Advancing from lab to industrial algae production

March 22, 2015
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

Prof. Bafna and his research team monitored the prokaryotic and eukaryotic composition of an algae pond in San Diego over the course of a year.

experts who spoke at Green Revolution 2.0. The symposium, March 12-13 in the Qualcomm Institute, was organized by the California Center for Algal Biology and the Center for Food and Fuel for the 21st Century (FF21). Bioinformatics expert Bafna addressed “Ecology of Open Algae Ponds for the Production of Biofuels,” noting that algae are great feedstocks for biofuels and other products, but the challenge is to get yield at low cost.

Green Revolution 2.0 refers to the observation that the first green revolution, beginning in the 1940s, focused agricultural scientists on saving more than a billion people worldwide from starvation by developing high yielding varieties of crops, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, improved irrigation practices and better land management. Now scientists are confronted with how to feed and provide fuel for countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico and China, which are not only projected to dramatically expand their populations in the decades ahead, but have rapidly developing economies that will require an exponential increase in fuel and food. What the world needs to satisfy those demands, say many scientists, is a second Green Revolution.

UCSD Computer Science and Engineering professor Vineet Bafna

In principle, microalgae may produce between 10 and 100 times more oil per acre than traditional crops, but that has not been achieved in an industrial setting. “There is a general understanding in ecology that diversity is good for productivity, and that precept might be useful for industrial production,” said Bafna. “But we don’t know that these ecological ideas can work in an industrial setting.”

To test his hypothesis, Bafna’s team did a year-long experiment in which they monitored the prokaryotic and eukaryotic composition of an algae pond using genome sequencing to assess the taxonomic composition and diversity in the pond. In addition to genomic sampling, they used phenotyping to gauge various measures of pond health.

“We managed to optimize productivity of biomass over the course of a year,” says Bafna. “Our results strongly suggest that diversity is important for pond productivity, and even in a managed setting, open ponds behave like natural ecosystems.”

The team’s results, as Bafna explained to the FF21 annual conference, indicate that algal diversity promotes production, and that understanding the ecology of open algae ponds for the production of biofuels is critical to managing their output of biomass energy and other products. The findings hold out hope that microalgae could one day fulfill its theoretical range of producing from 10 to 100 times more oil per acre than traditional crops.

The study was funded by NSF and carried out in a partnership with FF21 director Stephen Mayfield and Biological Sciences professor Jonathan Shurin (both from UC San Diego). Bafna also acknowledged collaborators at Sapphire Energy, Life Technologies and SDSU.

GLOBAL RENEWABLES SUBSIDIES BY SOURCE IN THE NEW POLICY SCENARIO
           IEA

Nutrient pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus reduces streams' ability to support aquatic life

Residence time of leaves and twigs, important to stream-dwelling species, can be halved

Leaves and wood provide essential "ecosystem services" to streams; nutrient pollution affects them. Credit and Larger Version

March 5, 2015

Nutrient pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus in streams has long been known to increase carbon production by algae, often causing nuisance and harmful algal blooms.

But according to results of a new study, nutrient pollution can also result in the loss of forest-derived carbon--leaves and twigs--from stream ecosystems, reducing the ability of streams to support aquatic life.

"Most people think of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in streams as contributing to algae blooms," said Diane Pataki, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"But streams contain a lot of leaf litter, and this study shows that nutrient pollution can also stimulate carbon losses from streams by accelerating the breakdown of that litter. That helps us better understand how fertilizer runoff affects carbon transport and emissions from streams and rivers."

What matters: How long a leaf or twig floats in a stream

The findings, published today in the journal Science, demonstrate that the in-stream residence time of leaves and twigs, which provide energy to fuel stream food webs, may be cut in half when moderate amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus are added to a stream.

"This study shows that excess nutrients reduce stream health in a way that was previously unknown," said Amy Rosemond, an ecologist at the University of Georgia (UGA) and the paper's lead author.

"By increasing nutrients, we stimulate decomposition, and that can cause the loss of carbon that stream life depends on."

Stream food webs based on photosynthesis, leaves and wood

Stream food webs are based on carbon from two main sources.

One is algae, which uses photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide in water into food.

The other is leaves and bits of wood from streamside forests. This forest-derived carbon usually persists year-round, making it a staple food resource for stream organisms.

Nitrogen and phosphorus play essential roles in decomposition of carbon by microbes and stream-dwelling insects and other invertebrates, but cause problems when they are present in excess amounts--as they increasingly are.

Widespread nutrient pollution

Nutrient pollution is widespread in the United States and worldwide, primarily due to land use changes such as deforestation, agriculture and urbanization.

Its effects on algae are well-known and very visible in the form of algal blooms.

Little was understood about how nutrient pollution affects forest-derived carbon in stream food webs, so Rosemond and her colleagues devised a set of experiments to find out.

Working at the Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory, an NSF Long-Term Ecological Research site in North Carolina, they set up a system to continuously add nutrients to several small headwater streams.

The first experiment ran for six years in two streams, and the second for three years in five streams, with different combinations of nitrogen and phosphorus to mimic the effects of different land uses.

The researchers found that the additional nutrients reduced forest-derived carbon in streams by half.

