A 4 million grant for cost-effective biofuel from algae oil
Will planes ever fly and ships sail on algae oil? A €4 million European grant for an international consortium including Wageningen and Amsterdam scientists brings that dream one step closer.
Around 2000, the gold rush to algae oil started. Knowledge of climate change and stricter environmental requirements spurred major oil companies to invest in alternatives. Total and ExxonMobil invested hundreds of millions in research to produce fuel from algae. Within 10 to 15 years, the first cars would be driving around on biodiesel. And even airline KLM would start flying on algae.
But those expectations were not met, describes journalist Maarten Keulemans in an article in De Volkskrant a year ago. Algae oil production was simply too expensive. Oil companies withdrew their support again, and some projects died a quiet death.
Dual strategy
Yet the dream is still alive. For instance, Horizon Europe, a European research funding programme, recently invested EUR 4 million in research into new strategies to enhance oil production in algae. In that project, Wageningen biologists are collaborating with physicists from the UvA.
Over the next four years, the researchers will use the 4 million to explore new methods to increase algal oil production. The researchers are working with microalgae, single-celled organisms that naturally produce oils. And that oil can be refined into biofuel. So far, that biofuel is simply too expensive: 3 to 5 times more expensive than a litre of petrol costing 1.5 to 2 euros.
With a dual strategy from physics and biology, algal oil should become more profitable, says Sarah D’Adamo, associate professor of microalgae at Wageningen University. “Unlike previous research, we are going to tinker with the genetic makeup of algae to increase oil production. Simultaneously, UvA physicists are also working on a special type of foil that allows sunlight to be better utilised by the algae, and which should ultimately also result in more oil production.”
Fluorescent foil
“With this piece of foil, you can produce more algae per square metre,” says Arnon Lesage while holding up a fluorescent, pinkish-red piece of plastic. Lesage is the founder of UvA spin off Solarfoil and worked on the foil as a postdoc with UvA professor Peter Schall five years ago.
Lesage: “Algae grow best on mainly red with a little bit of blue light. This foil not only filters light but also converts UV light and other colours of light to red light. As a result, the algae get more red light than if they were exposed to direct sunlight only. And they can also grow faster and produce more oil.”
Which colour of light works best differs for each algae species. That is why Solarfoil is going to make different foils, including green and orange foils. The Wageningen researchers will then test the foils under different conditions to see whether there is more growth, more oil production or both.
Ultimately, the idea is that the foils will be placed on the tubes of algae in greenhouses. Lesage: “With that, we hope to achieve 10 to 20 per cent more growth. Tests show that it can even lead to 40 per cent more algae production on very sunny days.”
Algae oil mixed with aviation fuel
Eventually, that algal oil could be used as biofuel for planes and ships, as they cannot switch to electricity as easily as cars. According to D’Adamo, that future is feasible. “The type of oil we produce, tryglycerides from microalgae, is already approved for aviation, and can be used as an additive to aviation fuel up to 10 per cent.”
Although that is still a long way to go. Although biofuels have already been added as standard to the tanks of KLM aircraft since 2022, those quantities are small – 0.5 per cent per full tank – and do not yet contain algal oil, for which production quantities are still far too low. Research into whether biofuels could eventually be used exclusively for fuel is work in progress.
For shipping, the future is still open, as conditions on the type of fuel there are less stringent. Algae oil is suitable for that too. But D’Adamo does not want to speculate too much about that. “That is not the aim of this project. We only want to show that it is possible to increase algal oil production through synthetic biology and nanotechnology. And thus ultimately reduce production costs.” She does not want to attach any numbers on that yet. “It is still too early for that.”
