Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Up coming Bio-butanol Technologies - II : Algae to Bio-Butanol




According to Dr. Adrian Vance, algal-butanol has potential to contribute in America's fuel requirements and carbon dioxide sequestration to fight green house effect and global warming, algae are fastest growing plants and in presence of sunlight and CO2 they can double their mass with in 12 hrs.

According to him algae farming and butanol production is very simple process, algae is cultivated in algae farm tank in presence of CO2 and sunlight and the mass is then flow down to fermentation tank in presence of butanol producing bacteria. Accorgding to Dr. Adrian, experiments can be carried out using 1 foot deep, 8 feet wide and 200 feet long plastic trough for algae farming, CO2 can be supplied through tubing in form of bubbles and the culture kept agitated using motor driven screws and at the end of the day half of the top of the culture will be ready for fermentation and can be transferred to fermentation vessel.

Algae culture then will be mixed with Clostridium tyrobutyricum and Clostridium acetobutylicum bacteria in fermentation vessel where temperature can be maintained by sun light or by heat exchangers. After several days of fermentation the culture will be cooled to zero degree Celsius and butanol will be separated out from the water.



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13 comments:

  1. rohit vishwakarmaAugust 22, 2009 at 11:41 AM

    i was not toatally aware of this thing but the way you told " what you think .

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    ReplyDelete
  2. ritublogAugust 22, 2009 at 9:57 PM

    Hai Rohit,
    I didn't get you. Can you elaborate.

    Ritu
    http://green-growth.blogspot.com
    http://buildinggreenlife.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Vilas KhadseAugust 24, 2009 at 12:05 AM

    The days required for fermentation(not mentioned)which may require industrial fermentators and the energy required for cooling it to zero degree will be the key to commercilise the technolgy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roberto AbdallaAugust 24, 2009 at 4:38 PM

    Is there any study or pre evaluation of vertical farming for algae to biofuels? Sounds like it is possible to do it but there is limited amount of information. I would like to have your comments on that. Thanks and congratulations for the blog.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ritublogAugust 28, 2009 at 11:21 PM

    Hello Vilas,
    I also have limited informations but you are correct and in commercial scale this process will need industrial fermentation unit and sepatation process willbe energy intensive.
    Ritu

    ReplyDelete
  6. ritublogAugust 28, 2009 at 11:26 PM

    Hello Roberto,
    You guess correctly it looks possible but very limited work and literature available, infact Dr Adrian (owner of this concept) is looking tie-ups to start studies at pilot level. I wrote this blog to get interested people in common plateform. I'll keep posting updates.

    Ritu

    ReplyDelete
  7. MandarOctober 8, 2009 at 12:50 AM

    Hi everyone,
    As regards to Roberto's comment, I worked on a class project when I was completing my Master's from Illinois Institute of Technology wherein we designed a transparent pipe system for vertical growth of algae with countercurrent contact between the CO2 and algae+water solution. However, our main problem was deciding the outlet algae concentration based on which the quantity of water is determined.
    And Ritu, I'd like to know more abt the fermentation process after we get the algae biomass from CO2 sequestration. Thanks. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousNovember 3, 2009 at 11:51 AM

    The bacteria are NOT to be mixed together, tyro is used first to produce butyric acid and then ace is used to turn the butyric acid into butanol, its a 2 step process....

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousNovember 4, 2009 at 12:56 PM

    Do you actually think that after fermentation and chilling that 35 to 45% of the solution will be butanols??? that seems a little high to me, what do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  10. daveleeanderDecember 19, 2010 at 9:49 AM

    http://fuelfarm.i8.com/

    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  11. ritublogMarch 29, 2011 at 9:32 AM

    I agree 45% of the solution butanol is high, I also felt its not little high but high high, but as I mentioned in my post I was just re-writing the work of Adrian, and the link of original work is post by Dave too. Here you go for your reference http://fuelfarm.i8.com/

    ReplyDelete
  12. CindyAugust 29, 2011 at 3:42 PM

    Hi I read your article and the experiment you mentioned is complitely new for me and very interesting. But I need some elaboration about the fermentation process. What is the raw material for the fermentation and what is the role of the algae in this process?

    ReplyDelete
  13. ritublogOctober 22, 2011 at 3:14 PM

    Hello Cindy,
    You might be having idea that algae contains carbohydrates also. These carbohydrates are feedstock for the fermentation.

    ReplyDelete

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