Algae Oil Project

ChE415 - Senior Lab - Spring 2006

Project Statement

We are evaluating the suitability of growing algae in economic and portable bioreactors for the purpose of harvesting their oil for biodiesel production.

Team Members

The team consists of three senior chemical engineering students.

We would like to extend our gratitude to Dr. Carpenter of Abbey Lane Labratory for his expertise and equipment.

Presentations

We presented a poster at the 2006 OSU Engineering Expo in May and distributed this handout.

A final technical memorandum detailing our project results was submitted to Dr. Hackleman on June 5, 2006.

Hai Nguyen presented our project to our classmates and guests on June 7, 2006. His PowerPoint slides are available here for viewing.

Information

We developed a project schedule at the beginning of April. The progress of project is documented in the Weekly Status Reports.

Weekly Status Reports

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Links

The U.S. Government studied algae for this same purpose from 1978 to 1996. Their report is available on the internet and we used their findings extensively.

UTEX - The Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin - Maintains a large bank of algae and supplied our strain.

Algae Research Round the World

MIT uses algae to clean powerplant stack gases

New Zealand firm makes biodiesel produced from algae used to treat wastewater