LANL capabilities towards bioenergy and biofuels programs
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
LANL invented technology for increasing growth and productivity of photosysnthetic organisms, including algae and higher plants. The technology has been extensively tested at the greenhouse and field scale for crop plants. Initial bioreactor testing of its efficacy on algal growth has shown promising results. It increases algal growth rates even under optimwn nutrient supply and careful pH control with CO{sub 2} continuously available. The technology uses a small organic molecule, applied to the plant surfaces or added to the algal growth medium. CO{sub 2} concentration is necessary to optimize algal production in either ponds or reactors. LANL has successfully designed, built and demonstrated an effective, efficient technology using DOE funding. Such a system would be very valuable for capitalizing on local inexpensive sources of CO{sub 2} for algal production operations. Furthermore, our protein engineering team has a concept to produce highly stable carbonic anhydyrase (CA) enzyme, which could be very useful to assure maximum utilization of the CO{sub 2} supply. Stable CA could be used either imnlobilized on solid supports or engineered into the algal strain. The current technologies for harvesting the algae and obtaining the lipids do not meet the needs for rapid, low cost separations for high volumes of material. LANL has obtained proof of concept for the high volume flowing stream concentration of algae, algal lysis and separation of the lipid, protein and water fractions, using acoustic platforms. This capability is targeted toward developing biosynthetics, chiral syntheses, high throughput protein expression and purification, organic chemistry, recognition ligands, and stable isotopes geared toward Bioenergy applications. Areas of expertise include stable isotope chemistry, biomaterials, polymers, biopolymers, organocatalysis, advanced characterization methods, and chemistry of model compounds. The ultimate realization of the ability to design and synthesize materials that mimic or are inspired by natural systems will lead to entirely new applications in the bioenergy areas. In addition, there are new developments in this capability that involve development of catalytic methods for the production of carbon chains from the most abundant carbohydrate on the planet, glucose. These carbon chains will be useful in the production of high density fuels which defined characteristics. In addition, these methods/capabilities will be used to generate feedstocks for industrial processes. LANL is the second largest partner institution of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI), and specializes in high throughput genome finishing and analysis in support of DOE missions in energy, bioremediation and carbon sequestration. This group is comprised of molecular biology labs and computational staff who together focus on the high-throughput DNA sequencing of whole microbial genomes, computational finishing and bioinformatics. The applications team focuses on the use of new sequencing technologies to address questions in environmental science. In addition to supporting the DOE mission, this group supports the Nation's national security mission by sequencing critical pathogens and near neighbors in support of relevent application areas.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 988326
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-09-02323; LA-UR-09-2323; TRN: US201018%%491
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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