The crude oil will be depleted within 40 years, alternative fuels have to be developed to drive our transportation systems, and biodiesel appears to be the most promising fuel of the future. Biodiesel is renewable, non-toxic, and biodegradable, it can be used in existing diesel engines without modifying the engin, and can be blended in at any ratio with petroleum diesel. However, the development of biodiesel industry is severely limited by the supply of feedstock, namely soybean oil and canola oil. Due to limitation of available agriculture land and irrigation water supply, the production of these oil crops can not sustain the biodiesel production, other sources of plant oil have to be developed as feedstock for biodiesel. Microalgae are known to exhibit 10- to 20-fold higher growth rates than agricultural crop plants, and certain microalgal species can accumulate large amounts of lipids or oil (30-60% of dry weight). As a result, the concept of using microalgae as an alternative source of feedstock for biodiesel production was intensively studied in the past 40 years. However, the past research & development efforts have led to a conclusion that microalgae-based biodiesel was not economically viable because of high production cost. Such failure to develop a commercially viable microalgae-based biodiesel production system was largely due to the lack of cost-effective photobioreactors and efficient method for oil extraction from algae. In this SBIR project, we will demonstrate the feasibility of reducing the cost of using oil-rich green algae as feedstock for biodiesel production. We intend to optimize culture conditions for microalgal oil production in our proprietary photobioreactors. The feasibility of using innovative nano-materials for algal oil extraction will be demonstrated. The combined advantages from both improvements will enable use to reduce the overall cost in microalgal oil production. The results obtained from this Phase I project will provide a solid base for us to pursue a Phase II project, in which cost-effective production of microalgae-based oil will be demonstrated in pilot scale. The long-term goal of this project is to establish an environmentally sound, commercially feasible and economically profitable engineered process for commercial production of microalgae-based biodiesel. The successful completion of this project will lead to establishment of microalgae-based biodiesel production facilities, absorpton of atmospheric carbon dioxide by microalgae, and job creation/economical development in clean energy sector. OBJECTIVES: The use of fossil fuel for transportation systems has cost the United States $450 ~ $500 billion each year and contributes to air pollution and the global warming. The predicted exhaustion of the known oil reserve has initiated the search for renewable alternatives. Currently, the leading alternative fuel is biodiesel produced from soybean oil, however, low availability of the feedstock has limited the wide application of soybean-based biodiesel. Microalgae have been tested as feedstock for biodiesel production, because they can grow 10~20 times faster than conventional agriculture crops and certain microalgae can accumulate large amount of oil. However, previous efforts failed to produce an economically viable product because an inappropriate cultivation system was used and lack of efficient technology for extraction of oil from microalgal biomass. At Algaen Corporation, we hypothesized that an economically viable microalgae-based biodiesel production system could be established if appropriate photobioreactors were used along with innovative technology for oil extraction. This SBIR Phase I project aims at demonstrating the feasibility of producing microalgal oil using our proprietary photobioreactor system and to optimize the innovative nano-material for oil extraction from microalgal biomass. We expect to find out the feasibility of cultivating the selected microalgae in our proprietary photobioreactors, and identify the key parameters controlling algal growth and oil accumulation. In addition, we anticipate that the nano-material will dramatically improve the efficiency for oil extraction from the microalgal biomass. The combined improvements from both aspects will enable us to reduce the overall cost for producing microalgal oil. Our long-term goal is to developing a microalgae-based biotechnology for production of biodiesel feedstock. APPROACH: This SBIR Phase I project aims at evaluating the culture conditions that can support high growth rate of selected microalgae, and testing the nano-materials that will lead to efficient oil extraction from the microalgal biomass. To achieve this goal, the selected oil-rich microalgae will be cultivated in our proprietary photobioreactors. The performance of the photobioreactors will be assessed by measuring the growth rates of the microalgae and the total lipid contents. The results obtained will be evaluated based on comparion with published scientific literature. It is expected that the selected microalgae will demonstrate a 30~50% higher productivity in the photobioreactors compared to other production methods, and the oil contents will be reaching 50~60% of dried biomass, a significant increase compared to average oil content of 20~30%. The resulting microalgal biomass from the photobioreactors will be used for testing the efficiency of nano-materials in oil extraction experiments. Multiple components of two classes of the nano-materials will be synthesized and screened for the most efficient combinations for oil extraction. The first class will be based on the following components (glycerol, xylitol, sorbitol, and choline chloride) while the second class will be based on imidazole chemistry. We will utilize combinatorial approaches for synthesis, functionalization and screening. These formulations of the nano-materials will be evaluated with the two strains of microalgae. The advantage of these nano-materials in extracting oil will be demonstrated by comparing with common method of hexane extraction, which has low extraction efficiency and energy consuming because of required distillation process. The results obtained from this SBIR Phase I project are expected to demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale production of oil from microalgae and efficiency of the nano-materials in extracting oil
