SBIR Phase II: Novel microalgae for high yield hydrogen production

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the development of a microalgae-based commercial hydrogen production process that will surpass current or developing technologies. A technology for low-cost, high purity, renewable, scalable hydrogen production can facilitate greater domestic energy independence. Many industries, such as the petro-chemical, chemical, and electronics sectors, would benefit from low-cost industrial hydrogen. Transportation and electric power generation industries would benefit from increased fuel efficiency. Environmental benefits include replacement of fossil fuels, switching hydrogen production from natural gas to sunlight and water, substantial emissions reduction. and reduction of airborne pollutants generated by coal- and natural gas-powered power plants. The goal of this project is to advance the use of engineered algae, in combination with recent advances in bioprocessing and hardware engineering, to manufacture clean, renewable hydrogen. The proposed project will develop microalgae strains that generate high hydrogen yields using a novel metabolic engineering strategy. Hydrogen production rates are challenging to improve due to complicated metabolic pathways and gene regulation guarding hydrogen production. The proposed project will create advanced algal strains combining increased hydrogen production rates with robust growth under the target process conditions. The objectives are: 1) engineer the chimeric genes to implement the metabolic engineering strategy, 2) validate the engineered genes in algae overexpressing a proprietary hydrogenase gene cHYD1, 3) determine effects of genotypes of parental strains on the chimeric genes, 4) combine the best selected genes in the developed parental genotypes and generate new production strains; and 5) demonstrate adequate H2 production rates in the production strains under controlled testing conditions. This project will produce the desired production strain with greatly increased hydrogen rates in the target commercial process environment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.