Suara.com – Prabowo Subianto recently claimed that seaweed could be an ingredient for making fuel. He revealed this in a dialogue program on TV One.
“Seaweed can be used instead of fertilizer, it can also be used as fuel, seaweed is extraordinary,” he said at the time.
But is this claim from presidential candidate number 2 true? Apparently a number of researchers in Europe, reported by Euronews, revealed that the use of seaweed is still at a stage where it cannot replace fuel 100 percent.
Fuel containing seaweed, or what is usually called Bioethanol, can only be used as a fuel mixture.
This trial was carried out using ordinary cars, to see the impact of emissions.
The car was used to test seaweed fuel, which scientists call 3rd generation biofuel, and is a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.
The Central Java Regional Pertamina Patra Niaga fuel truck carried out a Build Up Stock or Stock Addition in Karimun Jawa on Friday (22/12/2023). (Pertamina Doc)
The tank is filled with 10% seaweed fuel, the rest with gasoline and the performance is compared with gas station fuel.
“The emissions we measure are CO, CO2 and NOX. And in addition, we measure the particulate emissions from the car,” says Sten Frandsen – mechanical engineer and business manager at DTI.
“The emissions tests we got from the seaweed fuel were at exactly the same levels as what we got from the conventional reference fuel.”
Alternative solution for electric vehicles
“We see a lot of electric cars entering the market, but are they a one-fix-all solution for CO2 emissions?” Frandsen asked.
“Because we have heavy-duty transportation, we have ships, we have airplanes, it still consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels. We need a replacement for that, and perhaps, seaweed could be some solution.”
Why is seaweed sustainable? First, because it grows everywhere. It only needs the sun and the sea, which cover 70% of our planet.
Its cultivation does not require fertile land, fertilizer or fresh water, like other biofuels made from agricultural residues, for example.
Seaweed cultivation in Jeneponto Regency, South Sulawesi (SuaraSulsel.id/ Ahmad Bahar Documentation)
Fuel production costs could drop drastically?
Scientists at a laboratory in Petten, the Netherlands, in a European research project called MacroFuels, are looking for the best way to convert seaweed sugars into fuel.
In the long term, they will no longer have to produce bottles, but tons of ethanol and butanol barrels.
“First we take seaweed. And then we use water to remove the sugar with some enzymes or acids,” said Jaap Van Hal, a chemist & innovation manager at biorefinery, TNO and scientific coordinator of the macrofuel project.
“And then you get a sugar solution, and just like you produce wine or beer, you ferment it into Ethanol or Butanol, and you mix it with normal gasoline or diesel to produce E10 and then you drive your car on it.”
It must be produced on a large scale to make it cheap
More biofuel production means more seaweed biomass. Thanks to economies of scale and mechanization, researchers hope to cut fuel production costs by up to 100 percent.
Together with the commercialization of other seaweed products, this could make the fuel economically viable in the future.
However, it should be noted that experts also reveal that currently producing fuel from seaweed is more expensive, and will only get cheaper if it is done on a large scale.
“Currently, the price of a liter of seaweed-based biofuel is too high, perhaps a hundred times more expensive than traditional fuel. But as the scale will go up, the price will come down, and we will get into a range where we will compete with traditional fuels, ” said Bert Groenendaal, a chemist & R&D project coordinator at SIOEN.
Scientists estimate that it will take about 25 years for this technology to become profitable on a very large scale.