Algae location choice boosts biofuel production

A new method for recognising and assessing optimum algae locations is set to boost biofuel production.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sapphire Energy commissioned the article: 'Siting Algae Cultivation Facilities for Biofuel Production in the United States: Trade-Offs between Growth Rate, Site Constructability, Water Availability, and Infrastructure', in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and has been supported by The Algae Biomass Organisation (ABO).

Margaret McCormick, chair of the Algae Biomass Organisation and CEO of algae company Matrix Genetics says: 'Effectively siting algae cultivation facilities for commercial biofuel production is critical to the success of every commercial algae project.'

The analysis found that the Gulf of Mexico - particularly the Florida peninsula - has a good probability of creating exceptional productivity possibilities for cultivating green algae.

The study shows that the southern coast of Texas, southern Arkansas and Louisiana are also notable locations for an algae commercial site.

Algae strain choice and access to infrastructure are among the factors cited for the location choices.

'The biology is so complex, existing 'off-the-shelf' measurement tools fall short. Because this analysis considers numerous variables along with real-world algae cultivation data, it offers project developers a much more complete and rigorous evaluation of sites,' McCormick adds.

'Our analysis reduced the number of potential sites from nearly 100,000 down to a narrow set of the most promising sites for subsequent detailed, local analysis,' comments Erik Venteris, PNNL research engineer and co-author of the paper.