S37: Novel approaches to producing microbial oils for biofuel production

With oil price rising due in large part to increase consumption around the world, the need for cost effective and sustainable alternatives becomes greater than ever.  Mississippi State University for the past 7 years has been developing a process that would require no freshwater input, converts non-food or waste carbon, and capitalize on existing infrastructure.    This group has focused its efforts on the production of microbial oils from pure cultures of oleaginous microorganisms, consortiums of oleaginous microorganisms, and those found in municipal sewage systems.  Their research has shown that pure wild-type oleaginous microorganisms can consume all the sugars found in biomass and convert those into triglycerides that would account for approximately 35% of their cell dry weight (cdw).  Mississippi State University has also demonstrated that under the right conditions, oleaginous microorganisms found in return activated sludge can be stimulated to produce greater than 20% lipids on cdw basis.  The advantage this system provides is the presence of copious quantities of water and the existing infrastructure to support and control this biological activity. It is estimated that if 80% of the existing municipal wastewater were used to produce the microbial oil then approximately 5 billion gallons of this oil could be produced annually and would not compete with the food market.  This technology could also be applied to numerous industrial wastewaters thereby recovering some energy from their waste.