Date of Award:

5-2011

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Department name when degree awarded

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Byard D. Wood

Committee

Byard D. Wood

Committee

Barton L. Smith

Committee

Ronald C. Sims

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest within the United States to replace fossil fuels with biofuels for environmental and national security reasons. Algal feedstocks have the potential of producing significantly higher yields of oil for biofuels than any other source. It is well known that high concentrations of CO2 can increase algal yields. Flue gas from coal fire power plants is an obvious source of CO2. The flue gas, however, will contain other chemicals besides CO2 that may not be beneficial to the algae. The research objectives for this study were to determine how heavy metals present in the flue gas would affect the production of biodiesel, which is determined by the growth of the algae and the content of lipids inside the algae. This study found that the effects are concentration dependent, and that at concentrations likely to be present in flue gases, production of biofuels from algae should not be affected. This study did find, however, that at high concentrations the growth and lipid content of the algae will be negatively affected.

This work benefits the biofuels community in that there has been much interest in using flue gas CO2 to enhance production of algae, but the effect that the heavy metals would have on that production had not been studied. This study shows that algae can be grown with flue gas CO2 without having the production of biofuels be negatively affected by the metals (if concentrations remain below the acceptable levels).

This project was funded by Arizona Public Service Company (APS), The US Department of Energy, and Utah State University. The total expenditures of these projects was approximately $170,000.

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This work made publicly available electronically on April 10, 2012.

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