Novel Dewatering Method for Cost Effective Harvesting of Microalgae Biomass

A novel process is proposed which will allow continuous dewatering of algae growth culture in a device which is robust (no moving parts) and readily scalable through process parallelization. The process makes use of innovative passive (low energy input) flow control and does not need any chemical pre-treatment or external heat energy input. Microalgal cultivation affords the promise of renewable production of liquid transportation fuels with dramatically lower net carbon emissions than petroleum-based fuels. Although current production costs for algal biomass are not competitive with petroleum-derived fuel prices, microalgae have a number of compelling characteristics that argue for their development over other biofuel crops. The leading advantage is the fact that algae crops have the potential to yield much more oil from an acre of land (1000-4000 gal/acre/yr) than traditional oil seed crops. A roadblock in the cost-effective production of algal based biofuels is the high cost incurred to harvest the algal cells from the growth culture for further downstream processing. This project will greatly reduce the energy intensity and cost of algae harvesting, a key process located between the algae growth process and the oil extraction process. Removal of this roadblock is required for domestically sourced carbon-neutral algae based biofuels and bio-products to become commercially viable.