2010年实现海藻-生物质原油转化

生物谷

LiveFuels公司10月12日宣布，一个国家级的科学家联盟将致力于在2010前生产出生物质原油。这个联盟由LiveFuels公司提供资助，由Sandia国家实验室领导，该实验室是美国能源部所属的国家实验室。到2010年前，该联盟可能会资助几十个实验室和上百位科学家的研究工作。

“我们相信，在初期阶段，Sandia国家实验室有能力领导这个联盟的工作，”LiveFuels公司的CEO Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones说，“Sandia是能源部所属的实验室，由国家原子能安全部管理，在过程工程、生物科技方面有丰富的经验。Sandia实验室也是能源部的燃烧研究设施基地，是唯一能检验LiveFuels科学家联盟生产出来的生物质原油的燃烧性能的科学与工程方面的行家。”

LiveFuels联盟是最大和最热衷于农村商业化技术的组织，这些技术每天可以处理上百万桶生物质原油。LiveFuels的最初目标将集中在把海藻转化为生物质原油上。

海藻油类似于大豆油，但海藻可以生长在那些不适合粮食作物生长的地区。只要有充足的阳光和二氧化碳，海藻就可以在淡水或海水中生长。这使得海藻成为解决农作物减产问题的理想方案。而且，已经有人预测美国3-5年内植物油将供应不足，而海藻油则可以填补非食用油（如生物柴油）供应不足的空缺。

为了将生物质原油的成本控制在60美元/桶之内，海藻必须生长肥硕而富含油质。商用海藻如螺旋藻（Spirulina）富含蛋白质和淀粉，但油脂不足。少数富含油质的海藻种类如雨生红球藻（Haematococcus）有希望用于商业化生产，但在美国，其油脂（目前的价格为1200美元/磅左右）过于昂贵而无法用作汽车燃料。

“富油海藻”听上去与生物质原油原料毫不相干，但我们目前使用的石油正是源自史前的生物质（包括海藻）。在高热高压条件下，自然界生物质的分解过程持续长达数百万年之久。我们今天使用的很多石油都起至200万年前的石炭纪。例如，从北海海底获取的石油沉积物，部分是由一种已经分解的被称为球石藻的Haptophyte海藻组成。

LiveFuels的科学家面临的难题是培养出廉价的海藻，并且要在数天（而不是数百万年）内将其转化成生物质原油。用2-4千万英亩的贫瘠土地种植海藻，其转化的油便相当全美国进口的石油量。而其余4.5亿英亩肥沃的土地仍足够生产美国所需的粮食。

“LiveFuels将使美国的农民通过自己生产生物质原油并供应给美国，从而取代石油进口，”Morgenthaler Jones说，“其他国家在生物质原油研究方面领先于美国，但其他国家在空间竞赛中也曾经领先过美国。美国人在8年内实现了人类登月，美国也可以在4年内生产出自己的生物质原油。”

英文原文：

LiveFuels Alliance With National Laboratory to Make Algae-to-Biocrude by 2010

LiveFuels Inc. is proud to announce a national alliance of scientists focused on producing biocrude oil by the year 2010. Funded by LiveFuels, the scientific alliance will be led by Sandia National Laboratories, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory. The alliance is expected to sponsor dozens of labs and hundreds of scientists by the year 2010.

"We believe Sandia has the strengths needed to lead the alliance in its early growth phase," said Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, chief executive officer at LiveFuels. "Sandia is a DOE laboratory managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and possesses expertise in process engineering, bioscience and biotechnology. Sandia is also home to the DOE Combustion Research Facility, a unique science and engineering user facility which can test the combustion characteristics of the biocrude produced by the LiveFuels alliance."

The LiveFuels alliance is the largest and most intensely focused group in the country commercializing technology that can make millions of barrels of biocrude oil per day. The initial focus of LiveFuels' team will be algae-to-biocrude.

Algal oil is similar to soybean oil but can be grown on marginal lands unsuitable for food crops. Thriving on sunlight and CO2, algae can be grown in fresh or brackish water. This makes algae an ideal solution for farmers dealing with issues of agricultural run-off. Moreover, a shortage of vegetable oil has been predicted within 3 to 5 years in the United States, and algal oil could fill the gap for non-edible uses like biofuels.

In order to make biocrude for less than $60 a barrel, algae must be high in fats or oils. Commercially-grown algae like Spirulina are high in protein and starch but low in fat. A few high-fat species of algae like Haematococcus are promising, but the fats -- at prices around $1,200 a pound -- are too expensive to fuel America's vehicles today.

"Fat algae" doesn't sound like a biocrude oil feedstock, but the petroleum we use today is derived from prehistoric biomass (including algae). Nature's biomass decomposition process occurred over millions of years under conditions of enormous heat and pressure. Much of the petroleum we use today began some 200 million years ago in the Carboniferous Period. The deposits of oil pumped from the North Sea, for example, consist partly of decomposed haptophyte algae called coccolithophorids.

The challenge facing LiveFuels' scientists will be growing and transforming algae cheaply into biocrude within days rather than millennia. The entire United States' supply of imported oil could potentially be grown on 20 to 40 million acres of marginal land, leaving the 450 million acres of fertile American soil that are presently farmland still available to feed the nation.

"LiveFuels will enable American farmers to replace imported oil with home-grown biocrude and supply it to the United States," said Morgenthaler-Jones. "Other countries are ahead of the U.S. in biocrude research, but other countries were once ahead of us in the space race too. America put a man on the moon in eight years, and America can make its own biocrude in four."