Mass Cultivation of Microalgae for the Production of High Value Bio-Fuel Fractions through Hydro-Thermal Liquefaction (HTL)
Implementing Organization
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Principal Investigator
Prof. Kaustubha Mohanty
Professor
|
Prof. Manmohan Pandey, Department of Machanical Enginnering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, Assam
Department of Chemical Engineering
CO-Principal Investigator
Prof. Debabrata Das
Professor
|
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, West Bengal
Biotechnology
CO-Principal Investigator
Prof. B. C. Meikap
Professor
|
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, West Bengal
Chemical Engineering
Project Overview
Microalgae based biofuel has been studied extensively by several researchers. However, there are many challenges and drawbacks which need to be addressed before it becomes commercially acceptable. Key objective of the project 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 will 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 will produce bio-crude which will 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 will also explore the feasibility of residual bottom products towards value added products.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
Acces sibility Controls