The New "Oil"--Israeli Scientist at Forefront of A Revolution
- From: "The Pragmatist" <pragmatist@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 18:45:09 GMT
Terror promoting Islamic regimes promote more than sui-homicide bombing.
Their terror has spawned huge advances in not only security systems, defense
department technology around the world, but ALSO the awareness that reliance
on Arab oil=FUELLING TERROR. This is a fascinating article on the ongoing
technology that will be altering your life before long....Visionaries like
J.Craig Venter are also see the genetic modification of algae (which is
comprised of 1/4 oil) as the next wave of fuel. Read on--Dr. Isaac Berzin
left M.I.T. and is at the forefront of the new bio-fuel revolution. No
dream, investments are pouring in to this technology.
"From an installation of one square kilometer we are now producing five
million liters of green fuel a year. After the technology was demonstrated
at MIT, the next stage was to take it to a real power plant. Until then I
had raised enough money to do it on a small scale. Now it was time to go
big. So I went to Arizona." Read on:
Green giant
By Kobi Ben-Simhon (Haaretz, Israel)
Tags: GreenFuel Technologies
1. Hard to stop him
When Dr. Isaac Berzin talks about algae, he forgets everything else. He
starts talking a mile a minute, and sometimes he talks about true love.
"When I look at them through the microscope, I see them doing belly dances,
and they have this small mustache that they wave. They are really cute," he
says with a passion that he makes no effort to hide. He laughs and then
pauses to reflect for a moment. "But because I am not a biologist I can look
at them a little like a child," he tries to explain. "Where a biologist
would talk about filaments and other technical terms, I see a mustache and
behavior. I am constantly dumbfounded by this plant. This little thing is
the baseline for the production of oxygen in the world; it knows how to use
carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen. It amazes me that despite this,
algae are not given enough respect, and instead are treated like green
slime."
When Berzin looks at algae, he sees a new world and a revolution. Dr.
Berzin, 40, is wearing a blue suit, and his hair is held in place with
glistening gel. Eight months ago he returned to Israel from the United
States after generating a research breakthrough that changed his life.
Berzin, the founder of GreenFuel Technologies - a U.S. company that produces
green fuel from algae - discovered that "green slime" contains one of the
keys to the alternative fuel the world is seeking. His company is the first
ever to develop and produce biofuels from algae that are bred on gases
emitted by power plants.
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It might sound like some sort of magic trick to put algae, CO2 and sunlight
into a box and come out with fuel, but Berzin did it. "I feel a bit like
Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb," he says. "He tried thousands of
materials until he arrived at the filament. My intuition, too, told me that
it was possible to do something that people were only dreaming of - to build
a device from algae to produce energy at market-compatible costs.
"It's logical, really, when you think about it," Berzin continues, "because
all liquid fuels are compressed ancient organic matter, the outcome of
photosynthesis. The liquid fuels that are pumped out of the earth are
ancient plants. There are no miracles here. We just accelerated the process.
A quarter of the weight of algae is vegetable oil from which biofuel can be
produced, and the point was to control the biology. My goal was to adapt the
algae to the local water and the local profile of the gases - to ensure they
would be happy."
Thanks to that happiness, Time magazine this month included Berzin in its
list of the 100 most influential people in the world for 2008. He is in the
company of George Bush, Hillary Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, and
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (as a couple). Berzin is one of four people who
made the glittering list owing to their environmental activity. The green
slot also includes Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, for his plan to
make New York the largest city with clean air by 2030, and Susan Solomon, a
member of the United Nations panel on climate change that drew up the report
on which Al Gore based his landmark film "An Inconvenient Truth" and was,
with Gore, the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
2. The fuel generation
Berzin, an expert on alternative energy, had not expected to be included on
the list. He got the news via e-mail about a month ago. "It reminded me of
the feeling I had when I submitted my doctoral dissertation," he recalls.
"After spending 10 years on research, I was expecting a fanfare of trumpets,
but when I went to hand in the dissertation the secretary told me, 'Okay,
put it there, on the table.' And you put it on the table and that's it. So
it was something like that. An e-mail arrived, stating that it had been
decided to place me on the respected Time list, and congratulations."
