If we don’t want to turn every square metre of the countryside into farmland then we’re going to need sustainable production methods for both food and energy. Algae are set to provide us with oil and proteins as a source of food and energy.
Biofuels such as palm oil and rapeseed oil have given rise to considerable debate concerning sustainability, negative impact on biodiversity and competition with food crops. As an alternative, the cultivation of algae is certain to play an important role in making society both greener and more sustainable. Algae can be cultivated very efficiently in seawater in places otherwise unsuitable for agriculture, with no adverse effects on the environment.
Products from algae
To replace all the fuel needed for European transportation by a fuel based on algae oil (400 billion litres per year), we will need 10 million hectares; this is an area of land about the size of Portugal. In addition, about 0.3 billion tonnes of protein will be produced as a by-product. This is 40 times the amount that Europe currently imports as soy protein. In other words: algae can produce both fuel and food.
Optimising algae cultivation
The cultivation and biorefinery of microalgae are processes that are currently still relatively inefficient and small scale - there is a lack of knowledge regarding large-scale, cost-effective production. This is why we are conducting research at Wageningen UR (University & Research centre) to optimise algae cultivation. A new research facility, the Algae Production And Research Centre, or AlgaePARC, has been built to help achieve this.
A green future
The shortest route from sunlight to biofuel is via algae - in algae, sunlight is converted directly into oil. Because this route is the shortest it can also be the most cost-effective. My vision is that biodiesel will be made from biomass, sunlight, CO2 and seawater without further human intervention. The algae do not need to grow - they just need to make oil, and this oil need only be harvested (called "milking" the algae), with no need for expensive fertilisers such as phosphate and nitrogen. This stage has not yet been reached however and a great deal of technological development is still needed before we can attain it.
René Wijffels, Professor of Bioprocess Engineering
www.AlgaePARC.com
twitter: @ReneWijffels