From the Pond to the Pump

For decades, The University of Texas has been a world headquarters of algae expertise. Now pond scum could be the next source of jet fuel — putting the University at the forefront of research and setting the state up for potential benefits.

Plunge a hand into chilly water somewhere — Waller Creek, say, on a blinding spring day — and fish out the slimiest rock you can. Rub it in your dripping fingers, scratching its green gunk with a fingernail, until your palm looks like it’s been in an especially grainy mud puddle. You might also notice something else: your hand feels oily.

The partners who found an oily rain showering down on West Texas from the famous Santa Rita No. 1 rig in 1923 were seeing black gold. You, rubbing algae from a humble rock, may be feeling the state’s next great fuel source: green gold.

With their single cells, algae are primitive organisms. They contain chlorophyll but lack true stems and roots and leaves. They’re resigned to water because frankly, without those advanced plant features, they can’t hack it on land. Which turns out to be a plus in a time when unstable oil prices and climate concerns have the world hunting for alternative energy sources — algae don’t take up land that could be used for food production. In fact, algae require just three things to grow: sunlight, carbon dioxide, and less-than-pure water. And Texas has plenty of all three.

In case pond scum as fuel still sounds too novel, decades away, pie in the sky — try jet in the sky. A Continental Airlines plane soared through the air in January on the first-ever flight powered by algae-based fuel. Unlike corn-based ethanol, fuel derived from algae doesn’t freeze at high altitudes. And with their oil-rich cells and rapid growth cycles, algae can produce far more energy per acre than corn.

Until now, however, the high quality of algal oil has been matched only by its high cost of production. Nobody knows the challenges of growing and harvesting algae better than researchers at The University of Texas — home to the world’s largest assemblage of the organisms. The Culture Collection of Algae at UT Austin has been gathered during nearly 60 years and now contains some 3,000 strains. Over the decades, the collection has made UT a world headquarters of algal knowledge, drawing dozens of researchers to work in Austin. Algal biologists long knew about cells’ high oil content, but they didn’t think algal oil could be produced on a grand-enough scale to make it commercially viable, collection director Jerry Brand says.

Now the federal government is challenging researchers to figure out how cost-efficient production could be. The Defense Department’s Advanced Research Agency is pouring up to $50 million into two contracts for technologies that can produce a biofuel alternative to standard military jet fuel — affordably. Both contractors have turned to algae. One of them, Science Applications International Corp., is relying heavily on UT researchers. The other, General Atomics, is leaning on a team at the University of California-San Diego. For scientists, it’s an incredibly short research period: one year. And the race is on.

But UT has a head start, and it goes beyond housing the algae collection, says Michael Webber, associate director of the University’s Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy. Texas also has some of the world’s sharpest fuel engineers — and they began trading ideas with the algae experts a year and a half ago, Webber says. “It just turns out that UT is probably the best positioned research university in the entire world to do this,” he says. “We’ve got the greatest collection of algae expertise and algae strains in the world, and we have the greatest collection of fuels expertise in the entire world. We decided, let’s put them together and make algae-based fuels.”

Forming the Culture Club

Tucked into many rooms of the time-tested Biological Laboratories building are bubbling vats, mysterious lighting, and wet beakers suspending what looks like alien mold in wild colors and forms. The Culture Collection is, in short, just the kind of place kids would love to play mad scientist. Test tubes, beakers, and even antique milk bottles are shelved in row upon row, their contents glowing emerald or ruby or rust. Some algae samples look like simple fuzz balls; others are curved into tube or umbrella shapes.

The growth, organization, and storage of algae within the collection must be tightly controlled. Strains from arctic, temperate, and tropical oceans are stored at their natural temperatures and lighting. And 2,000 critical strains are triple-wrapped, sheathed in stainless steel, and padlocked in liquid nitrogen at -310 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s so cold that a human finger, exposed for seconds and then struck on a table, would shatter like glass dropped on a floor, Brand says. At least three copies are kept of every strain, making for around 20,000 samples in all, and there’s no room to mix up barcodes. Exacting orders for algae to be used in research come in from all over the world, and four full-time staff members and at least six undergraduates busy themselves filling the orders.

