Washington State University Algae Biofuels Research
The goal of this project was to advance algal technologies for the production of biofuels and biochemicals by establishing the Washington State Algae Alliance, a collaboration partnership among two private companies (Targeted Growth, Inc. (TGI), Inventure Chemicals (Inventure) Inc (now Inventure Renewables Inc) and Washington State University (WSU). This project included three major components. The first one was strain development at TGI by genetically engineering cyanobacteria to yield high levels of lipid and other specialty chemicals. The second component was developing an algal culture system at WSU to produce algal biomass as biofuel feedstock year-round in the northern states of the United States. This system included two cultivation modes, the first one was a phototrophic process and the second a heterotrophic process. The phototrophic process would be used for algae production in open ponds during warm seasons; the heterotrophic process would be used in cold seasons so that year-round production of algal lipid would be possible. In warm seasons the heterotrophic process would also produce algal seeds to be used in the phototrophic culture process. Selected strains of green algae and cyanobacteria developed by TGI were tested in the system. The third component was downstream algal biomass processing by Inventure that included efficiently harvesting the usable fuel fractions from the algae mass and effectively isolating and separating the usable components into specific fractions, and converting isolated fractions into green chemicals.
- Research Organization:
- Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Sustainable Transportation Office. Bioenergy Technologies Office
- Contributing Organization:
- Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0003112
- OSTI ID:
- 1349713
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-WSU-3112
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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