MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Seaweed bio-fuels plant fuelled with CO2 from sugar cane processing in Brazil

“The trick is to convert CO2 from passive to active” at the algae pits

The world's first industrial plant producing bio-fuels from seaweed will be built in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco in late 2013, the official in charge of the project said Thursday

The factory to be set up by Austrian firm SAT (Sea Algae Technology) on a sugar cane plantation that yields ethanol will produce 1.2 million litres of algae-based bio-fuels annually, Rafael Bianchini, head of SAT Brazilian subsidiary said.

The 9.8 million dollars facility will make use of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted in the ethanol production to speed up the photosynthesis process in the seaweeds and thus reduce emissions of polluting gases into the environment, he said.

Bianchini said the goal was to “convert the CO2 from a passive to an active” state, making use of the strong CO2 emissions lost in the sugar cane ethanol production.

“For each ethanol litre produced, one kilogram of CO2 is released in the atmosphere. We are going to take this CO2 to feed our plant,” he added.

Initially, the algae-based bio-fuel facility will use five percent of the emissions from the sugar cane ethanol process but later the proportion will be increased, Bianchini said.

According to SAT’s Brazilian partner Carlos Beltrao from the Group JB, the one hectare test farm will be implanted with GM alage in the second half of 2013. A second similar plant is planned at the state of Espiritu Santo.

A hectare of algae is estimated to consume 5.000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

The project has yet to be approved by Brazil's National Petroleum Agency. Brazil is the world's second largest producer of bio-fuels after the United States.