Berzin Discusses Carbon Sequestration, the Future of Biofuel and the Fate of Our Earth

Scientists dream about a massive machine that can suck up carbon dioxide, curing overnight –– or at least within our lifetime –– our ailing planet from warming up at a ferocious pace. A NASA chemical engineer working on bioreactors may have come the closest so far to fulfilling the dream: Dr. Isaac Berzin is the first in the world to have proven that growing algae off the CO2 from power plant smokestacks can be a viable carbon sink. What’s better, the algae can be used as a biofuel, a renewable fuel that may be able to curb our dependence on oil.

This year Time Magazine voted Berzin as one of the world’s most influential for 2008 for his ability to turn a dream of an oil-free future into a reality through GreenFuel, the company he founded in Boston in 2001. (His daughter saw the email notification from Time and told him it was spam). Today with a new CEO of GreenFuel in place, Berzin’s back doing what he loves best: Science.

He’s over in Israel because he believes the tiny country that’s been flourishing against the odds, has what it takes to become a renewable energy powerhouse. And he’s collecting visionaries and scientists to build solutions –– algae for biofuel is expected to be one of them. Today Berzin talks with Carbon Catalog.

We’ve been hearing some controversy in the US about the use of algae for biofuel. Can you explain?

“For about twenty years (from 1978 to 1996) the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) investigated a program for sequestering CO2 from smokestacks with algae for biofuel. After trying out their plans in some open ponds, and two decades later, the scientists concluded that it wasn’t going to work,” says Berzin.

The idea was shelved and remained there collecting dust until Berzin was flipping through an NREL report, A Look Back (PDF link), which offered a perspective look on America’s alternative energy initiatives.

From 1978 to 1996, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fuels Development funded a program to develop renewable transportation fuels from algae. The main focus of the program know as the Aquatic Species Program (or ASP) was the production of biodiesel from high lipid-content algae grown in ponds, utilizing waste CO2 from coal fired power plants. Over the almost two decades of this program, tremendous advances were made in the science of manipulating the metabolism of algae and the engineering of microalgae algae production systems. Technical highlights of the program are summarized.

That was about 10 years ago and Dr. Isaac Berzin was working at NASA on bioreactors for Space. “Are the inputs and outputs of this study valid?” he asked himself. He realized there were a number of very important variables the scientists didn’t consider before drawing their conclusions. Hundreds of scientific papers were written about the project, none were positive.

“There never was a power plant involved,” Berzin tells Carbon Catalog. “Because all the experiments had been done using bottled air and CO2 mixtures. They learned nothing about the biology of algae this way. How many gallons of biodiesel did they create? The answer was zero. What were they doing for 20 years? There have been hundreds of papers written on the subject of algae for biofuel, but no one thought about anything disruptive. They farmed and collected the algae from open raceways, which are open pools,” Berzin explains.

Algae are considered a high-value neutraceutical used in vitamins, cosmetics and food. But Berzin recognized that “energy is all about scale.” He would need to rethink ways to cultivate the algae. To farm them and not operate the same way companies were working to cull algae for high-value products.

“If there was skepticism about algae for biofuel, it came from something that was irrelevant,” says Berzin. “We need to get the cost of producing algae down from several thousand dollars per ton to $600 per ton. We’ve done that by developing a new system that includes a new way of bringing the CO2 gas into the farm, a new way to cultivate the algae, and new ways for separating the algae from the water and extracting the oil.”

What are some of the risks/problems of looking to alternative ways for mitigating CO2 emissions?

“CO2 mitigation is a problem,” says Berzin. “CO2 emissions from power plants are about 15-5 percent of all the emissions. There are some problems with carbon sequestration:

1. Separating CO2 from the other emissions takes a lot of energy.
2. We have to put the CO2 somewhere. It has no smell, it’s toxic and is heavier than air (this makes it risky).
3. The power industry cannot take risks and has been avoiding the sequestration idea because of the inherent risks involved.”

Relative cost of algae biofuel to oil?

“A ton of algae (which includes about 15-30% oil) is worth $600 per ton. Each ton of algae used about 2 tons of CO2. This makes the value of CO2 (say $60) suddenly not too high. Therefore you could give it away to make the deal tick. An interesting business model would be for the power plants to give away the CO2 to algae farms; the power plant also gives support and they get credits per ton of CO2,” says Berzin.

