Improving algal biofuel production through nutrient recycling and characterization of photosynthetic anomalies in mutant algae species
type: CreativeWork
description: Continued use of fossil fuels is now widely recognized as unsustainable because of diminishing supplies and the contribution of these fuels to the increased carbon dioxide concentration in the environment. Algae represent a promising new source of feedstock for the production of renewable, carbon neutral, transportation fuels. However, significant economic and technical challenges remain to be solved for scaling-up of algal biofuel production. This dissertation has examined two innovative approaches to improve algal biofuel production: (1) an integrated waste to algae biofuel production process that recycles wastewater nutrients into multiple cycles of algal growth, and (2) characterization of potentially advantageous photosynthetic anomalies observed in a mutant strain of green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. A novel system for algal biofuel production was proposed, which integrates algal biomass production, wastewater treatment and conversion of biomass to bio-crude oil. In this system, low-lipid but fast-growing algae were cultivated in wastewater, and the biomass was harvested and fed into a hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process for biofuel production. The post-HTL wastewater (PHWW) accumulates most of the nutrients from the incoming biomass and this can subsequently be fed back to the algae culturing system to recycle nutrients for multiple cycles of algae growth. A series of algae cultivation and hydrothermal conversion experiments were conducted, which showed that a consortium of algae and bacterial can be cultured in PHWW and capture both nutrients and organics. In our tests, 86% of organics (represented as chemical oxygen demand COD), 50% of nitrogen, and 25% of phosphorus were removed from the PHWW, and other previous research has shown that mixed algal-bacterial bioreactors can remove more than 90% of these contaminants when the process is optimized. Our results also showed that low-lipid alga-bacterial biomass can be successfully converted into…
abstract: Continued use of fossil fuels is now widely recognized as unsustainable because of diminishing supplies and the contribution of these fuels to the increased carbon dioxide concentration in the environment. Algae represent a promising new source of feedstock for the production of renewable, carbon neutral, transportation fuels. However, significant economic and technical challenges remain to be solved for scaling-up of algal biofuel production. This dissertation has examined two innovative approaches to improve algal biofuel production: (1) an integrated waste to algae biofuel production process that recycles wastewater nutrients into multiple cycles of algal growth, and (2) characterization of potentially advantageous photosynthetic anomalies observed in a mutant strain of green alga species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. A novel system for algal biofuel production was proposed, which integrates algal biomass production, wastewater treatment and conversion of biomass to bio-crude oil. In this system, low-lipid but fast-growing algae were cultivated in wastewater, and the biomass was harvested and fed into a hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process for biofuel production. The post-HTL wastewater (PHWW) accumulates most of the nutrients from the incoming biomass and this can subsequently be fed back to the algae culturing system to recycle nutrients for multiple cycles of algae growth. A series of algae cultivation and hydrothermal conversion experiments were conducted, which showed that a consortium of algae and bacterial can be cultured in PHWW and capture both nutrients and organics. In our tests, 86% of organics (represented as chemical oxygen demand COD), 50% of nitrogen, and 25% of phosphorus were removed from the PHWW, and other previous research has shown that mixed algal-bacterial bioreactors can remove more than 90% of these contaminants when the process is optimized. Our results also showed that low-lipid alga-bacterial biomass can be successfully converted into…
author: Zhou, Yan
language: en
keywords: algal biofuel, wastewater, hydrothermal liquefaction, nutrient recycling, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, photosynthesis, fluorescence transient, environmental stress
date published: 2010-08-20T17:58:54Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:09Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16823