The fertilizers, manure and sewage that rains wash into Lake Erie each summer help grow a "bloom" of toxic algae that pose a dire threat to wildlife, fishing and tourism. But where there are problems, there also are opportunities.
The fertilizers, manure and sewage that rains wash into Lake Erie each summer help grow a "bloom" of toxic algae that pose a dire threat to wildlife, fishing and tourism.
But where there are problems, there also are opportunities. For scientists, Lake Erie's problems are opening doors for research and millions of dollars in government grants to help support it.
One example is Sridhar Viamajala and Sasidhar Varanasi, two University of Toledo biochemists who are looking for ways to turn algae into fuel. They want to take the sewage and manure-tainted water that toxic algae feast upon, divert it from fields and streams and use it to help grow algae that can be refined into biodiesel fuel.
"It motivates us," Viamajala said of Lake Erie's problems. "This is our community, and we feel motivated by the issues that are happening here."
The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation are funding the project with two grants that total $4 million.
In all, federal energy officials have committed more than $115 million in the past few years for algae biofuel research nationwide.
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set aside nearly $17 million for research and projects intended to keep phosphorus and nitrogen - nutrients found in manure, fertilizers and sewage that feed algae - from washing off farm fields. Other agencies and programs, including Ohio's Third Frontier science and technology grant program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also fund algae research.Why algae? Half of algae's mass is made up of lipids, or vegetable oils, which can be converted into biodiesel.
The Wright Center for Algal Engineering, Research and Commercialization at Ohio University has received $7 million since 2003 to help support this kind of research. Ohio's toxic-algae problems at Erie and a number of inland lakes make the state a more attractive target for this type of research and funding, said David Bayless, an OU mechanical engineer."We have an abundance of nutrients in the water. It makes a lot more economical sense to recover those nutrients from that water," he said. "Otherwise, you have to buy fertilizer."
The idea of growing fuel algae from wastewater is popular. Researchers at Ohio State University's Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster are trying to do the same thing.
A $7 million Department of Energy grant is funding a project to grow algae in pools using leftover liquid wastes from a digester in Wooster that converts organic waste and sewage sludge into natural gas. The natural gas is burned to generate electricity.
Yebo Li, a professor of biological engineering, is feeding leftover sludge from the bio-digester into a pond stocked with algae. The hope is to refine a process in which algae can be grown for fuel on a commercial scale.
One problem is keeping the pools free of algae-eating aquatic insect larvae, Li said. "In the laboratory, it works just fine."
Like Viamajala, Li envisions algae pools placed near sewage-treatment plants or large livestock farms, where liquid manure is stored in lagoons.
Other research efforts key on keeping phosphorus from running off fields.
A team of researchers at Ohio State and Case Western Reserve University is modeling farm field runoff in areas that drain to Lake Erie through the Maumee River.
Jay Martin, an OSU ecological engineer, said the model could be used to predict how climate change could increase spring rainfall and flows of phosphorus to Lake Erie. Researchers could then change the model to see how different methods to contain phosphorus could benefit the lake. Their work is being funded with $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation.
Jeffrey Reutter, the director of Ohio State's Sea Grant Program and the Stone Laboratory on Lake Erie, said he hopes a renewed effort to more accurately monitor the spread of toxic algae across the lake also will gain support and funding.
He said a monitoring system could help identify how much phosphorus needs to be removed from lake water to prevent large blooms, such as the one in 2011 that stretched from Toledo to Cleveland during the summer.
"We could probably do something like that today for about $1 million a year," Reutter said.