A report we received on the Alternative Technology Association meeting where Professor Ben Hankamer of University of Queensland spoke on Solar Biofuels.
Hello Everyone
I have just come back from attending the final ATA meeting for this year and listening to the talk presented on Solar Biofuels by Prof Ben Hankamer from our very own University of Queensland.
I have not been particularly interested in the area of biofuels after all how exciting can algae get? But Prok Hankamer’s talk opened my eyes to a whole area of science that appears to hold great promise for us. I was informed and engaged by his modest delivery of some very exciting looking science in laymans (laypersons?) language.
Prof Hankamer and his colleagues in two other continents together form a research consortium of over 100 scientists working on the project of farming algae for fuel oils hydrogen and high value pharmaceutical products. They have many business partners in their project one of whom is Boeing. Boeing are very keen to use biofuels in their planes produced from farming algae as they believe this will be a cost effective fuel for them for the future. Boeing have already successfully flown a passenger aircraft on biofuel made from algae. In fact this aviation biofuel apparently has better properties for aviation engines than the aviation kerosene that they use at present. Biofuel from algae has a lower freezing point than aviation kerosene so it withstands the cold temperatures at altitude better and also has higher energy density. No modifications to existing aircraft engines are necessary I believe.
In the next three years Prof Hankamer and his colleagues will be building and testing various forms of biofuel reactors to find out which reactor designs and which algal strains are the most efficient and cost effective to farm.
They have already successfully farmed algae that produces hydrogen from photosynthesis. The hydrogen gas bubbles to the surface of the algae vat and can be drawn off and used to power a hydrogen fuel cell. As most of you would know hydrogen fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a reaction that produces electricity and clean water. Hydrogen is seen as a great fuel source but current methods of producing it are costly and environmentally damaging. Prof Hankamer has a algae that will belch hydrogen if you feed it CO2. How awesome is that idea!
I am now pondering how much roof real estate I would need for my own hydrogen producing biofuel reactor to feed into a household fuel cell that would power all my household needs and give me the added bonus of producing potable water as well?
When I first saw the message about the topic of the talk for this evening I thought I would not find it very interesting. I saw the words algae and biofuel and zoned out believing it would be too technical and dry for me. But I went along anyway as you never know unless you give something a go and I love to catch up with my ATA friends each month. I have to say that I was most surprised to find myself really enjoying the talk by Prof Hankamer. I have had my eyes opened to an area of research that seems likely to offer us great opportunities for alternative and truly renewable energy sources in the foreseeable future. Bring on the green sludge I say!!!
What I omitted from my initial post about the wide ranging talk given by Prof Hankamer which touched on a lot of different algae research areas was that he spoke of a process by which the algae used to eat the CO2 emitted by power stations is turned into bio-char and added to the ground resulting in much improved crops growth compared to a control plot without bio-char. Bio-char is spent algae that has been turned into charcoal. It is an alternative to CO2 ground sequestration – which has always seemed like a dodgy concept to me. If you pump pure CO2 gases into the rock strata underground to my mind because it is a gas it is not likely to stay put where you pumped it! It is just as likely to come leaking up to the surface someplace else to belch into the atmosphere.
I believe that Prof Hankamers’ research consortium is involved in the power station pilot trials at Tarong. It is tremendous that the Uni of Qld is in the forefront of this field of research.
If algae bioreactors are used to farm hydrogen for fuel cell technologies then the only by-product will be water and not CO2. But it will be a long stretch before planes fly on hydrogen fuel cells if ever I suppose but not so far away for cars perhaps.
Prof H also talked about high value products that could be sourced from bioreactors such as pharmaceuticals and protein for food.
Shades of ‘Soylent Green’ I said from the audience showing my age and movie preferences. The prof just looked a bit blank at the reference being pretty young for a professor and obviously having different movie tastes to mine. Does anyone else recall the movie in which ‘Soylent Green’ was the primary food source purported to be made from plankton made to feed the too large population in a future world damaged by pollution greenhouse climate change and depleted resources? The movies final revelation was that ‘Soylent Green’ was not made from plankton (or algae).
I have a fascination for end of the world type movies as fiction but I am less enamoured of the emerging realities.