UT got serious about studying algae when the field was just starting to grow. Jack Myers, a leading algal physiologist in the ’50s, and Harold Bold, who wrote the definitive textbook The Algae for the ’60s and ’70s, were recruited separately to the University. Myers and Bold both had been elected to the prestigious National Academy of the Sciences, and together they built the reputation that drew others to Texas. Richard Starr came in 1976, bringing with him the 1,800 strains he’d started collecting at IndianaUniversity nearly 25 years before. Brilliant, focused, and demanding, Starr picked up algae samples wherever he traveled in the world. He never did give up directing the collection, dying of pneumonia after a trip to Australia at age 73. That was in 1998, and Brand has overseen the collection ever since.

For decades, UT’s positioning as world headquarters of algal knowledge was of interest mostly to the scientific community. Until three years ago, most samples ordered were applied to research, teaching, or studying water quality, Brand says. Some were used for commercial projects, like carrageenan, a solidifier found in foods like Dairy Queen ice cream.

Once oil prices started spiking, however, interest picked up in growing algae for fuel; the number of orders has since doubled, Brand says, and is up to 80 to 100 cultures per week. The University’s algae experts keep tabs on the growth rates and fat content of strains in the collection, and they stay abreast of research and findings on algae and biofuel, Brand says. That helps them recommend types for would-be fuel producers to try.

Out of the Lab, Into the Field

Growing algae under a laboratory’s controlled conditions is one thing. Taking them to the unruly natural world, cultivating them on a large scale, and extracting their oil cheaply are different prospects entirely. Start-up companies in Texas, California, Hawaii, and elsewhere have gone through several rounds of experimentation. One, Sunrise Ridge Algae, Inc., is working from Austin, collaborating with UT algae researchers and engineers.

Sunrise Ridge started three years ago with just a few recommended strains from the Culture Collection and the high hopes of CEO Norm Whitton, a former energy advisor to major oil companies. Now Whitton has an operation on the Hornsby Bend sewage treatment plant site east of Austin and a hand in Science Applications International’s federal algae-to-fuel contract. Whitton and his small crew are growing algae “reasonably effectively” after trying several methods, he says. Now they’re figuring out how to make it cost-effective on a large scale.

On a strip of stiff grass next to huge piles of Dillo Dirt composted from sewage, Sunrise Ridge has spread out its supplies. Among them are tarps, tents, lawnmowers, garden hoses, a pool filter, and PVC pipes. If it looks like the stuff you’re storing in your garage, that’s by design. The Sunrise Ridge team hopes to drive down the cost of producing algal oil to $3 per gallon. To get there, they’re trying to use cheap, basic supplies for every step of the process. “You have to nibble, nibble, nibble,” Whitton says.

The crew first tried growing algae in lined ponds on the site, but found they were attracting toads, bugs, and algae-eating microorganisms instead. They’re now using “boomers,” which look like giant air mattresses and can hold 8,000 gallons of greenish water. Out of a smokestack from the sewage treatment plant, the company captures carbon dioxide in a stainless-steel pipe that can handle the 1,400-degree gas. Piped into the boomers, which are loaded with treated wastewater, the CO2 enhances algal growth.

Part of algae cultivation’s great promise is that it puts to use materials that would otherwise be wasted, UT environmental engineer Kerry Kinney says. Normally, carbon dioxide simply would be released into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. And several types of water that otherwise might be discharged or unused can be employed for growing algae, including seawater, treated wastewater, and brackish groundwater. Kinney and other researchers at the University are working on several engineering points of the process — how best to capture the CO2, for instance, and make sure the water is safe at all stages of the process.

Meanwhile, the boomers would have to expand hugely in order to produce significant amounts of algae, Whitton says — 1,000 gallons of water generates 5 liters of algae concentrate, which amounts to half a liter of oil. That result may sound impossibly tiny, but the growing cycle is just three days.

