Algae from Norwegian fjords can be the future fuel of airplanes and cargo ships

20 research, industry, and administrative partners board a ferry in Bergen. The destination is the National Algae pilot in Mongstad, approximately 70 kilometers north of the city. Right after departure, a passenger flight appears in the blue and sunny sky above us, and shortly after a mix of orange and brown colors can be seen on the surface of the water. This is the Noctiluca scintillans, an alga that colors the water several places in Western Norway these weeks.

The scenes fit well to the project the partners are gathered for on this 2-day kickoff meeting in Bergen. The project is called ‘ALGAESOL’ and aims to optimize the technology behind shipping and aviation fuel production based on direct solar energy conversion technologies and microalgae.

Phasing out fossil fuels is essential when tackling the climate crisis. The shipping and aviation industry emit significant amounts of CO2 each year, and developing more sustainable fuel is therefore a priority for the EU that has financed the project.

– The technologies have a great potential for renewable fuel production, but they are still at lab scale. We need to optimize and develop them further and make sure they are ready for scale up and thereafter commercialization, NORCE researcher and project leader of ALGAESOL, Dorinde Kleinegris says.

Although the ferry we are on and the plane we saw most likely not will be using the sustainable fuel that the researchers will contribute to develop in this project anytime soon, it provides a good perspective for why developing sustainable fuel is important.

– This fuel is meant for cargo ships, cruise ships and long-distance airplanes. Smaller boats or planes, travelling shorter distances can use batteries, but if you want to go long distances, then sustainable, energy dense fuels hold more promise, says Kleinegris. For large vessels or long-haul flights, current battery technology cannot generate enough power and has limited energy storage capacity, making it difficult to achieve the vessels’ range and endurance, or negatively influencing cargo capacity.

The algae that colored the fjord orange and brown we saw on the ferry tour will most likely not be used in the project. But other algae from the Norwegian fjords or other locations will be tested in the lab. Here, the challenge will be to get the algae to produce more lipids. Enhancing lipid production is essential when trying to convert algae into biofuel.

– The microalgae that we currently use in our labs come directly from nature, but they have not been optimized to produce as much lipids as possible. Same as we humans have done in the past with agricultural crops by breeding them to get higher yields (for example more grains or larger tasty tomatoes, ed.), we need to optimize the microalgae to have them produce a lot of the right lipids while growing fast. And we need to develop strategies for how to control the contamination in order to reach high density of microalgae with a lot of lipids without having the contamination impacting the production of microalgae negatively, explains Nikola Medić, a specialist in microalgae at the Danish Technological Institute, and leader of work package 3 on microalgae-based solar conversion routes.

Medić will work on controlling the contamination which is currently one of the problems of microalgae cultivation because it is reducing the productivity.

NORCE will contribute to ALGAESOL with expert knowledge on microalgae strain optimization to increase biooil production, in addition to sustainability analyses, and developing value-chain design and scale-up strategies.

We know it is going to be technologically possible for long-distance airplanes and cargo ships to be powered on solar energy and algae-based biofuels, but the challenge is to make such fuel cost-effective, sustainable and in the end commercialize it. We don’t know when that exactly will happen, but the partners in the ALGAESOL project are enthusiastic and optimistic when asked.

– It is going to take some years. We must be realistic about that. This is a research and development project. The ideas are there, the technology has been tested in very small scale and show great potential. This project is about optimizing them, integrating and developing the whole production chain from sunlight to end product and do simulation of how it will look like at large scale. Next step after the project will be to scale up all the developed technologies and develop to commercial level, and then the whole commercialization of the full value chain needs to happen. This is not going to be ready in the next ten years, but hopefully not too long after that these fuels will be at such scale in the market that they can compete with the current fossil fuels, Kleinegris says.

The partners in the consortium are Leitat Technological Center, Universitat de Girona, Danish Technological Institute, SimTech, SOCAR Turkey R&D and Innovation and AMIRES. The ALGAESOL project has been funded with 4 million euros by the European Union under grant agreement number 101147112. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The project started on May 1 this year and will run until April 2027.