6:00pm: Social Hour | 7:00pm: Dinner | 8:00pm: Speaker
Ivar's Salmon House, 401 NE Northlake Way, Seattle, WA
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Speaker Bio
Teodora Rutar Shuman, PhD is a Paccar Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Seattle University and an Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her research interests are in developing sustainable energy practices, including algal oil extraction, pollutant reduction from combustion and in improvements in teaching techniques to maximize student learning.
She serves as senior design coordinator at Seattle University and has authored several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. She has supervised many industry-sponsored student capstone design projects, including the design of three algae photobioreactors and design of two algae oil extraction devices.
She received her PhD from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2000 focusing on NOx and CO formation in lean-premixed combustion. Her MSME, also from the University of Washington, focused on reburning with N2O. She received her Mechanical Engineering undergraduate degree from Belgrade University in Serbia in thermal engineering.
Presentation Abstract
"Sustainable Algal Fuel Production - Projects at Seattle University"
This talk will provide an overview of developments in the field of algal biofuels and will focus on the two projects completed at Seattle University: 1) growing algae and designing three photobioreactors; and 2) designing an algae lipid extractor.
These interdisciplinary projects have provided a unique learning opportunity for undergraduate students in mechanical engineering, biology, and chemistry.
Huesemann and Benemann point out that the current cost of commercial algal biomass production alone is at best $5/kg of dry algal biomass, which is at least 20 times too high. That cost is prohibitive for fuel production, and means that it is imperative to curb costs in all aspects of the algae-to-fuel life-cycle, including algae growth and lipid extraction.
The key aspect of this development is finding avenues for sustainable fuel production, in my opinion.
Seattle University students have designed three prototype bioreactors during the 2006-2007 school year. They demonstrated that Botryococcus braunii, a hydrocarbon-rich algae, could double its cell numbers in two days in these bioreactors when a gas mixture of 10% CO2 and 90% N2 (simulating power plant exhaust) was injected. They have shown similar accelerated growth of that freshwater alga in bench scale experiments.
During the 2008-2009 school year, students designed three lipid extractors. The devices appear to efficiently disrupt the cell membrane and release lipids from algae. The prototypes were tested with Botryococcus braunii and Nannochloropsis oculata, two distinctly different oleaginous algae.