“One sq. km can produce 20-80 tons of dry algae per day (depending on the cultivation system, the solar input etc.). In that amount of algae is 15-30 % oil and between 30-50% of carbohydrates that can be converted to ethanol. Algae yield 10-100 times more energy than any other crop.”

What problems need to be solved in the system?

“We bring the CO2 gases into the farm to cultivate algae. We need to separate the algae from external water, dry them and then extract the oil. We have overcome costly limitations by:

“Thy shall not bubble. We have brought in the flue gases by bubbling them into the water. I love bubbling, but not for this industry. Instead, we dissolve the gases into the water using alternative methodologies.

“Traditional algae farming costs between $5,000 to $50,000 per ton. I have looked at it a different way: this is not biotech, this is farming. The quality of algae we need for fuel is different than that needed for the neutraceutical market. To make the system more efficient we grow algae in closed systems because we can’t have evaporation from the culture.

“Separating the algae from water is also costly. We needed a small energy footprint in this process. We can’t use a centrifuge. Internal water presents a challenge too. Algae are like little bags full of water. To dry them with hot air would need a greater input of energy than we would get from them. We needed a non-thermal approach. Now we know the problems and have developed a solution with a partner. It’s a solution we can’t talk about.

“Obviously multiple levels of miracles were needed to make this work.”

What’s with all the controversy we’ve been reading about with GreenFuel?

“I will answer from the field of algae and not on behalf of the company,” says Berzin. “There is scepticism of where the carbon credits are coming from. Turning algae into fuel reduces the carbon footprint. We get a real reduction in CO2, but to whom do those credits belong? It’s complicated. Should they go to the car owner or the power plant? Some believe the credits should be on the market.

“In America nothing goes ahead with a lobby in the government. Imagine an algae farmer lobby? It wouldn’t happen. Nevertheless, if this technology offers the most cost-effective and risk-free solution for carbon management, I can clearly see the lobby of the power industry pushing this technology forward.”

Have you used carbon financing to increase the economic viability of the tech?

“No.”

What’s happening with GreenFuel?

“Though I am not active in the company these days, I can say that GreenFuel is well funded and is leading the world right now for carbon sequestration from power plants with algae. GreenFuel succeeded because we decided early on to work in partnerships with other companies. There are about 250 companies now in the world chasing the dream of algae for biofuel. GreenFuel is leading the pack.

“We were lucky to be there at the right time; we were also well connected to industry. The company is now well beyond pilot stage and the closest to developing a real solution. In about 1-3 years, the solution should be ready. To make it mainstream, we needed to build a large-scale system that works, about 1 square km in size. GreenFuel is now doing that in several places in the world.”

Your future plans?

“There is no silver bullet solution. We need a portfolio of solutions and algae should be a part. If we can take 20 percent of effluents from a power plant – this is easy to obtain; if we grow algae on it, we can recycle the entire 20 percent. Using these algae to make biofuels could equal 20 precent of US imports. This can be done on half the space needed for producing corn, and on land that is not fertile. Twenty percent is great – but not enough.

“We know now that you can’t grow fuel where you grow food. I propose cultivating algae on brackish water. They don’t need freshwater, and shouldn’t be put where crops can grow. That’s why I’ve been looking to Israel, a Mecca of technology in water use, and agriculture. The world recognizes this point too. The National Energy Technology Labs (NETL) from the US came to Israel about a month ago and signed an MOU with the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya to collaborate in this field. One of the largest chemical companies in the world is now collaborating with the IDC on green chemistry. Israel has the toolbox to lead the world into the post-oil era.

“China and India won’t be looking for legal solutions, like the ones America is pursuing. If it makes [China] money they are going to choose it. For every coal-fired power plant in the US shut down, they will open 20 more in China. While green organizations in the US are trying to “ban the hand” in the US, it is really irrelevant. They are trying to stop the smokers in the room (the US coal plants), when they have someone smoking a cigar on the other side (China and India).

“CO2 acts globally, not locally. This is unlike nitrous oxide and sulphur oxide. So we don’t necessarily need to treat CO2 at some specific location. While America thinks it is a player, it is not. The largest growth in CO2 emissions is coming from China and India. America’s emissions are becoming irrelevant. We need to get the East participating in this idea. Twenty-five percent of CO2 today comes from the US. Now we are going to see the real ‘horror’ and it’s going to come from the East. Global warming is all about scale, and the additional weight and tipping point is China. We have to find cost effective solutions for CO2 mitigation, otherwise is going to be too late.”