Green climate chance? Jacobs University’s marine algae based CO₂ mitigation technology tested in pilot plant by major German power company RWE

On November 6, 2008, a novel algae cultivation pilot facility for CO2 mitigation in industrial exhausts was put into operation in Niederaußem near Cologne. The facility is part of the local lignite-fired power plant, which is operated by Germany’s second largest power company RWE commercially as well as an R & D facility. Scientific manager of the project, which is partnered by Forschungszentrum Jülich and Jacobs University’s first spin-off Phytolutions GmbH, is Laurenz Thomsen, Jacobs Professor of Geosciences. RWE provided 700,000 Euros for the first stage of the project.

[ Nov 06, 2008]  CO2 removal from industrial exhausts plays a major role for future climate protection. In addition to physicochemical options and subsurface storage, possibilities of CO2 conversion and utilization are increasingly being discussed.

One option of climatically effective CO2 recycling is the CO2 fixation by marine micro algae and the utilization of the biomass harvest as energy source, which is now being tested for the first time on a large scale and under normal power plant operation conditions in the 600-square-meter RWE test facility. The project aim is to optimize the whole process chain – from algal production to end product. In addition to technical aspects of technology development, the major focus of the project is the verification of a positive total energy balance of algal production and actual net CO2 mitigation.

“For us the project together with RWE is a great opportunity to substantially push R & D in the field of actual application of marine algal technology in the context of energy, renewable raw materials, and alleviation of the greenhouse effect,“ Laurenz Thomsen, Jacobs professor and scientific project manager, said on the occasion of the official activation of the algae cultivation pilot facility in Niederaußem. “The project builds on our experiences with a much smaller test facility of a few hundred litres cultivation volume we started to use in 2004 in a Bremen coal-fired power plant to first explore the potential of algae as CO2 mitigation agents. With about 55,000 litres the facility we inaugurated today for the first time allows us to try out the technology adapted and advanced by Jacobs University and Phytolutions on an industrial scale.“