Could pond scum solve the world's energy and global warming crises?

University of Hawai'i professor Pengchen "Patrick" Fu thinks it can, with a little push from biotechnology.

Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.

He has done it both in his laboratory under fluorescent light and with sunlight on the roof of his building. Sunlight works better, he said.

"It's a promising technology," said Maria Tome, energy engineer with the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism's energy office. "It has a lot of appeal and potential."

Tome, who has been briefed on the project, said that if it works, its benefits could be significant.

"Turning waste into something useful is a good thing," she said.

The technique may need adjusting to increase how much ethanol it yields, but "I think this technology has a future. This work is very good," said C.Y. Hu, associate director for research with the university's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, which houses the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Biotechnology.

The process was patented by Fu and UH in January, but there's still plenty of work to do to bring it to a commercial level, Fu said.

ETHANOL PLANT PLANS

Fu figures his team is two to three years from being able to build a full-scale ethanol plant, and they are looking for investors.

He is fine-tuning his research to find different strains of blue-green algae that will produce even more ethanol, and that are more tolerant of high levels of ethanol. One problem Fu encounters is that as the cyanobacteria produces ethanol, the increased concentration of ethanol eventually kills the algae.

Recently, he clambered over Kilauea volcano on the Big Island seeking out new strains of cyanobacteria that might be more effective.

Fu started out in chemical engineering, and then began the study of biology. He has studied in China, Australia, Japan and the United States, and came to UH in 2002 after a stint as scientist for a private company in California. He is an assistant professor in the university's Department of Molecular Biosciences and Biotechnology, although his contract ends this summer.

He is working with NASA on the potential of cyanobacteria in future lunar and Mars colonization, and is also proceeding to take his ethanol technology into the marketplace. A business plan using his system, under the name La Wahie Biotech, yesterday won third place — and a $5,000 award — in the Business Plan Competition at UH's Shidler College of Business.

Daniel Dean and Donavan Kealoha, both UH law and business students, are Fu's partners. Kealoha said the time seems to be right and the technology compelling, so they are in the process of turning the business plan into an operating business.

The production of ethanol for fuel is one of the nation's and the world's major initiatives, partly because its production takes as much carbon out of the atmosphere as it dumps into the atmosphere. That's different from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which take stored carbon out of the ground and release it into the atmosphere, for a net increase in greenhouse gas.

Most current and planned ethanol production methods depend on farming, and in the case of corn and sugar, take food crops and divert them into energy. Fu said crop-based ethanol production is slow and resource-costly. He decided to work with cyanobacteria, some of which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into their own food and release oxygen as a waste product.

Other scientists also are researching using cyanobacteria to make ethanol, using different strains, but Fu's technique is unique, he said. He inserted genetic material into one type of freshwater cyanobacterium, causing it to produce ethanol as its waste product. It works, and is an amazingly efficient system, he said.

"We have no need to use anything but sunlight and carbon dioxide," plus a trace amount of nutrient materials, he said. "We are very confident about this."

QUICK RESULTS

The technology is fairly simple, he said. It involves a photobioreactor, which is a fancy term for a clear glass or plastic container full of something alive, in which light promotes a biological reaction.

Carbon dioxide gas is bubbled through the green mixture of water and cyanobacteria.

"Solar energy drives the conversion" of the carbon dioxide into ethanol, Fu said. The liquid is then passed through a specialized membrane that removes the ethanol, allowing the water, nutrients and cyanobacteria to return to the photobioreactor.

The benefit over other techniques of producing ethanol is that this is simple and quick—taking days rather than the months required to grow crops that can be converted to ethanol, Fu said.

And he believes it can be done for significantly less than the cost of gasoline and also less than the cost of ethanol produced through conventional methods.

Also, this system is not a net producer of carbon dioxide: Carbon dioxide released into the environment when ethanol is burned has been withdrawn from the environment during ethanol production.

To get the carbon dioxide it needs, the system could even pull the gas out of the emissions of power plants or other carbon dioxide producers. That would prevent carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, where it has been implicated as a major cause of global warming.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.