He is trying to restrain himself in the face of this festive international
recognition. It's important to him to remain on keel. "I am not willing to
take it personally, because I see myself connected to a number of circles,
and this recognition is something like a certificate of appreciation for
those circles. Not for me personally. I am talking about a circle of people
who decided to do something in the sphere of alternative energy. I feel that
I am their representative. I also feel that I am a product of Israeli
excellence, because I obtained my knowledge here, at Ben-Gurion University
in Be'er Sheva. I had the privilege of being a student of incredible
teachers, who watered me with a sea of knowledge. They deserve it, too; it
is not my own ego trip."
In a large conference hall at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya,
Berzin declares that the world is on the threshold of a vast change. "An era
has ended," he asserts without hesitation. "Until now we found a reserve of
fuel and used it up. In comparison to the evolutionary process, we are at
the transition from the stage of the collectors of food to the situation in
which humanity began to engage in agriculture and grow food. That is what we
are doing today: we are starting to grow our fuel. Our generation will go
down in history as the 'fuel generation.' That generation is over. Man is
moving from a situation in which he uses up the sources of energy to one in
which he grows energy."
Berzin's odyssey began in 1999, immediately after he obtained his Ph.D. in
chemical engineering at Ben-Gurion University. He then embarked on
postdoctoral studies at MIT. That was a formative moment in his career. "I
was in one of the world's leading technological institutions. I was part of
a NASA project to plan a facility for growing cells in the international
space station. I had reached the cutting edge of the most prestigious
project in NASA," he says in an unsatisfied but emphatic tone. "I was
working with the best and most brilliant minds that were dealing with a
hallucinatory problem: how to grow cells in the space station. At the time,
buses were blowing up every day in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. That preoccupied
me. I thought to myself: Dear God, fuel is killing us. After all, those
terrorists are funded by fuel powers. I felt it was off the wall to be
dealing with cells in space, that I should be engaged with a problem whose
solution would change the world: the problem of energy."
3. Crazy decision
On his desk at the time was a document issued by the U.S. Department of
Energy. The idea of producing fuel from algae was not new. "It was known
that vegetable oil is the original material of fuel," Berzin explains. "In
the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the fuel crises that were spawned by
political crises, the national laboratory for alternative energy in the
United States decided to try to produce fuel from algae. The idea was to use
power plants that emit carbon dioxide in order to raise algae and produce
green fuel from them. After 20 years of research and tens of millions of
dollars, they concluded that it wouldn't work. When I looked at their
research, I discovered that they had actually taken carbon dioxide in a
bottle and shaken it. They had not taken genuine gas emissions from power
plants. I discovered that they had worked for 20 years and produced zero
gallons of fuel. Twenty years and how many scientific articles? Hundreds. I
realized that the project was an academic platform for them, that no one
there was really determined to make fuel from algae."
Berzin decided to act. He left MIT eight years ago and founded GreenFuel,
whose professed aim is to produce green fuel from algae. The Israeli
researcher was intent on solving the riddle that the best American
researchers in the field had labored over for two decades. GreenFuel began
to develop a distinctive method of reproducing algae, one that does not use
up agricultural land or clean water, while at the same time consuming a
considerable quantity of carbon dioxide, one of the most pernicious of the
greenhouse gases. "In the technological world it was a crazy decision," he
admits. "You have to be crazy to leave an institution like MIT for an
uncertain future."
Berzin had no money to launch his ambitious project, so he borrowed $200,000
from two close friends. "Looking back on it today," he says, "I understand
how much I didn't know. Because my instincts as a scientist were not suited
to the business world. As a scientist, I thought that technological
excellence was the key to success. Well, it's not. A scientist who discovers
something immediately rushes to tell the world; in the business world you
keep your mouth shut and rush to the patent office. But I was determined. I
did not want to do academic research and I did not want to write scientific
papers. I wanted this thing to happen. I took an area that was considered
impossible and built a platform - a business model, partners and technology.
It's not by chance that in all my talks I tell the audience that there are
two things they have to know about me: that I am an Israeli and that I am
from MIT - two places that do not take no for an answer."
In his childhood, Berzin, who grew up in Ramat Gan, kept his distance from
the world of the exact sciences. "I was a colossal failure in the sciences,"
he reveals with unabashed relish. "My two sisters were sent to a vocational
school because of their technical skills, whereas I was sent to Blich High
School. Literature seemed to be a better option for me. But at Blich I met a
teacher who taught me physics by means of strange stories. He talked about a
fly that was sitting on a plate of hummus on a moving train. Afterward, he
got to the complex formulas. I was intrigued, and because of him I drew
close to science."
