our current consumption of fossil fuels

is a major problem for everybody

especially those concerned with the
price environmental impact and
sustainability sources of alternative
fuels will hopefully supplement
petroleum in the future my name is Vijay
Togo and this summer I researched algae
biofuels with professor Phil savage
algae biofuels are particularly
attractive because they are renewable
carbon neutral not used for human food
and don't require much land to grow we
use batch reactors such as this one to
liquefy algae hydrothermal liquefaction
is only one of the several ways to
harvest energy from biomass that uses
water as a solvent under extreme
temperatures and pressures but before I
explain further let's first look at
where crude oil comes from millions of
years ago a bunch of plants animals died
but instead of decaying they got buried
under tons of rock their dead bodies got
converted into crude oil under very high
temperatures and pressures today energy
companies drill beneath the surface to
harvest the crude oil in fact when you
think about it what nature does is very
close to hydrothermal liquefaction of
course nature takes millions of years
and our lab can do it in about half an
hour now that you're caught up I'm going
to take you into our lab to show you a
typical experiment the experiment begins
by loading a known amount of algae into
the batch reactor
next water is added to produce the
slurry of desired concentration high
pressure valves are attached to collect
gaseous products and they're sealed with
a torque wrench to 45 foot pounds this
is a fluidised sand bath that is used to
supply heat to the reaction here's what
it looks like without the sand the coils
at the bottom are the heating elements
and air bubbles up from the holes in the
bottom this particular experiment takes
place at 350 degrees Celsius and 2400
psi loading reactors in the sand bath
requires the face shield and heat
resistant gloves because the sand is hot
enough to burn skin when it's time to
stop the reaction the reactors get
quenched into a water bath listen
closely that's hot after analyzing the
gas is made in the reaction solvent is
added to the reactor to extract the
products the contents are poured into a
test tube
here's what the full tube looks like to
make separating the faces easier the
tubes are centrally used the yellow at
the top is the aqueous phase which
contains water and water-soluble
products and the black is the organic
phase which contains the bio oil it's
difficult to see but there is also solid
phase particles at the interface each
phase is separated and analyzed
separately
each experiment takes about a day and a
half start to finish our lab looks at a
variety of different reaction parameters
such as time temperature catalyst
effects and strain of algae used
different strains have different
concentrations of macronutrients for
example this summer I've worked with
protein rich nano chlorosis
carbohydrate-rich canna Decimus and
lipid-rich chlorella ultimately the goal
of this project is to develop a set of
equations that will allow us to predict
the quality and quantity of bio oil from
any strain of algae given its
composition this will allow us to choose
the best algae by calculation rather
than trial and error and that concludes
what I wanted to show you for today I
hope you found my project is interesting
as I do roll the credits