So how confident is Whitton that his company can produce low-cost algal oil? He answers in terms of his own investment: “I’ve put in, personally, $350,000 — and I’m not a rich man.” He considers it an Edisonian quest, knowing lore has it that Thomas Edison made anywhere from 35 to 9,000 attempts at the light bulb before hitting on the right formula. And so Whitton and his wife have agreed to keep investing in the venture, using a chunk of the money she earns from her Houston clothing store, believing algal oil is too important to give up on now.

Growing Opportunities

For the University’s portion of the federal algae-to-fuel contract, Kinney believes too that the chances for success are positive. At least four groups of UT researchers are working on the project: Environmental Water Resources Engineering, the Center for Electromechanics, Separations Research, and Biology and Biochemistry. “Ultimately, I think we can make it a viable process,” she says. “By having everyone from the biologists to the engineers working together all the way, integrated throughout, the odds of success are greatly enhanced.”

Of course, the UC-San Diego team is working toward the same goal. But even that group includes algae research biologists who were educated at UT, like Greg Mitchell, BS ’77. Mitchell became fascinated by algae more than 30 years ago, while studying under professors Bold and Starr. But there was little emphasis on or funding for researching algae as fuel at the time, Mitchell says, and so he studied other aspects of the organisms, like ocean photosynthesis.

Oil had made Mitchell’s octogenarian father, George, a billionaire; he founded Mitchell Energy and Development and later, The Woodlands residential area outside Houston. But four years ago, Mitchell says, George challenged each of his 10 children to do something about sustainability, posing what’s become his frequent question: “If the world doesn’t work with six billion people, how’s it going to work with 10 billion?” Mitchell decided to return to the idea of algal oil. He contacted people working on it, started writing about it, helped start the Algal Biomass Organization to promote it, and organized several summits devoted to it.

So the scientists researching algae-to-fuel have a base of collaboration. Now, with the federal contracts, the feeling between UC-San Diego and “our friends at The University of Texas” could be characterized as friendly competition, according to Mitchell. “It might get worse,” he says, a smile in his voice. “Right now we’re very polite.”

But the race to produce algae for fuel isn’t just for bragging rights between scientists. It’s also to see which states could win the economic benefits of its research and development.

Webber, at UT’s Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, tries to ensure solid science is considered in state lawmaking on energy. Texas legislators are starting to take note of algae’s potential for fuel, Webber says, dispatching aides to ask what the emerging research could mean for the state. Tax breaks, market incentives, and loans are mechanisms that federal and state governments have used to grow other biofuel sectors. What Webber encourages for algae in Texas is R&D matching — for every dollar the federal government or a business puts into algae-to-fuel research, the state puts one in too. “It doesn’t have any long-term infrastructure commitments to it,” he says. “In worst case, research and development is a high-dollar jobs program; in best case, you actually did something really cool.”

California and Hawaii will maneuver, too, for positions at the forefront of algae research and production, Webber says. Like Texas, both offer good growing conditions — warm air, sunshine, salty or brackish water. But when it comes to the infrastructure for fuel production, Texas has the pipelines and the refineries. “We have so much of the nation’s refining capacity that when it comes time to blend these biofuels in with petroleum-based systems, it’s going to be Conoco-Phillips and ExxonMobil and these same old guys down in Houston,” he says.

Mitchell expects California and Texas to be highly motivated to pursue biofuel research and development, but for different reasons. “What California has is a world leadership in energy efficiency and renewable energy,” he says. “Texas doesn’t have as much of a foresight in policy, but what Texas has is a huge petroleum refining infrastructure. Texas should be motivated to find alternative feedstocks for its massive investment in refining.”

Before states with the right conditions for growing algae compete for federal research money, Mitchell says, they should unite to lobby for more of that money to be made available. “Whether it's policy or politics driving it in our large states, they are in the south, they have the sunshine and favorable climate year-round — those are all drivers,” he says. “In my opinion, Texas, California, and Florida — it’s time for us to get together and go sit in Washington and tell Washington to get going on this.”