UB, partners work to make algal fuel more efficient, affordable

Harvesting biofuel from algae is effective, but not yet practical.

A UB-led research project — funded by a $2 million U.S. Department of Energy grant — is tackling this problem using polyculture farming, artificial intelligence, microscopy and other techniques.

Algae are microorganisms that live in aquatic environments. They behave like plants and use photosynthesis to produce energy from sunlight.

Algal cultivation is an effective way to produce biomass, a renewable energy source that can be directly converted into biofuel — a fuel source that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The current process takes months and must restart whenever algae is attacked by micropests, like fungus.

“The algal cultures are always growing. When the system gets contaminated, the algae get completely wiped out,” says the grant’s principal investigator Ian Bradley, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. “You miss growing biomass for a few weeks or a few months and lose between 30-50% of the product.”

Bradley, who is also a core faculty member in UB's RENEW Institute, will lead the team in addressing this problem.

Many biomass harvesters wait until an infiltration from pests occurs and add chemicals or use other methods to remedy the infection. Bradley’s team will examine environmental conditions like temperature, sunlight and wastewater treatment, and track changes in the algae’s metagenomes and transcriptomes — DNA and RNA — before and after the organisms are infected.

Collaborators at the Georgia Institute of Technology will monitor these organisms using low-cost microscopy and provide updates about algae and pests in real time. The team at Georgia Tech will also use artificial intelligence and deep learning to analyze data and try to develop predictive correlations between algal responses and environmental conditions.

“We want to make algae a viable producer for biofuel applications. Right now, it’s expensive and not consistent,” Bradley says. “Our goal is to predict the infections before they occur.”

In addition to monitoring and understanding factors that lead to infection in algal cultures, Bradley and team will use polyculture farming — growing more than one crop species in the same space — to protect biomass production. Polyculture farming mimics natural ecosystems and can increase crop diversity, enhance productivity and help protect against common pests.

“Pure cultures, or monocultures — made up of the same types of algae — are the most common for biomass production. When a fungus comes into a monoculture, it completely wipes it out and you get culture crash,” Bradley explains. “We grow polycultures to make the process more sustainable. If fungus attacks and wipes out one type of algae, there are others to continue the process.”

Using polycultures also increases productivity because it prevents a complete restart of the biomass production process. Bradley believes using polycultures instead of monocultures could double productivity.

“We’re in phase one of this project. Phase two is to progress the state of this technology and then scale it up for implementation,” Bradley says.

Additional collaborators include researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Montana-based Clearas Water Recovery Inc.