UT biologists and engineers are involved in a government project to convert oil from algae to jet fuel for military use.
The search for biofuels in algae is not rare, and researchers and scientists consort and utilize UT’s culture collection of algae, UTEX.
UTEX is one of the world’s largest collections of algae and is home to more than 3,000 strains, which supply scientists around the world.
UT is in charge of identifying the best strains from its culture collection to use in a project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“The culture collection of the algae is not the only primary player,” said UTEX Director Jerry Brand. “We provide a knowledge base for those trying to grow algae and a culture collection for research.”
The logistics of the $25 million project could not be discussed in detail due to restrictions by the granting agency, said researchers involved in the program. However, the project is long-term, said principal investigator K. Sathasivan from the School of Biological Sciences.
People around the world use the algal cultures for their research, especially as the search for biofuels heightens.
“This collection is unique to UT and has been quietly used for teaching and research on campus since 1976,” Brand said. “Only in the last three years has it been recognized for its value, with orders of algae doubling or even tripling at UTEX.”
Algal feedstock is considered a good source for alternative fuels because it is renewable, does not compete with food crops and grows in wet or dry environments.
“We now realize that we have to find alternative sources of fuel, and algae is coming to the forefront of that possibility,” Brand said. “We’re trying to understand what ways algae can be induced to produce large amounts of biomass as a transportation fuel or oil that can be converted to diesel fuel.”
UTEX sells algal cultures to researchers. The money from the sales pays the income of many staff workers in the lab.
“Algae can be used for so many things,” said research assistant Bonnie O’Neil. “Our No. 1 seller is an algae that is a water-quality tester. We also sell to cosmetic companies and to shrimp farmers. Algae is also the No. 1 source of auger in the world, which labs use every day.”
The rest of the top 25 algae are sold for biofuel research, O’Neil said.
“Many people are researching lipid content,” O’Neil said. “There are various methods to extract lipids from algae and different types of lipids based on chains that lipids form.”
The defense agency is expected to spark commercial development of jet fuel for military and commercial applications and possibly diesel fuel for land transportation.
One of the project’s goals is to produce algal oil-based jet fuel on a large scale at a cost of $3 a gallon to the user as opposed to the current cost of diesel fuel made from algae, which ranges from $10 to $12 a gallon.
“The military is interested in various fuels, especially those that can drive military interests,” Brand said.
