So this project investigates the use of waste waters in order to make analogy culture media
suitable for commercial production of algae for biofuel.
The advantages of using waste water is the fact that you are using nutrients that are
going to be disposed of.
In this case, you're having the algae use of nutrients to grow, develop more biomass
and ultimately biofuels.
Otherwise, the nutrients are simply put in landfills or end up in groundwater or in
lakes or streams.
The research on algae has many potentials, mainly focused on people with a biology background.
However, with recent research and development, there is a need of more broad disciplines
involved.
The project involves three graduate students from different disciplines, horticulture,
molecular biology, and mechanical engineering.
Growing up on a farm in Missouri, I've always been interested in growing things.
I've just recently had more of an interest in biofuels and microalgae present so many
opportunities.
I have to understand that I deal with living organism here.
I kind of put certain equipment that can damage some of the algae cells.
The process starts off with aerobic digestion.
Here we use the five gallon bucket to release the nutrients from the waste water.
We scaled it to 1,000 liter digester batches, very able to develop swine, poultry, municipal
sledge, and ag runoff for use as an algae culture media.
After we're done with that and we have a media ready, we have the preparation of inoculum,
so a single colony will be streaked across.
We do this to ensure we're using one strain and we know what strain we're using.
We can take single colonies, pluck them off of the dish, and use it to start a small amounts
of inoculum and test tubes.
At this stage it will go on to a larger tube, finally it will go to a 2 by 2 panel and then
eventually we'll take it out to the build site.
What starts off as a single algae colony on a petri dish is eventually formed into trillions
of workers that work cleaning phosphorus, ammonia, and nitrates from waste waters.
The next stage after algae culture is the algae dewatering process.
Here we've chosen a strain that can be settled within the day.
The result from there is the final effluent and it's low in nitrate, phosphate, and ammonia.
Back here is a sample of the algae that's been dewatered.
This biomass was freeze dried, however, so we're drying maybe employed on a commercial
scale.
So after harvesting and drying, we bring the biomass in here.
So we put the biomass in with an excess of methanol in the presence of a catalyst and
it'll end up a crude product that looks similar to this, then that can be further purified
into a clean diesel product.
I think what is surprising to me is the fact that they were able to look at multiple types
and get differential results.
So not all waste waters give you the same type of algae growth.
I can see the entire process to be commercially viable.
Industry will take an interest in this when you can affordably produce biodiesel.
What's exciting about it is students from different areas of science and engineering
coming together and using their own unique capabilities to grow something that produces
products that are very important in the standpoint of energy sustainability.
