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Ottobrunn / DPA
The race is on to produce an aviation fuel from algae that could power the passenger jets of the future. By creating a cycle that absorbs as much CO2 as it generates, algae fuel would cut out fossil fuel and help beat global warming.
Thomas Brueck heads one of several research groups working on different projects. His is funded in part by the Airbus Group and conducted at the Munich’s Technical University. The professor of industrial biocatalysis carefully regulates his high-
tech LED lighting array under which the algae are growing – if the light were too strong, it would give them a shock.
Water trickles through plastic basins arranged in a cascade to be recycled to the top once it has reached the bottom. Here the algae grow for three to four weeks.
“Algae grow 10 times quicker than soil plants, produce 30 times more oils than rape (canola) for example, do not need fresh water and absorb carbon dioxide,” Brueck says describing the advantages. Nevertheless algae have not yet been used for jet fuel for lack of quantity and because production remains uneconomic. Brueck and his team aim to find out which algae grow best and where. To do so they are simulating climate zones from semi-desert to sub-tropical in two greenhouses in Ottobrunn near Munich.
The Algentechnikum is a kind of boosted greenhouse. Foil in the glass lets ultraviolet radiation through, and the LED array increases the intensity of the natural sunlight, with the aim of generating conditions similar to those in Almeria in southern Spain.
The humidity is also adjusted, and then the pale green water begins its cycle through the cascade until the algae have grown into a lush green mass.
The idea is that, by 2020, global air traffic should be able to expand without emitting more CO2, with
regenerative fuels making a contribution alongside more efficient engines. The aim in Germany is that 10 per cent of jet fuel should come from these fuels by 2025.
Manfred Aigner, head of combustion technology at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), says: “The technical requirements for the use of biofuels are in place.”
Some airlines have already tested them, but the problem thus far is cost, as the fall in the price of crude has made standard jet fuel even cheaper in relation to biofuels. In Aigner’s view, boosting the biofuel share can only be done through compulsion or subsidy.
The technical difficulties with fuels from algae turn on the harvest, with the energy input still high and the yield low. Brueck realizes that algae are not the answer to all the problems, given that demand for jet fuel is around 1.7 billion litres a year. “We would be happy to cover 3 to 5 per cent of that with algae,” he says.
After around two weeks, the algae in the test basins are deprived of the nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen. Unable to produce sugars after this, they form lipids, as Daniel Garbe, a member of Brueck’s team, explains.
The oil content is currently at between 60 and 70 per cent, almost all of which can be turned into fuel
suitable for jet engines. Brueck believes it will be seven to 10 years before industrial production can be launched, once the researchers have worked out the optimal conditions.