Berzin's parents are academics: his father, an engineer, worked for Israel
Aerospace Industries (IAI), and his mother is an electrical engineer. "My
father was an inventor, a very unconventional person. I had a passion for
his work, so our home was always filled with broken machines and wrecked
gears. In the 1980s, for example, there was an arrangement at IAI whereby if
you come up with an efficiency proposal that saved money for the plant, you
got 10 percent of the amount that was saved in the first year. My father
made a lot of money that way."
4. Energy farmers
Berzin established his first energy farm adjacent to the power plant at MIT.
That was the inception of a historic event, because at the end of the
process, fuel was produced from carbon dioxide for the first time. "I
introduced the gases into the system as they were and started to grow the
algae in transparent plastic pipes. In effect, you become an 'energy
farmer.' The algae grow on the liquid base. In the next stage of my
experiments I grew the algae in a shallow, plastic-covered pool. The algae
grow in the water and divide at a wild rate. In the morning the water is
green and by evening it is already black. Afterward the algae are separated
from the water. Every day I harvested a third of 10 centimeters, you pump
out the liquid, and every day a third of the volume is taken."
And the fuel is produced from the pulp of the algae?
"Exactly. You separate the algae from the water, and then you have pulp, a
green sludge from which the oil is extracted. Back then, all the existing
technologies to separate algae from water were too expensive. I had to find
a different technology. A researcher's life is frustrating. I bear the scars
of unsuccessful experiments, of a search for solutions and of failures. I
remember a moment when I thought I was on the right track, and then I
suddenly made a calculation and understood that the effort I had made to
compress the gas was in vain. I realized that I was actually losing energy
rather than producing energy."
And then?
"It was terribly difficult. You believe you have something, and in a split
second you understand that you have nothing. And that was after building
devices and investing a great deal of money. There was a crisis. I couldn't
believe it was happening to me. Anyone who wants to reach the top of a hill
will follow every path; sometimes the path leads to a downturn, but you must
not continue just because the landscape is pretty. As soon as you identify
the mistake, you have to change course.
"We succeeded in finding a different path," Berzin goes on. "I remember
skeptics who told me I would never achieve what I wanted. 'Do you know how
much it costs to grow algae today?' they said. That in fact was a crucial
stage in the chain of challenges that prevented this from being a true and
profitable technology. But we did it. From an installation of one square
kilometer we are now producing five million liters of green fuel a year.
After the technology was demonstrated at MIT, the next stage was to take it
to a real power plant. Until then I had raised enough money to do it on a
small scale. Now it was time to go big. So I went to Arizona."
5. Freedom for the world
What had seemed to be science fiction became a thriving, measured business.
Berzin has registered 12 patents that enshrine his rights to the technology
connecting an energy farm to a power plant. In 2005, in the heart of the
Arizona desert, he chalked up another achievement when he set up the world's
first trial project adjacent to a power plant of APS, Arizona's largest
electrical utility company. The director of the advanced fuels program of
APS, Raymond Hobbs, relates that his Ford has been cruising the streets of
Phoenix on green fuel since 2006. "My mandate is to burn fuel and produce
electricity, but we have a problem called CO2," he notes. "The good thing
about Itzik's [Isaac's] technology is that we are recycling the toxin and
creating a new industry. It's a win-win situation for everyone. It's not
every day that you make a hole in the smokestack of a power plant that is
worth billions of dollars and start to grow algae. I did it because I
believed in Itzik. The first time we met, he showed up at my office with
three people and said that was his whole company. I say that the size of a
company does not determine the size of the head. One person's idea can bring
about tremendous change. I am certain that his technology will bring mankind
lots of fuel, food and peace."
But it turns out that persuading Hobbs was no easy task. "I came out of the
MIT hothouses with a technology and a business model, but without any
money," Berzin says. "It was very hard for the electricity companies to put
money into an idea like this. When Raymond first saw me enter his power
plant in a suit, he muttered that he was in a hurry to get to another
meeting. But in the end, if there is someone, such as me, for example, who
in return for partnership in the business asks the electricity company only
for the CO2 and its lands, the answer is very quickly yes. If they face no
professional or economic risk, but only profit, they work with you
straightaway."
