Tuesday, April 20, 2010 - 11:00 AM
4-06

Development of microalgal biomass feedstocks for the production of advanced, high-energy density biofuels

Al Darzins1, Lee Elliott2, Lieve Laurens1, Edward J. Wolfrum1, and Matthew Posewitz2. (1) National Bioenergy Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd, Golden, CO 80401, (2) Chemistry and Geochemistry, Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois Street, Golden, CO 80401

Microalgae offer tremendous promise to contribute a significant portion of the biofuels that will be required by the new Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).  Certain microalgae have the ability to accumulate more than 50% of their biomass as lipids which can be extracted and converted into renewable, high-energy density transportation fuels. A comprehensive R&D program for the development of microalgal biofuels was initiated by the US Department of Energy more than 30 years ago, and though great progress was made, the program was discontinued in 1996. Recent events in the world energy markets over the last few years have rejuvenated interest in algal-based biofuels. Despite this interest, however, the industry remains largely in its infancy. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the potential of microalgal biofuels, an evaluation of past research efforts and a discussion of the technical and economic barriers that need to be overcome before microalgal-derived diesel fuel substitutes can become a large-scale commercial reality. In addition, this presentation will provide insight into funded research initiatives currently underway at NREL. Given the enormous amount of valuable natural biodiversity that remains undiscovered, we have engaged in a bioprospecting project that uses Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) to rapidly isolate and identify unique microalgal strains from a variety of aquatic environments. We are also developing rapid, high-throughput methods for extraction and profiling of microalgal lipids and fatty acids, as well as methods to correlate and predict the lipid content and composition in microalgal biomass based on Infrared (IR) spectroscopy.

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