Production of biofuel from microalgae

IIT Guwahati is researching into production of microalgae-based biofuels

It is well known that you can producing biofuels from cultivated microalgae but
there are many challenges that need to be addressed before it becomes commercially acceptable. 

IIT Guwahati has undertaken a Rs 4-crore research project, whose key objective is to carry out microalgae biomass production in indigenously designed photobioreactor of 200 L and raceway pond of 2000 L. 

Considering the requirement of high volume growth medium, low cost media will be optimized towards high value algal biomass production. This project tries to exploit a two-step approach to produce fractional biofuels directly from wet biomass via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) followed by fractional distillation. This will save the cost of energy required during harvesting and drying of wet biomass. HTL expects to produce bio-crude which would be further distilled to fractional biofuels such as green gasoline, green ATF and green diesel with properties similar to that of petroleum fractions. The project also seeks to explore the feasibility of residual bottom products towards value added products.

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