Resource World Magazine

www.resourceworld.com 59 F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 0 1 4 Haliae uses sunlight and low-cost carbon feedstocks to produce products from algae. Its core production technology is the com- pany's proprietary algae farming and oil extraction platform, Volaris™. Using Volaris, the commercial facility will initially produce high-value algae products for personal care products. This startup represents the first phase of Heliae's Gilbert plant production, with further expansion slated for late 2014. TransBiodiesel specializes in enzyme- based biocatalysts for advanced biodiesel production. Among other advantages, TransBiodiesel's enzymes are effective without solvents (in conventional biodiesel production, a solvent enhances contact between methanol and the bio-oil feedstock). Biodiesel could also help usher in algae as a viable energy alternative and may allow companies to sell biofuel commercially for as low as two dollars per gallon. In June 2013, TransBiodiesel won a portion of an $11 million fund from the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), which was split among 14 companies. TransBiodiesel's share will go to integrate its third-generation enzymes with Heliae's Volaris platform. POWERING BATTERIES WITH RHUBARB-LIKE MOLECULES According to the Harvard University online newsletter, a team of Harvard University scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamen- tally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable. The team has developed a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called qui - nones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals. The availability of intermittent wind or sunshine and the variability of demand is the biggest obstacle to getting a large fraction of our electricity from renewable sources. A cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy could solve this problem. Flow batteries store energy in chemical flu - ids contained in external tanks – as with fuel cells – instead of in the battery container. The two main components – the electrochemical conversion hardware through which the fluids flow (which sets the peak power capac - ity), and the chemical storage tanks (which set the energy capacity) – may be indepen- dently sized. The amount of energy that can be stored is limited only by the size of the tanks. The design permits larger amounts of energy to be stored at lower cost than with traditional batteries. The active components of electrolytes in most flow batteries are metals. Vanadium is used in the most commercially advanced flow battery technology now in development, but its cost sets a rather high floor on the cost per kilowatt-hour at any scale. Other flow bat - teries contain precious metal electrocatalysts such as the platinum used in fuel cells. The new flow battery developed by the Harvard team already performs as well as vanadium flow batteries, with chemicals that are signifi - cantly less expensive, and with no precious metal electrocatalyst. Quinones are abundant in crude oil as well as in green plants. The molecule that the Harvard team used in its first quinone-based flow battery is almost identical to one found in rhubarb. The quinones are dissolved in water, which prevents them from catching fire. To back up a commercial wind turbine, a large storage tank would be needed, possibly located in a below-grade basement. The next steps in the project will be to fur - ther test and optimize the system that has been demonstrated on the bench top and bring it toward a commercial scale. By the end of the three-year development period, Connecticut- based Sustainable Innovations, LLC in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a collaborator on the project, expects to deploy demonstra - tion versions of the organic flow battery contained in a unit the size of a horse trailer. The portable, scaled-up storage system could be hooked up to solar panels on the roof of a commercial building, and electricity from the solar panels could either directly supply the needs of the building or go into storage and come out of storage when there's a need. Sustainable Innovations anticipates playing a key role in the product's commercialization by leveraging its ultra-low cost electro - chemical cell design and system architecture already under development for energy stor- age applications. This technology could also provide useful backup for off-grid rooftop solar panels—an important advantage con- sidering some 20% of the world's population does not have access to a power distribution network. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (OCI-1053575), an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and the Fellowships for Young Energy Scientists program of the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, which is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). n Heliae Development's headquarters in Gilbert Arizona. Source Heliae Development LLC.

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