen langsam nach.
Boeing gründet “Algal Biomass Organization”
Zusammen mit Forschern, Akademikern und Industrieexperten hat Boeing die „Algal Biomass Organization“ gegründet. Ziel der Non-Profi- Organisation ist es, die Marktentwicklung der Algen Biomasse als Kraftstoff zu fördern und seine Kommerzialisierung zu stützen. Zwei Vertreter des Konzerns im Aufsichtsrat der Organisation, hohe Investitionen in die Forschung und Entwicklung: Kraftstoff aus Algen Biomasse scheint ein Hoffnungsträger in Zeiten der globaler Unsicherheit.
KLM testet Kraftstoff aus Algen
Zusammen mit dem Niederländischen Unternehmen AlgaeLink N.V. setzt die KLM Royal Dutch Airline ein Pilotprojekt auf, das die Entwicklung von Biotreibstoff aus Algen zum Ziel hat. Als Produzent von Kraftstoffen aus Algen Biomassen und innovativen Herstellungsprozessen wie die Nutzung eines Foto-Bioreaktors zur Optimierung des Algenwachstums kann AlgaeLink bereits mit einiger Expertise und Erfahrung aufwarten, die KLM Wettbewerbsvorteile verschaffen könnte.
TREND IMPACT
Während die Tests der Luftfahrtindustrie mit Biokraftstoffen und innovativen Antriebssystemen die verschiedensten Technologien und Ressourcen zum Zug kommen lassen, ist eine Tendenz zur Konzentration abzusehen. Jetzt, da die Auswirkungen des hohen Ölpreises deutlich zu spüren sind und jedem bewusst sein dürfte, dass Ressourcen knapp und die nachhaltige Erholung des Ölpreises eine Illusion ist, fangen Industrien an, auf ein Pferd zu setzen und Expertise aufzubauen. Algen kristallisieren sich so als Hoffnungsträger für zukünftige Kraftstoffalternativen.
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ETHANOL-PRODUCTION WITH BLUE-GREEN-ALGAE
University of Hawai’i Professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu developed an innovative technology, to produce high amounts of ethanol with modified cyanobacterias, as a new feedstock for ethanol, without entering in conflict with the food and feed-production .
Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.
He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.
It has a lot of appeal and potential. Turning waste into something useful is a good thing. And the blue-green-algae needs only sun and wast- recycled from the sugar-cane-industry, to grow and to produce directly more and more ethanol. With this solution, the sugarcane-based ethanol-industry in Brazil and other tropical regions will get a second way, to produce more biocombustible for the worldmarket.
The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but it may be a new technology-challenge in the near future.
The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there’s still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level. The team of Fu foundet just the start-up LA WAHIE BIOTECH INC. with headquarter in Hawaii and branch-office in Brazil.
PLAN FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL ETHANOL PLANT
Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scale
ethanol plant, and they are looking for investors or industry-partners (jointventure).
He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. The system permits, to “harvest” continuously ethanol – using a membrane-system- and to pump than the blue-green-algae-solution in the Photo-Bio-Reactor again.
Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California.
He is working also with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH’s Shidler College of Business.
Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu’s partners. So they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.
The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation’s and the world’s major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That’s different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.
Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy.
Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.
Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu’s technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system.
The technology is fairly simple. It involves a photobioreactor, which is a
fancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction. Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the
ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to the
photobioreactor.
Solar energy drives the conversion of the carbon dioxide into ethanol. The partner of Prof. Fu in Brazil in the branch-office of La Wahie Biotech Inc. in Aracaju - Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke - is developing a low-cost photo-bio-reactor-system. Prof. Franke want´s soon creat a pilot-project with Prof. Fu in Brazil.
The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol.
La Wahie Biotech Inc. believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.
Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production. To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a
major cause of global warming.
Honolulo – Hawaii/USA and Aracaju – Sergipe/Brasil - 15/09/2008
Prof. Pengcheng Fu – E-Mail: pengchen2008@gmail.com
Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke – E-Mail: lawahiebiotech.brasil@gmail.com
Comment by Prof. Hans-Jürgen Franke - CTO La Wahie Biotech - Brasil — 16. September 2008 #