Algae testbed leaders look to solve national energy needs

Algae Testbed Public-Private Partnership (ATP³) members from across the nation descended upon the ASU Polytechnic campus April 15-18 to discuss strategies for advancing research and development of algae-based technologies for biofuels and other valuable co-products. 

Led by the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation (AzCATI) at ASU, representatives from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Cellana, Touchstone Research Laboratory, Valicor Renewables, California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and Commercial Algae Management have partnered to form ATP³. ATP³ aims to facilitate innovation, empower knowledge creation and accelerate growth of the emergent algal energy industry.

During the kickoff meeting, members of ATP³ strategized how to effectively meet the needs of testbed users across the world and collaboratively produce relevant data and standard analytical and production methods to inform algae-based solutions for the energy, carbon capture and scale-up needs of public and private markets.

“The ATP³ kickoff meeting gave all of the partners of ATP³ a chance to discuss how we will support public and private institutions in finding solutions to the nation's energy challenges,” said Gary Dirks, director of ATP³, and ASU LightWorks, the university initiative that pulls light-inspired research at ASU under one strategic framework. “Working together, we will push the envelope on algae-based sciences and produce usable, sustainable solutions to carbon capture and fuel needs – to name a few.”

The ATP³ project is made possible by a $15 million U.S. Department of Energy competitive grant from its Bioenergy Technologies Office. This funding allows ATP³ to support the operation of existing outdoor algae cultivation systems and produce algae that can be used for real-world solutions such as biofuel.

Partner testbed facilities are located in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Ohio and Georgia.

The ATP³ framework allows partners to work individually within their own institutions or collaboratively, to coordinate analytical and technical support from the larger ATP³ network.

“The framework we are creating at ATP³ is unprecedented,” said John McGowen, Portfolio Manager in ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development’s Project Management Office and Director of Operations and Program Management for ATP³. “By providing closely coordinated, harmonized and objective standards for algal production and biomass compositional analysis protocols across our network of testbed facilities, we will have the ability to reduce the uncertainties around biomass productivity, oil compositional quality and yields.  ATP³ will make these standardized and validated methods, as well as the high impact data from our long term cultivation feedstock trials accessible to the algal biofuels modeling and R&D community.”

The collaborative effort of ATP³ not only serves the group mission to accelerate algae-based research and development, but also helps partner agencies advance their own goals.

"Partnering with industry leaders through the ATP³ framework enables collaboration to more quickly solve underlying challenges in support of commercial algae technology solutions," said Lee Tonkovich, vice president of Research & Development at Heliae LLC, an algae technology company in Gilbert, Ariz.

The ATP³ meeting took place at AzCATI, a hub for research, testing, and commercialization of algae-based products at the Polytechnic Campus. AzCATI provides open test and evaluation facilities for the algae industry and research community. AzCATI is embedded within ASU’s College of Technology and Innovation and is part of the LightWorks initiative, supported by ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.

For more information about ATP³ visit atp3.org.