SIG 2
What are algae? What type of organism? Where can they grow?
Algae is a photosynthetic organism that can be found all over the world, mostly in aquatic environments. Today known, there are about 500.000 to 1 million species world wide. Algae produce nearly 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere during photosynthesis. In contrast to regular plants, algae lack stems, leaves and roots, this enables the algae to distribute its energy in production of useful products instead of making sure that the stems, leaves and roots stay healthy.
What can algae produce that are of interest to mankind?
all sort of things, such as food, feed, colorants, vitamins, carotenoids and oils to use for biodiesel.
What different cultivation systems are used for algae?
Outdoor: Cheap but incrontrollable
Closed:expensive but no risk for contamination
Open: Cheap but high risk for contamination
Axenic: Expensive and difficult but less prone to crashes
Non-axenic: Cheap and easy but prone to crashes.
Write down three interesting things from the christ table.
There seem to be quite inefficient to use maize and sugar canes which are used in big scale today in comparison to algae.
Microalgae seem to dominate in an completely incredible level.
To cover 50% of the needed transportation fuels in USA, only a few percent of the agricultural land need to be used for growing of microalgae.
What were the main aims of the project MicroBiorefine?
To clean wastewater, clean exhaust gasses and also create biodiesel.
What were the main species used in the PhD thesis by Nzasieyngeyb?
Chlorella vulgaris, Desmodesmus Sp., Ettlia pseudoalveolaris, Scenodesmus obliquus. Probably used these for some fun reason..
Mention three different lipids in algae.
Sterols, cartenoids, triacylglycerols and phospholipds.
Where in algae can you find lipid?
The plant forms oil bodies in the cytosol and sometimes in the cholorplast, lipids is also found int the membranes.
Describe the FAME synthesis.
FAME is synthesised from fats and alcohol along with a catalysator using the transesterification, the product is this FAME and glycerol. The catalyst is most often some kind of base, like a hydroxide.
What type of water was used and why?
The water used was wastewater, this is rich in nutrients to help the plants grow, it is also interesting to see how well the algae can clean this wastewater, i.e. how much nutrients it can pick up from the wastewater.
Under what conditions did this specific algae produce the most FAME? And why is this of advantage here?
During heterotrophic conditions, the production of 18:1 carbohydrates was the highest, this is the most optimal for fuel. This is a great result in Umeå due to the lack of light in big parts of the year here.
You can also use two other conditions to create FAME, which?
Autotrophic (with light) and mixotrophic (with light sometimes and without light sometimes.