Engineering of microalgae for biofuel production

Engineering of microalgae for biofuel production

Recep , Vatansever

Increasing of the world population along with the economic wealth deepens the energy crises every day. Hence we need to find the new alternative energy sources that will satisfy the energy demand and concomitantly deliver no emission to the environment. In this particular situation, plants offer us a highly efficient and effective solutions. However use of higher plants for such purposes can cause several problems such as food competition, water shortage, arable land, fertilizer etc. Algae are tiny biological factories that use photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy so efficiently that they can double their weight several times a day. As part of the photosynthesis process algae produce oil and can generate 15 times more oil per acre than other plants used for biofuels, such as corn and switchgrass. Algae can grow in salt water, freshwater or even contaminated water, at sea or in ponds, and on land not suitable for food production. We are working on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and some other algae to increase their biomass and lipid production which can in future stand as an alternative energy source for next generation. We started our research with Chlamydomonas reinhardtii since it was a model organism. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a single celled photosynthetic microorganism and produces a kind of lipid which can be easily converted for biofuel production. The process of making biodisel from algae contains a number of seperation steps; separating the algea from the media, separating the oil from the algea and removing the glycerol from the oil to lower the viscosity. Hence our aim is to produce a high biomass algea strain containing a high amount of lipid which can be efficiently used for biodiesel production.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-31

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