Date of Award:

5-2016

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Jason C. Quinn

Committee

Jason C. Quinn

Committee

Ronald C. Sims

Committee

Nicholas A. Roberts

Abstract

Microalgae has a great potential to help alleviate the world's current dependence on fossil fuels. Microalgae is a single celled organism that produces lipids as a food storage device much like humans and animals store fat. These lipids are a kind of oil that when harvested can be utilized as biofuel.

As the technology surrounding using microalgae as a source of biofuel has advanced key bottlenecks in the eventual large-scale production of microalgae based biofuel have been discovered. One of these bottlenecks is the need to cheaply supply carbon for microalgae growth. One idea that has emerged as a plausible solution is the utilization of exhaust from coal power plants which dump large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. However, there are many contaminants contained within the exhaust that could have unknown effects on the microalgae and limit its potential use.

The goal of this work is to better understand the effects of combining a microalgae growth setup and coal power plant exhaust by growing microalgae in the presence of heavy metals found in coal exhaust and measuring the effects the contaminants have on microalgae growth, biofuel production and methane production.

Results show that heavy metals from flue gas have negative effects upon the growth of microalgae and the production of lipids. Heavy metals were found to have positive effects on lipid recovery and on the production of methane.

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