Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Iberia, Aena and Algaenergy unveil Alga-based bio-fuel production project

Spain Transport Secretary Isaías Táboas, Iberia's chairman Antonio Vázquez, AENA chief Juan Ignacio Lema, and AlgaEnergy company president Augusto Rodríguez-Villa, today unveiled a microalgae-based biofuel production project that will be set up Madrid-Barajas airport. The presentation was made at the Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis Institute in Seville.


The research platform, with an initial budget of more than 600,000 euros, will be installed near Terminal 4 of the Madrid-Barajas Airport and will become operational in June.


The platform will be devoted to research, experimentation, and improving technologies for sequestering carbon dioxide and for the cultivation of microalgae. The purpose is to reduce the production costs of biomass and to achieve profitable biofuel production. 


Spain's airport and air traffic control agency Aena granted the site for the platform which will be managed by AlgaEnergy. Helping to design the platform were scientists from the Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis Institute and from the universities of Seville and Almeria. 


The technological platform will be supplied with distilled water from the Iberia purification plant in its industrial site in the airport complex, and with CO2 from Aena and recovered at Iberia's aircraft engine bench test facility in its Madrid-Barajas maintenance hangars, where it is currently emitted into the atmosphere. Both Aena and Iberia will analyse the use of the biofuel obtained to power airport ground vehicles and aircraft.


Also taking part in the project is the oil company Repsol, a shareholder and technological partner of AlgaEnergy, which will convert the biomass oils obtained into biofuel.


The project situates Aena and Iberia at the vanguard of research into the biological sequestering of CO2 and into ecological biofuels, whereby they contribute to sustainable development and environmental protection.


Substantial Improvements


Through photosynthesis the microalgae transforms the CO2 its captures as a nutrient for its own subsistence into an energy source. In addition, some of the 40,000 estimated to exist on earth contain fatty acids that can be converted into biofuel.


Research into the cultivation and production of microalgae biomass at the facility, which needs no soil nor large amounts of water (recovered waste water can be used) will be aimed at improving essential aspects of algae-base biofuel that is rich in fats, from which second-generation biofuel can be made.


The new research facility will also supply biomass to partners in the CENIT-VIDA programme (Comprehensive Evaluation of Microalgae) headed by the utility company Iberdrola, also a shareholder in AlgaEnergy). 


The facility will also be used to develop the patents of the biological processes AlgaEnergy has acquired from Spain's CSIC national scientific research institute. The universities of Seville and Almeria, world pioneers in this field, will contribute to the achievement of the project's aims via the knowledge acquired in decades of research into microalgae.

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