I am asking for my PhD project. I am really interested in the Algae world, but I'm not sure on what I should focus my research in order to obtain the most relevant results and innovations on the climate change mitigation and shift to renewables.
Thank you
WOW. I also have great interests in microalgae for Earthcare. As you may know, research in microalgal-derived biofuel has a lot of other things to get through in the economic way or the processing way.
Comparing with chemotrophs like yeast or e.coli, the only strength of microalgae is its CO2 absorption capacity for sustainable development, mitigating climate change as you said. High prices in the processes and low cell density interfere with making microalgae companies’ profit.
So I have focused on microalgal biomass as feed or food for nutrition without product purification, saving costs in the extraction processes for bioproducts.
Genetically engineered alga for high fatty acids use for biofuels i.e. jet fuel, diesel and other liquid biofuels. it has broad range of applicaiton, solid algal biomass can be used for solid biofuels such as biochar, hydrochar etc, liquids also produce ethanol as well as diesel, gasoline and jet fuels. its up to you which direction you want to go. Best of Luck
Agree with the views of Sang-Min Paik. All the varieties of algae may not have found a place for its optimal utilisation, especially those that are found in the station of your work.
I have also been enthusiastic about converting micro-algae into biodiesel and achieved some very nice results. At the end of the day I concluded that 1-5 g/l algae concentration in water makes this route questionable on feasibility ground. Profiting of algae activity has a number of promising routes. This is what I am chasing right now as it brings better contribution to curbing CO2 emissions.
If you want fuels, the only likely first processing step is hydrothermal liquefaction. The two major difficulties are growing and harvesting sufficient material at acceptable prices, and upgrading the final product. The difficulties in part arise from the different natures of macro and microalgae. I worked on microalgae, grown in sewage treatment ponds, and what we found was that while simple fuels could be obtained (high quality petrol and diesel) the byproducts were actually more valuable. However, harvesting costs were always significant. The reason for favouring hydrothermal liquefaction was it is the only real technology where you do not have to dry the feedstock - merely concentrate it. 95% water works quite well.
Probably no biofuel is cost-effective at current oil prices and with the giant refineries that get huge economies of scale. However, the potentil economic advantages of hydrothermal treatment of microalgae include if obtained from sewage treatment the material is free prior to isolation because you currently treat it anyway and throw the microalgae away with the effluent, thus polluting. The second cost advantage is the byproducts are worth an order of magnitude more than the fuel, provided hey can all be obtained from the raw material at a reasonable cost.
Thank you all for the interesting answers. I don't want to study only the use of microalgae for biofuel or bioproducts, I am also interested in studying the economic and environment feasibility of the whole process. I've in fact read about the use of wastewater to grow microalgae, which is economically convenient. I would like to study an integrated biorefinery in which microalgae is grown and then every single algal biomass part is used to obtain a fuel or a product. With no waste. But I am afraid is a huge work.
Marine ares with high chlorophil level, and elévate biomass turn over, with high biomasa reposición is possible to ret a sustainable ammount of explotacion. I thin so.
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