Engineering Alternative Fuel With Cyanobacteria
Date: 21.1.2013
Sandia National Laboratories Truman Fellow Anne Ruffing has engineered two strains of cyanobacteria to produce free fatty acids, a precursor to liquid fuels, but she has also found that the process cuts the bacteria's production potential.
In general, this is how the process works: Eukaryotic algae grow in a pond to the density needed, then producers must get rid of the water, collect the cells and break them open to get the fuel precursor inside. This precursor is isolated and purified, then chemically converted into biodiesel. Cyanobacteria excrete the fuel precursor outside the cell, so a separation process can remove the product without killing the cells. That eliminates the need to grow a new batch of algae each time, saving on nitrogen and phosphate.
