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Facilitator: Now when I first meet people and I tell them that I'm a scientist, the
next question is always what kind of a scientist are you? I do multidisciplinary research so
it's very hard for me to say I'm a physicist or a biologist or a chemist. What I can say
is that I do applied science and that my main area of interest is to understand how to make
biology work for us. So when I say biology, I'm talking about these
things. So these are microscopic marine algae. Now let me introduce them to you. So these
things are three and a half billion years old. That makes them among the oldest living
things on the planet. As you can see they occur in many different shapes, sizes and
colours and there are 50,000 documented species out there.
So I want to play a little [sort of] experiment with the audience now. I want everybody to
think of an animal, any animal. You've got your animal? Okay. So it doesn't matter whether
you thought of a snake or a dinosaur or anything else. Chances are you have more genetically
in common with that animal than one of these algae cells has to another. So there's huge
genetic diversity in algae. If that's not impressive enough, how about this? Marine
algae produce half of all the world's oxygen. That means every second breath that you take
is only possible because of these organisms. How does it all work? Well it's photosynthesis.
So the algae absorb light energy and they convert it into chemical energy in the algal
biomass. The process uses up carbon dioxide and water and oxygen is a by-product. Now
photosynthesis is quite difficult to visualise. I'm going to do my best. You all know what
this is, right? So in a firework you have chemical energy in the rocket, you shoot it
up into the sky and it releases all this light energy. Well photosynthesis is like a firework
in reverse. So the algae absorb light energy and they use the energy to grow and transform
it into chemical energy. I mentioned something about this process being
useful and we know that it's useful because crude oil ultimately came from finding marine
organisms, like microalgae, that lived in the oceans many millions of years ago. This
crude oil is what we use to drive our whole transport sector. So how did this happen?
Well this process is a series of fortunate geological accidents. So first the algae die
in sediment, they're trapped in an appropriate geological formation and then exposed to high
temperature and high pressure over hundreds of millions of years. If we're lucky, they
may turn into crude oil, in which case we can extract them from the bottom of the sea.
Now because this process is so slow and so unlikely, crude oil is a finite resource which
means that at some point in the not so distant future you may end up going to the petrol
station and trying to refuel your car and they will tell you, well okay, you'll just
need to wait a few hundred million years and then we'll have some more fuel for you. So
that's a problem. This is another problem. So once we've burned those fossil fuels, like
crude oil, it will release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and carbon dioxide is
a greenhouse gas and it leads to climate change. Now what we want to do is we want to replicate
this natural process on a much faster timescale. So wouldn't it be nice if we could get from
algae that live today to a fuel in a few weeks; that way that fuel will be renewable because
we can just keep on doing this. What's more, it will also close the carbon cycle. So as
those algae grow and do photosynthesis they absorb carbon dioxide, [and] once we burn
off fuel that same carbon dioxide is released. So we have a closed carbon cycle and it's
a sustainable fuel. Well, we know we can do biofuels. These are
the two biggest biofuel industries in the world, corn bioethanol and palm biodiesel.
The reason I put these photos up is to make a point. These are pretty complex organisms.
They are complex plants. They need to grow roots and shoots and leaves and bark and eventually
every now and again they'll produce some seeds. It is these seeds that we harvest as biomass
and we can convert into biofuels. So as you can imagine this is not the most efficient
way of doing things. Also it takes up a huge land area that may be better used for growing
food crops to feed the world's growing population. So can we do better? Well yes we can because
we can use an algal cell. Algae do photosynthesis best. So if they get some light energy, they'll
grow and then they'll split and then they'll grow and they'll split. You get the idea?
So all of that energy or the majority of that energy goes into growing algal biomass and
all of this biomass can be processed into fuel.
So what's the ideal scenario? What do we need? Well we want to start with the coastal region
- it doesn't have to be arable land. It can be in the middle of the desert - dig some
swimming sized holes in it and fill them with seawater, pump seawater into it. That's an
algal pond. We then seed that algal pond with some algal cells and if there is sufficient
sunlight those algae will grow and we'll have the algal biomass.
