MICROBIO ENGINEERING INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 15c

Description

MicroBio Engineering, Inc. proposes a power plant flue gas CO2 utilization and conversion technology that uses filamentous microalgae to generate a commodity-scale animal feed. In the proposed process, large raceway ponds will be used to cultivate filamentous green algae, which have the major advantage of being easily harvested at low cost by wide mesh screens. Based on techno-economic analyses, such algae biomass could be sold as an animal feed, providing economically beneficial reuse of waste CO2. Animal feeds would have a higher value than biofuels providing an earlier pathway towards commercialization of this technology for power plant emissions reductions. In Phase I, the basic feasibility of cultivating filamentous algae in high productivity open raceway ponds and harvesting these with low cost filtration will be established. From the productivity data and carbon content of the biomass, the uptake of CO2 will be projected for a full scale system. Protein, lipid and carbohydrate content in the algal biomass will be used to establish its potential quality and value as an animal feed. This information will allow for a preliminary techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment of the process. CO2 capture and reuse from fossil power plants is currently costly and requires a commercially beneficial use of the resulting products. Easily harvestable filamentous green algae will be cultivated on power plant CO2 for use as animal feed, producing a sufficiently valuable product for this process to be economically beneficial. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: A successful demonstration of the Phase I objectives will allow advancing to Phase II, which would entail a scale-up of filamentous microalgae cultivation at an operating power plant with actual flue gas. This would be at a sufficiently large scale to demonstrate the technical performance of such a process and produce sufficient biomass for animal feeding trials. The Phase II project would establish the market value and potential of the algal feeds grown in the system and of the CO2 reduction benefits achieved. It would allow proceeding to Phase III which would be a full-scale pilot plant to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the process and products at scale. This technology will allow beneficial reuse of CO2 emissions from point sources such as fossil fuel fired power plants, with substantial economic and GHG reduction benefits.