Feed ops could help commercialize algae

Biodiesel Magazine
January 2011
By Luke Geiver
Posted Dec. 28, 2010

Confined Animal Feeding Operations and algal biomass may have a unique link that could help move algae-to-energy developments closer to commercialization. Why? According to Thomas Byrne, president and CEO of Byrne & Company LLP, a renewable energy project developer, CAFOs offer a rich source of nutrients that can be used as a feedstock to grow algae. Most operations located in the northern climates are equipped with anaerobic digesters that use microbes to break down the organic forms of nitrogen and phosphorous into inorganic forms, Byrne said, all of which can be assimilated by various algal species.

“The methane produced by the anaerobic microbes is burned in a generator to produce an export of electricity and also waste heat that can be utilized to raise algae year-round,” Byrne says. “Bioreactors to grow algal species are well suited to take both the inorganic forms of nitrogen and phosphorous from the digester, as well as the waste heat and carbon dioxide (CO2) from the generator, to produce ideal inputs for algal growth.”

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