Financing for Berzin's project actually came from Europe, where, he says,
"quality of the environment" is a genuine, deep commitment. "In Europe they
made a strategic decision to shift to green, so there is billions available
for green projects. To sign contracts of $300 million to build an energy
farm in Arizona and a second farm in Spain at a cost of $92 million, I found
European partners willing to put up the money."
Some will be critical of your partnership with power plants that are
polluting the atmosphere.
"People who develop green technologies are considered either hallucinatory
types or enemies of the free market - people who demand to work for the
environment with no economic logic. I don't believe that is the right
direction. The industry is aware of the environmental problem it is
creating, and its alternative solution is to compress the CO2 as pure gas
into the depths of the earth. But dumps like that might be released one day
and cruise to the nearby city and kill millions of people before they fall
to earth. Because carbon dioxide is a necessary byproduct in the burning
process, the electricity companies are scared stiff, so they fight the Al
Gores of the world. I am proposing a solution that not only does not cost
them money, it makes money. I have turned things upside down - there is no
punishment and no risk. So what's the problem? I understood that I had to
solve a tremendous problem of the industry in order to actualize my green
technology."
Does the fuel produced from algae compete with green fuels made from corn
and soy?
"It turns out that the biofuels produced from corn or soy seeds - fuels that
are considered the future substitute for pollutant fuel - cause
environmental damage themselves. It is also not economically viable: to grow
the soy beans you need leaves and roots, a whole system that supports the
beans from which the oil is produced. No such system is required to grow
algae. Their rate of growth is 10 to 100 times that of any other biological
system. So if you have a unit of land, you can achieve orders of production
that are many times higher. This is a process that does not compete for land
and water resources - algae can grow in saltwater and in sewage."
6. Finger of God
Berzin is already looking forward to cultural implications for his
scientific-technological breakthrough. "As soon as one energy farm proves
itself economically - and that will happen within a year and a half - we
will be able to establish similar farms all over the world. If an energy
revolution of this kind occurs in China, it will foment a strategic change
in the division of the political forces on a global scale. A world in which
China will not be dependent on Iran will be a different world. Some
countries will lose part of their power. The message is one of energy
freedom. If you have land, sun and CO2, you can grow your own energy. A
revolution like this will make the world free."
In the meantime, the young scientist is getting extraordinary exposure. His
work was further acknowledged in a flattering article that appeared in
Fortune magazine in April. But not in Israel. "My work has not received
publicity here, and I can understand that," he says with characteristic
softness. "Israel is constantly busy solving its own problems, which I see
as a serious mistake. I want to bring about a conceptual change. I say,
forget investing in solutions for Tnuva [the giant dairy and food company],
and solve the problems of Wal-Mart instead."
Berzin, a senior faculty member at the Interdisciplinary Center, is now busy
establishing an Israel-based international institute to formulate an
alternative energy policy. With the thriving market for growing algae as a
source of energy - more than 250 companies and universities are engaged in
this sphere - Berzin has decided to focus on setting policy. "I want Israel
to become an international center of knowledge in the realm of alternative
energy. The world is looking for solutions in this sphere, and in my view
Israel is in a very special position. The toolbox that is needed to create
solutions of this kind is here."
Berzin intends to recruit his extensive connections in the energy industry
for Israel's benefit. "I am a great believer in the idea that policy
generates results. A case in point is the governmental policy to encourage
the use of solar water heaters. That saved a great deal of energy. But I
also feel a big missed opportunity because Israeli excellence has not been
channeled into the energy field. I intend to establish an objective
institute, which will not engage in technology development, one that will
have worldwide connections and will examine the suitability of Israeli
technologies for the world market. If we invest in many things we will not
get far, but if we invest more in specific projects, after thorough,
dedicated research, we will get very far indeed."
Was that the path you followed to reach your historic achievement?
"Maybe. But it was mostly the finger of God. I am not a religious person,
but I have a feeling of divine providence. God is not mentioned in the Book
of Esther, but from the events you understand that He is behind the scenes,
that He exists. In my story, too, what I dreamt of came to be, and I often
had the feeling that someone behind the scenes was helping me.
.
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