"We were frankly shocked at how quickly leaves disappeared when we added nutrients," said Rosemond. "By summer, the streams looked unnaturally bare.

"This is comparable to the doubling of carbon from algae that can occur with nutrient pollution, but it's not a zero-sum game.

"Increasing one form of carbon and decreasing another does not equate. These resources have unique roles in stream food webs, and nutrients are affecting their relative availability."

Many streams lack enough light for algae to grow, making forest-derived carbon their main source of energy. But forest-derived carbon is more than a source of food.

Leaves and twigs in streams take up pollutants

"Leaves and twigs, and the microbes that live on them, are also important in taking up pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus," Rosemond said.

"Ironically, by stimulating the loss of these resources with nutrients, we lose a lot of their capacity to reduce the nutrients' effects. That means that more nutrients flow downstream where they can cause problems in lakes and estuaries."

Rosemond said she hopes the study's findings will be incorporated into policies aimed at reducing nutrient pollution.

"Our results provide a more complete picture of nutrient effects in streams."

Co-authors are Phillip Bumpers, David Manning and Bruce Wallace, all of UGA; Jonathan Benstead and Keller Suberkropp of the University of Alabama; Vladislav Gulis of Coastal Carolina University; and John Kominoski of Florida International University.

-NSF-

Media ContactsCheryl Dybas, NSF, (703) 292-7734, cdybas@nsf.gov
Beth Gavrilles, UGA, (706) 542-7247, bethgav@uga.edu

Related WebsitesNSF Grant: Defining ecosystem heterotrophic response to nutrient concentrations and ratios:http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0918894&HistoricalAwards=false
NSF Coweeta Long-Term Ecological Research site:http://coweeta.uga.edu/
NSF LTER Discovery Article Series:http://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=133883

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2015, its budget is $7.3 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 48,000 competitive proposals for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Algae Systems making waves

March 3, 2015
AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

Algae Systems’ processing plant in Daphne, Alabama. Image courtesy of Algae Systems

on Willmott writes in Huffington Post about Nevada-based Algae Systems, which has built a test plant on Alabama’s Mobile Bay to not only turn algae into diesel fuel but also to extract potable water out of sewage and manufacture fertilizer.

The company grows indigenous algae in a nursery and scales it up in a greenhouse. Then it’s transferred to big floating bioreactor bags offshore (think OMEGA) where it consumes CO2 from the atmosphere and nutrients – including nitrogen and phosphate – from the disinfected household wastewater in which it is bathing. Wave action does the required mixing, and the water temperature is just right for the process. After a few days the algae’s finished eating, and it’s harvested and de-watered.

Algae grows inside large floating bags that take advantage of wave action and the ambient water temperature. Image courtesy of Algae Systems

Next it undergoes hydrothermal liquefaction, a process that cooks the algae under extreme pressure at 550 degrees Fahrenheit, yielding a liquid not unlike crude oil right out of the well. That liquid is sent to a lab, where hydrogen is added, and the result is a hydrocarbon fuel. The bottom line: carbon-negative wastewater treatment, alternative fuel, and useful byproducts.

It will likely cost Algae Systems up to $100 million to get its plant up to scale, but its business plan includes charging cities for wastewater treatment, selling the potable water it creates, and selling the potentially valuable renewable fuel credits that the EPA offers to low-carbon biofuel producers.

Aquarius Systems: Billboard Produces Drinkable Water Out of Thin Air...

Aquarius Systems: Billboard Produces Drinkable Water Out of Thin Air...: What would a great ad for a university of technology be? An ad, that itself, solves a problem through technology. This is exactly what the ...

Billboard Produces Drinkable Water Out of Thin Air

What would a great ad for a university of technology be? An ad, that itself, solves a problem through technology. This is exactly what the University of Engineering and Technology of Peru and their ad agency have done.  They created the first billboard in the world to make drinking water out of thin air and alleviate the lives of Peru's people.

Trying to inspire young people to pursue careers in engineering, the university and ad teams decided to show how technology can be used to solve local problems. One such problem in Lima is the lack of running water. Due to the extremely dry climate with an annual precipitation of less than 1 inch, most people draw water from wells that are often polluted. On the other hand, the atmospheric humidity in Lima approximates 83%.

A study shows that the Andean glaciers, which provide fresh water for the residents of Peru, among other countries, have shrunk between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s. As water supplies dwindle amid climate change, growing populations and food insecurity issues innovative solutions must be developed.

The panel consists of five machines which convert humidity into water through use of air and carbon filters and a condenser.  This reverse osmosis, a water purifying process then stores the water in five tanks located at the top of the structure. The filtered water flows into a pipe at the bottom of the billboard, supplying the neighboring community with clean water. In the three months since it was first installed, the billboard has produced 2,496 gallons of water.

Hopefully enrollment has increased at the University.

Anesthesiology News - Novel Compound Yields Long-Acting Anesthetic Effect

Anesthesiology News - Novel Compound Yields Long-Acting Anesthetic Effect



Las microalgas proponen su uso para la obtención de compuestos que facilitan su uso como anestésicos de larga duración.

La multicidad de usos que nos brindan las microalgas no dejan de sorprender a los científicos, ya que lo hacen superando los productos actuales, muchos de ellos sintéticos.

Fish Farm of the Future Goes Vegetarian to Save Seafood