Sapphire Energy was a San Diego-based American energy company that aimed to produce crude oil with algae.
Even though hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a promising route to produce crude oils (referred to as "green crude"), the molecular composition of the nitrogen fraction of such green crude oils is not fully understood. The goal of this work was to identify and, quantify the fraction of fatty amides in green crude oils obtained from five different samples derived from Desmodesmus armatus, Tetraselmis sp., and Chlorella sp. biomass treated under different HTL conditions (260 or 340 degrees C as batch or-continuous processes). The goal of this work was to elucidate the nature of the high nitrogen content of the green crude oils: We identified at least 19 distinct fatty amides present in green crude oils and quantified them based on relevant standards in purified-fractions after functional group-based separation and enrichment. It was not known how much these compounds contributed to the oils or which molecular fraction they are associated with. We found that fatty. amides-exclusively partitioned With the neutral fraction of the oils and belonged mainly to one of five categories, based on, their functional group substitution, i.e., fatty amides,, monomethyl,, dimethyl,, monoethanoramide, and,diethanolamide.,The quantification of fatty amides in the neutral oil fraction Was based on respective fatty amide standards,after verification of consistency in response factors-between molecules with different snbstitutions of the amide, group. We found that the amount of fatty amides found in each of the five samples varied considerably and ranged between 1.4 and 3.0% of the green crude oils, With the highest levels detected in the sample with the highest oil content, after HTL of biomas derived from a nutrient deprived Chlorella sp culture.
ABSTRACT Managing ecosystems to maintain biodiversity may be one approach to ensuring their dynamic stability, productivity, and delivery of vital services. The applicability of this approach to industrial ecosystems that harness the metabolic activities of microbes has been proposed but has never been tested at relevant scales. We used a tag-sequencing approach with bacterial small subunit rRNA (16S) genes and eukaryotic internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) to measuring the taxonomic composition and diversity of bacteria and eukaryotes in an open pond managed for bioenergy production by microalgae over a year. Periods of high eukaryotic diversity were associated with high and more-stable biomass productivity. In addition, bacterial diversity and eukaryotic diversity were inversely correlated over time, possibly due to their opposite responses to temperature. The results indicate that maintaining diverse communities may be essential to engineering stable and productive bioenergy ecosystems using microorganisms.
Algae have been used for food and nutraceuticals for thousands of years, and the large-scale cultivation of algae, or algaculture, has existed for over half a century. More recently algae have been identified and developed as renewable fuel sources, and the cultivation of algal biomass for various products is transitioning to commercial-scale systems. It is crucial during this period that institutional frameworks (i.e., policies) support and promote development and commercialization and anticipate and stimulate the evolution of the algal biomass industry as a source of renewable fuels, high value protein and carbohydrates and low-cost drugs. Large-scale cultivation of algae merges the fundamental aspects of traditional agricultural farming and aquaculture. Despite this overlap, algaculture has not yet been afforded a position within agriculture or the benefits associated with it. Various federal and state agricultural support and assistance programs are currently appropriated for crops, but their extension to algal biomass is uncertain. These programs are essential for nascent industries to encourage investment, build infrastructure, disseminate technical experience and information, and create markets. This review describes the potential agricultural policies and programs that could support algal biomass cultivation, and the barriers to the expansion of these programs to algae.
Microalgae used in the production of biofuels represents an alternative to fossil fuels. One problem in the production of algae for biofuels is attacks by algal parasitoids that can cause population crashes when algae are cultivated in outdoor ponds (Greenwell et al. 2010). Integrated solutions are being sought to mitigate this problem, and an initial step is pest identification. We isolated an algal parasitoid from an open pond of Scenedesmus dimorphus used for biofuel production in New Mexico and examined its morphology, ultrastructure and molecular phylogeny. A phylogenetic analysis placed this organism in Aphelida as conspecific with Amoeboaphelidium protococcarum sensu Karpov et al. 2013. As a result we re-evaluated the taxonomy of Amoeboaphelidium protococcarum sensu Letcher et al. 2013 and here designate it as a new species, Amoeboaphelidium occidentale.
