Category: Blog

Join Sandia National Laboratories on February 4th in Livermore, CA for a ribbon cutting of the Algae Raceway Testbed and learn about their biomass program to produce renewable fuels and chemicals for the new bioeconomy.

The newly opened testing facility will enable the researchers to translate technologies from the lab to the field by providing a fully-contained climate-controlled system that mimics the temperature and lighting at locations across the US.

Learn more about the facility and the event here. 

In collaboration with NRG and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, the nonprofit XPRIZE has begun accepting applications from individuals and teams with projects that will help turn carbon from a liability into an asset.

In a series of rounds, teams will be whittled down as they attempt to use new technologies to convert CO2 from an actual coal-fired or natural gas plant into valuable products.

Instead of a silver bullet approach, XPRIZE believes in developing an ecosystem of technologies that will work together to mitigate and convert carbon. XPRIZE sees this competition as a chance to prove that carbon technologies can work, be economically viable and, in turn, stimulate further investment into similar innovations.

ABO would love to see algae-based solutions among the winners, so click here to learn more and then register here. Registration closes in April.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne School of Engineering have discovered a new method for delivering much needed pure CO2 to algae with lower costs, boosting the potential for creating biodiesel and other algae biomass products.

CO2 for algae is like spinach for Popeye — a daily dose does a lot to improve growth rates.

Abundant flue gasses from power generation and industrial processes are the best place to source the CO2 because it is being released in a much more concentrated form than the CO2 found in the rest of the atmosphere and using those gasses would mitigate a huge source of climate change.

But there’s a catch. Flue gases often contain other chemicals that are costly to remove. If the algae consume the unpurified form of CO2, they can perish. Popeye would not do well with contaminated greens!

That’s where Professor Sandra Kentish, Head of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Melbourne and Ph.D. Student Qi Zheng come in.

In their new method, CO2 is absorbed into a liquid and delivered via extremely thin, log straws called hollow fiber membranes, that penetrate the algae beds. Feeding CO2 to algae in this way is not only cheaper, it also increases growth rates.

Read more about their findings here.

A recent article in Nutritional Outlook highlighted the wide variety of uses for algae in the food industry. Algae not only bring a lot of nutritional benefits to the table—most notably omega-3 fatty acids, which play a crucial role in optimizing brain function—but can also substitute for artificial ingredients or act as a protein supplement in food.

This versatility is reflected in the endless uses for algae described in Nutritional Outlook. As Mark Brooks, senior vice president for food ingredients with Solazyme, points out, “algae-based ingredients can be found in food products in more than 10 aisles of the grocery store here in the United States.” And the trend is no different in Europe. To give you a sense of the flexibility of algae, here are just some of the food items in your supermarket that may contain algae:

• Oil (for cooking and baking)
• Cereal and Energy Bars
• Cream Cheese
• ‘Bubbles’ for Bubble Tea
• Brat-Algenwurst (a vegetarian sausage)
• Soy Cakes
• Protein Powder
• Smoothies
• Ice Cream
• Chocolate Bars

Algae is truly remarkable in its ability to address a variety of concerns at once, while simultaneously being flexible in its form and use. In other words, the sky is the limit. Brooks expects to see an increase in algae use in foods in 2016 and we are excited to see the the new products that come along with it.