So is there anyone from Switzerland in the audience maybe? Are you Swiss? Nobody? It
doesn't matter. So Switzerland's a great country and if you want to go skiing go to Switzerland,
but if you want to grow algal biofuels that's not the right place to be. The right place
to be is here. So Australia is an algal gardener's paradise because you've got the sea, you've
got the sun and you've got so much space all in close proximity.
Here are some algal ponds. But this is not Australia. This is actually Hawaii. The reason
I put this up is just to say look an algal biomass industry is viable, it can be done,
it has been done and we can do this in Australia on a much larger scale. So there's huge untapped
potential here. The next thing you probably want to know is
how do we get from algal cells to a fuel. Well the first thing we need to do is grow
up the cells. At the laboratory scale we use these things used photo bioreactors. There's
one right here. So the green stuff that you see in there is many, many microscopic algal
cells growing in suspension. Let's assume for the moment that there's a million algal
cells here now. This algal has a doubling time of approximately 12 hours. That means
in 12 hours we'll have two million cells. By this time tomorrow there'll be four million
cells there. So this is algal biomass production happening
in front of your eyes. So the research that we do at UTS is in trying to understand how
environmental parameters, such as light and temperature, affect the physiology of algal
cells. So how do they grow under certain environmental conditions and even more importantly why do
they behave in the way that they do. Once we know this then we can take some real conditions
from the field and we can program them into that bioreactor and we can say okay how will
the algae perform under these conditions; why do they perform well; what are the challenges
and also which algal species grows best under those conditions.
Let's assume that we've grown our algal biomass, it's nice and healthy, got lots of it. The
next thing to do is to harvest it, so pull the algal cells out of suspension and create
an algal sludge. Once we have that algal sludge we chemically process it. So we expose it
to high temperature and pressure and under those conditions the cells break and all the
bits and pieces pour out, react with each other and we get something called biocrude.
This is basically an analogue for crude oil. So once we have an analogue for crude oil
we can just put it in a refinery and refine it into biological equivalent of the everyday
fuels that we use; so diesel, petrol and jet fuel. So let's do this. We've got algal biomass.
Why is nobody producing this? What's the problem? Is it the surface area required? Is it the
costs? What is it? Well I've got a little aside first and I want to make one point.
Energy is a big numbers game. In Australia, the Australian population burns through four
and a half billion kilowatt hours of energy every day. Now clearly that's a huge number,
but how big is it? Well I'm going to try and personalise it for
you. So if you have [free/three] kilowatt hours you can run [three] light bulbs for
a day. Obviously hundreds of years ago we didn't have light bulbs, but if we were fortunate
enough to have lots of money we could have live-in servants, like a butler or a maid.
Conveniently [three] kilowatt hours is the amount of energy you need to feed a person
for a day. So let's call this energy unit the energy
servant. Now consider the average Australian, how many energy servants do you think the
average Australian needs? I've done the maths. The average Australian needs 67 energy servants
working for them all day every day. That's a huge number. So now I feel more prepared
to talk about the land area requirements for algal biofuels. I'll introduce you to another
huge number, 40 billion litres per year, that's the crude oil demand of Australia. Eighty-five
per cent of that is imported. Now we could grow all of that in Australia
from algal biofuels but it will take a huge service area, 10,000 square kilometres. That's
about the surface area of Sydney. Now you can look at it and say that's a huge surface
area, you can fit four million people in there, surely we can't do this. But if you look at
it more pragmatically, that's just a dot on the map of Australia. I'm not advocating that
we should knock down Sydney and replace it with algal farms, I'm saying we can place
that dot anywhere and everywhere along the Australian coastline. So land area isn't really
an issue, not in Australia. What about cost? Well it's been estimated
that to get an algal biofuel industry going we need about a billion dollars. Now I know
you're thinking there's no way boy and you're crazy scientist. There's no way I'm giving
you a billion dollars of my hard won taxpayer money so you can grow your pet algae. But
consider this. Is that really a big number? Let's compare it to something else, $7.8 billion.
