(Notícia em Inglês)
Heating and squishing microalgae in a pressure-cooker could be the fastest way to turn it into a crude bio-oil.
Principal investigator Phillip Savage and colleagues at the University of Michigan are using the pressure-cooker method to replace the conventional technique that extracts the oil after drying special, oily types of algae.
The hydrothermal process overcame two major barriers to large-scale conversion of microalgae to liquid fuels by using less-oily types of algae and avoiding the need to dry it.
"We make an algae soup," Savage said. "We heat it to about 300oC and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil."
The high temperature and pressure allow the algae to react with the water and break down because they don't have tough cell walls. This leads to the release of oil along with decomposed proteins and carbohydrates, which add to the fuel yield.
"We're trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we don't want to wait millions of years," Savage said.
universityworldnews.com»
Heating and squishing microalgae in a pressure-cooker could be the fastest way to turn it into a crude bio-oil.
Principal investigator Phillip Savage and colleagues at the University of Michigan are using the pressure-cooker method to replace the conventional technique that extracts the oil after drying special, oily types of algae.
The hydrothermal process overcame two major barriers to large-scale conversion of microalgae to liquid fuels by using less-oily types of algae and avoiding the need to dry it.
"We make an algae soup," Savage said. "We heat it to about 300oC and keep the water at high enough pressure to keep it liquid as opposed to steam. We cook it for 30 minutes to an hour and we get a crude bio-oil."
The high temperature and pressure allow the algae to react with the water and break down because they don't have tough cell walls. This leads to the release of oil along with decomposed proteins and carbohydrates, which add to the fuel yield.
"We're trying to do what nature does when it creates oil, but we don't want to wait millions of years," Savage said.
universityworldnews.com»