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Biofuels
Team goal
Maximize biomass production of oil-rich algae for use in alternative fuels.
Faculty
Team description
Learn more on USTAR Radio. Listen to Energy Lab director Jeff Muhs' five-minute podcast.
USTAR professors at Utah State University are putting what some of us call "pond scum" to a very useful purpose. Jeff Muhs and colleagues are developing commercial scale systems to grow algae to produce biofuel. (Some algae make significant amounts of oil that can be extracted to make fuel.) Biofuel can be used to replace transportation fuels that are refined from petroleum products, decreasing our reliance on foreign oil and minimizing CO2 emissions that cause global warming.
There are thousands of different kinds of algae and only a few species grow fast enoughand produce enough oiltobepractical for making
biofuel. USU researchers are carefully screening different algae strains to find the perfect algae formaking biofuels. The USU team is also
working to design "bioreactors" to better distribute sunlight to grow algae faster and in more concentrated environments. In short, the team
hopes to find a way to put the right algae in the right bioreactor for the optimal production of biofuels.
Since algae needs CO2 to grow, the USU team is applying innovative strategies to build bioreactors that allow CO2 from power plants or other sources to be captured or "sequestered" in the algae. In this way, algae can further slow global warming - first by replacing fossil fuels and second by trapping CO2 produced when fossil fuels are burned.
Jeff Muhs was recruited to Utah State with USTAR funds from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he invented a novel method of collecting and distributing sunlight through optical fibers to light the inside of buildings. For this, he received R&D 100 and National Excellence in Technology Transfer Awards. Jeff has served as a science and energy policy advisor in the U.S. Senate and drafted provisions included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. He has served as Vice President of Research with a start-up company called Sunlight Direct, Inc., authored 14 patents, led research projects totaling over $50 million, and was ORNL's Engineer/Scientist of the year in 1997.
Testifying before Congress in May 2009, Muhs urged greater federal research investment in development of mass-scale technology to create algae biofuels. At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Muhs also released a new report by Utah State University’s Energy Lab, entitled “Algae Biofuels and Carbon Recycling.” The report is available at http://www.utah.gov/ustar/documents/63.pdf.
The report is the first comprehensive look into the opportunities and challenges of utilizing algae not only to create biofuel but also to recycle carbon dioxide. The major new push is the concept of utilizing algae for CO2 recycling. Created as a collaborative effort with nine industry partners and several academic colleagues at other universities, the report also summarizes challenges to other methods of carbon sequestration and reuse.
Following up on this report and the congressional testimony, KSL Channel 5 interviewed Muhs in the USU Biofuels lab. In June 2009, KUER Radio interviewed Muhs about the project.
In August 2009, the Salt Lake Tribune highlighted the Biofuels team's efforts with the Energy Dynamics Lab to address wastewater treatment in the City of Logan's lagoon.