Global Algae Innovations and its Kauai farm – Low cost algae production technologies for food and fuel
THE
COMPANY
The
island of Kauai (Hawaii) is the home of one of the largest algae biofuel
production facilities in the United States. The Kauai Algae Farm is owned by
Global Algae Innovations, a company which designs innovative technology to make
algae production more efficient and consistent. Its vision involves harnessing
the unparalleled productivity of algae to provide food and fuel for the world,
dramatically improving the environment, economy and quality of life for all
people. Focused on this vision, the company is revolutionizing the algae
industry and becoming a leader in low cost algae production technologies.
Global
Algae Innovations was founded by David Hazlebeck, a proven leader and innovator
in the algae industry. He has over 32 years of experience in chemical and
biological R&D from laboratory-scale through piloting and commercial
implementation. For the past ten years, he has focused on large-scale,
innovative photosynthetic algae cultivation, harvesting and processing
technologies. During this time he led an
algal-derived jet fuel project in collaboration with 28 companies and
universities. The project culminated in the construction and operation of the
algae farm at Kauai.
Figure
1. Aerial photograph of the Kauai Algae Farm (extracted from Reference 2)
Global
Algae Innovations has conducted its work with the support of different US Energy
Department’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) funding awards to develop
advances to ramp up the rate of algae production. In 2013, the company was part
of a program to demonstrate improvements in oil yield, and since then, it has
surpassed its goals by greatly improving algae productivity. Those are other
recent awards:
- 9th
July 2015 – $1 million to increase algal biomass yield by deploying an
innovative system to absorb carbon dioxide from the flue gas of a nearby power
plant (see press
release).
- 14th
July 2016 – A grant to accelerate the commercialization of algal biofuels
through development of an integrated, photosynthetic, open raceway pond system
to produce algal oil (see press
release).
- 28th
December 2016 – Program: “Project Definition for Pilot- and Demonstration-Scale
Manufacturing of Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biopower”. $1.2 million to design a
pilot-scale algae biofuel facility with improved productivity of open pond
cultivation and more energy-efficient algae harvest (see press
release).
Also,
Global Algae Innovations is committed to changing people’s lives through
charitable work and life-enriching experiences.
In fact, it established a nonprofit organization in 2014 called Stepping
Forward International (SFI). The charity's
mission is to provide compassion, inspiration and support to people and
communities around the globe.
THE
TECHNOLOGIES AND THE FARM
Global
Algae Innovations is developing a broad array of advances spanning the entire
algae production process:
Cultivation
Typical
raceway ponds use paddle wheels for mixing purposes in order for the algae to
receive adequate sunlight and nutrients. Global Algae Innovations’ raceway
ponds use a sloped design that eliminates the need for a paddle wheel. This
lowers energy use and increases algae growth, which reduces costs to construct
and operate the facility.
CO2
delivery system
Global
Algae Innovations has invented a flue gas delivery system to transport and
supply the carbon dioxide from the smoke stacks of the coal-fired power plant
to the algae. The algae of its open raceway facility are fed exclusively with
carbon dioxide from power plant flue gas.
Harvest
Zobi
Harvester™ is an advanced harvesting platform that produces crystal clear
permeate (10 times lower turbidity than US drinking water standards) and a
15-20% algae concentrate. This algae harvesting system uses membranes to eliminate
the need for secondary dewatering. Operation has been validated for many
classes of algae including diatoms, green algae, cyanobacteria and red
algae. The automated system is easy to
operate and algae are harvested at ambient pressure without exposure to high
centrifugal forces or shear. It is
available in sizes from 5 gpm to 200,000 gpm (0.40 l/s to 15,150 l/s).
Those
advances are being demonstrated at one of world’s largest open pond raceways. The
biggest one covers an area of 2 acres (almost 1 ha). There, it has implemented
over 30 innovations at large-scale and has over 70 more on its current
development map. According to the company, some of the advances achieve orders
of magnitude improvements over conventional technology:
- Raceway
Design: 2x higher productivity.
- Harvest
and dewatering: 30x reduction in energy use.
- CO2
supply: 15x cost reduction, 70x reduction in energy use, 15x increase in
capture efficiency.
- Drying:
10x reduction in energy use.
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REFERENCES
1 www.globalgae.com (accessed on 24th February
2017).
2 EERE
Success Story—Algae Hard at Work in Hawaii (accessed on 25th February 2017).