This is the fossil fuel subsidy that the Australian government pays out to the fossil fuel industry
every year. Before you get your cheques out and start
asking for that money back, just remember that we all have those 67 energy servants
that we need to feed. So this money needs to be spent. It's just a question of how do
we spend it. So is it better to spend a billion dollars to drill a hole through the Great
Barrier Reef so that we can export more coal to China or is it better to spend a billion
dollars to get the algal biofuel economy going? You decide.
I guess the point I want to make here is don't listen to anyone that tries to make an argument
against sustainable energy based on dollars alone because this argument is made against
any new technology that wants to come out. So whether it's electricity or personal computers
or mobile phones, it doesn't matter, this argument has been made. If there's a need
for that new technology, and there's clearly a need for sustainable energy, then that shouldn't
be an obstacle. So what is the main challenge? Well the main
challenge is scale. So how do we get from this lab scale system to this stage? So this
is a demonstration scale system. It's a few thousand litres and when you get to this scale
unfortunately you start to incur significant construction and maintenance costs but you
don't have very many algae so you can't produce a lot of fuel. So you have high risk and very
low reward and under the current political climate here are very few private or public
enterprises that are willing to take this risk.
So what can we do? Well we can consider a different industry. So here's the different
industry. So algal biomass could be used to make these dietary supplements and similar
products. Now regardless of how you feel about dietary supplements as a scientific concept,
that industry is out there and there's money in it. So if you're at this pilot demonstration
scale of a few thousand litres, use the algae to produce these high value products and sell
them at $100 per kilogram. Then you can use that as a stepping stone to get towards the
really large scales where you can produce algal biofuels, which is a huge market but
it's a commodity product so you can always sell it for about five dollars per kilogram.
Okay let's forget about algal biofuels for a second and try and concentrate on making
as much money as possible. So why would be sell the algal biomass for $100 per kilogram
if we can sell it for $100 per gram? Does an industry exist that would buy that? The
answer is yes is the pharmaceutical industry and specifically we're talking about human
protein production. So this is one protein, that's insulin. We use it to metabolise sugar
and it's very important in treating diabetes. Here's another protein, thrombin, it helps
the blood clot. So this is very important in post-surgical procedures where there's
been a lot of blood loss and you need to close that off.
So at the moment there are two ways to produce these things. You either use bacterial cells.
Now bacteria are very simple organisms and often they do not have the machinery to fold
those proteins into the correct shape, which means they're non-functional, they do not
work. In that case we have to use mammalian cells. Mammalian cells extracted from a mouse
or from a hamster, they will work but they're very expensive to grow and to maintain. So
guess what I'm going to say the solution is? Let's use algal cells.
So algae are eukaryotic organisms which means that in terms of the cellular structure they're
not that different from a mouse or a human, so they should have the machinery needed to
process those proteins. Also they offer a very interesting drug delivery method in that
you can crunch them and dry them and actually feed them to patients. So this might not seem
that appetising but surely it's preferable to eating something like horse placenta or
some other mammalian product. I just want to leave you with four key points.
First point, algae are really cool. There's this amazing diversity, amazing genetic diversity,
colours, shape, sizes. They really are. We can make sustainable biofuels from algae today.
Here's some algae biomass growing. We can use that today. The main challenge, it's not
the surface area required, it's not even the cost, it's scaling up. It's how do we get
from this laboratory scale to the size of Sydney. That's a big challenge.
Finally, the reason I'm doing this research is because I believe that this is a technology
that has a lot of potential, it's a technology that should be discussed more and it's a technology
that's worth investing in and I hope that you agree with me. Thank you.