cows from coal?

Australia - Cattle feed made from coal12 Nov 2009
Food for thought: what if the emissions from coal-fired power stations could be use to make a high-protein livestock feed—a feed that lowers methane emissions from cattle and sheep?
Australian company MBD Energy believes it can do this, and more, courtesy of algae, an organism that thrives on greenhouse gases.

MBD proposes to draw off carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and feed it into giant "algae farms", growing millions of tonnes of slimy green stuff that can be converted into feed meal or oil for biofuels and industrial use.

It might sound like a sci-fi fantasy, but the "bio-sequestration" concept is fast gaining traction.

Tony St Clair, MBD Energy’s Agri Business manager, said the company has already signed agreements to conduct demonstration trials with three coal-fired power stations: Loy Yang, Victoria, Eraring, NSW, and an undisclosed power generator in south-east Queensland.

A 5000 square metre experimental site, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere and possibly the world, will be opened at Townsville later this month.

The MBD principle looks straightforward on paper, if not in practice.

Carbon dioxide and possibly other greenhouse gases are drawn straight from the flue of a coal-fired power station (or cement plant or coal seam) and piped to an "algal synthesiser" farm.

There the gases are fed to specially-selected strains of oil-rich algae growing in brackish water, with nutrient supplied by a mix of sewerage or intensive livestock waste and commercial fertilisers.

The algae multiplies in the synthesiser, consuming the greenhouse gases and emitting oxygen and hydrogen. As it multiplies, it is pushed out into large opaque tubes, 50 metres long by 3.2 m wide, where it continues to grow during sunlight hours.

Every 24 hours, 50 per cent of the algal growth is flushed from the tubes and processed.

MBD’s current calculations are that 35 per cent will be spun in centrifuges to extract oil for the manufacture of biofuel and plastics.

The remainder can be turned inTO meal containing 20 per cent protein that can be potentially used as a livestock feed, or biomass for fertiliser, power generation or plastics production.

A million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e) could produce 550,000 tonnes of algae from the system, MDB claims.

If the concept works, it may offer good news for the livestock industries other than a potential new source of feed.

As a water-borne plant, algae contains only a fraction of the cellulose that land plants require to maintain cell structure. It is during the digestion of cellulose that ruminant animals produce methane.

Experiments are now underway at James Cook University (JCU) to investigate the effects on methane production of feeding cattle algae meal as part of a broader ration.

Mr St Clair said that MBD Energy believes its "bio-sequestration" technology shapes up well against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, which proposes to capture and liquify CO2 emissions from power stations and pump them deep underground.

Despite about $2.4 billion of Federal investment in CCS research, enthusiasm for the technology is faltering as the hefty costs of implementation are calculated against the likely returns from an emissions trading scheme.

MBD Energy was formed to pursue biofuel options, Mr St Clair said, but found significant hurdles to commercial production from palm oil and jatropha.

In its quest for alternatives, it hit upon algae and learned that some of the world’s leading algae specialists operated out of JCU.

Then carbon dioxide hit the agenda, and MBD realised that biofuel was secondary to the new main game of bio-sequestration.

The company claims to be in talks with a number of downstream processors for its algae-derived oils and meals.




Source: farmonline.com.au