LOGAN, Utah — Somewhere among the beakers and bubbling green-tinged tanks in this Utah State University lab, Jeff Muhs is searching for champion pond scum for Uncle Sam.
If he and others like him across the country are successful, algae-based biofuel could one day power one of the world’s biggest gas guzzlers: the U.S. military.
Heady stuff for a simple sun-sucking organism.
But algae’s ability to grow fast and churn out fatty oils makes it an alluring prospect for a military looking to lessen its dependence on foreign oil.
“It inherently makes sense to start there,” said Muhs, who runs Utah State’s energy lab.
Work at the lab is part of a Pentagon project aimed at fast-tracking research to produce algae-based biofuel that costs less than $3 a gallon, can be produced at a rate of 50 million gallons a year and meets strict military standards.
“We believe it’s possible. We wouldn’t invest in it if we didn’t,” said Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department’s main research arm.
Lab tests and smaller-scale experiments over several decades have shown that algae oil can be turned into fuel.
But the military, which spent more than $12 billion on fuel in 2007, wants something large-scale and cheap.
The workload is being spread among subcontractors from universities and private research firms across the country.
Part of the trick is finding the right algae for the job. There are about 40,000 species to choose from. Many are efficient at converting nutrients and carbon dioxide into the organic matter that provides oils that can later be used as a base for biofuels.
The problem is certain algae grow fast — some can double their mass several times a day — but produce little oil. Others produce gobs of oil but are slow growers.
“You have to find a happy medium,” Muhs said. His lab is examining about 300 kinds of algae.
At Arizona State University, scientists are testing about 500 strains, searching for the most robust specimens in flasks and beakers that could make the transition to larger outdoor ponds and growing facilities.
There are still plenty of unknowns, including how much energy it will require to produce fuel from algae at a large scale and whether it’s better to grow algae in pools or in enclosed tanks.
The rough cost estimates for producing algae fuel vary right now from $10 a gallon to $40, said Al Darzins, who manages the national bioenergy center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
“Obviously, that’s not cost-effective,” Darzins said. “So we have our work cut out for us.”
By the numbers
50 million Gallons per year of algae fuel the military hopes to eventually get, at a cost of less than $3 a gallon
$10 to $40 Current cost of producing a gallon of algae fuel
$35 million Cost of military contracts to develop algae fuel
40,000 Species of algae
The Associated Press
