Life Sciences Commons^™

Marine Biomass Analyzer, Kai Jay Staal, Brian Paris, Tyler Cottle

Mechanical Engineering

This report documents the design, fabrication, and testing for a marine biomass analyzer. The goal of the project and constructed system was to determine the validity and efficacy of a process that could flatten benthic macrofauna to a consistent thickness such that a biomass for the collected sample could be accurately determined. The system that was built and tested consists of a drive train that turns a mill subassembly where the organisms are flattened, supply and collection spools that hold the white fabric and clear film used to capture the organisms, a collection zone where the sample is injected, and …

Production And Harvest Of Microalgae In Wastewater Raceways With Resource Recycling, Alexander Colin Roberts

Master's Theses

Microalgae can be grown on municipal wastewater media to both treat the wastewater and produce feedstock for algae biofuel production. However the reliability of treatment must be demonstrated, as well as high areal algae productivity on recycled wastewater media and efficient sedimentation harvesting. This processes was studied at pilot scale in the present research.

A pilot facility was operated with nine CO₂-supplemented raceway ponds, each with a 33-m² surface area and a 0.3-m depth, continuously from March 6, 2013 through September 24, 2014. The ponds were operated as three sets of triplicates with two sets continuously fed …

Classification Of Multi-Domain Glycoside Hydrolases To Aid In The Enzymatic Production Of Biofuels From Biomass, Emi Leonard, Gregg Beckham, Deanne Sammond, Michael Crowley

STAR Program Research Presentations

Biomass conversion to renewable biofuels provides an alternative to conventional fossil-fuel based transportation fuels and a means to reduce dependence on foreign oil. However, plant cell walls have evolved to be quite resistant to enzymatic deconstruction, a phenomenon generally termed biomass recalcitrance. As enzymes represent a substantial cost in biofuels production, there is significant impetus to understand and improve their efficiency in converting cell wall carbohydrates to fermentable sugars. Much research has been conducted on single "free" enzymes with one catalytic unit per protein and on the much larger, complexed "cellulosomes" with many tens of catalytic units per protein, but …

Performance Screening Of Chemostat Adapted Recombinant Zymomonas Mobilis Strains, Deirdre M. Beard, Nancy Dowe

STAR Program Research Presentations

Corn stover biomass can be pretreaed and hydrolyzed into soluble sugars to be fermented by microorganisms to ethanol. NREL has developed a recombinant bacteria Zymomonas mobilis 8b that metabolizes both five and six carbon sugars. During pretreatment, toxic inhibitors such as furfural and acetate are produced. NREL has made an attempt to adapt two sub-strains of Z. mobilis 8b to acetate and furfural by using a chemostat method. During the chemostat process, cultures were frozen back in glycerol and saved. In this study, those frozen cultures were revived and analyzed for performance in environments with varying concentrations of furfural and …

Burning Manure As An Economical Energy Source, Ron Machado

Dairy Science

The dairy industry is under pressure from increasing environmental regulations, falling prices, as well as very aggressive foreign competition. Manure management and electrical costs are one area dairymen can look to cut costs. My objective for this project was to determine how cost effective biomass gasification of manure is at generating electricity. The proposed project was designed for a manure production equal to a 3,000 cow herd. I used standard capital budgeting techniques to determine the efficiency of the project, primarily focusing on the net present value, internal rate of return, and payback period.

Identifying Alternative Waste Conversion Technologies For Use At California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, Matthew R. Bono

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This project was undertaken to identify and study alternative technologies for converting waste streams available on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus into energy. As a large campus on the Central Coast of California Cal Poly not only produces lots of waste, but has limited options for its disposal. Furthermore, the campus is in the midst of an on-going green initiative, and more efficient use of its waste products would be a welcome development for the entire campus community. This report gathers information on waste streams originating at Cal Poly and information about waste to energy conversion technologies. The …