Algae biocomposites for carbon capture and storage

Abstract

Microalgae technology has been used to capture CO2 from flue gases, but the current commercial algae open pond systems have many drawbacks such as expensive, infrastructure, high risk of contamination, large land and water requirements. Algae biocomposites can overcome those disadvantages as the cells were immobilised and protected from the environment as well as enhance the photosynthetic ability leading to higher CO2 consumption. This work has established a new easy and simple screening protocol using bio-latex binder emulsions as a coating to retain cyanobacterial cells (i.e. S. Elongatus) onto a loofah scaffold. The protocol involved formulation of cell/binder mixture, toxicity and adhesion tests in order to find suitable binders for production of long lasting biocomposites. By far, the developed biocomposites were tested for CO2 consumption for 2 weeks period in the batch system with different % solid binder and % cell loading. The highest average cumulative CO2 consumption after 2 weeks were reported to be 13.84 mmol CO2/g biomass/day and 31.85 mmol CO2/g biomass/day for S. Elongatus PCC 7942 and CCAP 1479/1A. It was found that the increasing % solid binder leads to a decrease in CO2 consumption, which could be due to a mass transfer limitation. However, there was a depletion of CO2 consumption when the % cell loading was increased for both cyanobacterial strains, which could possibly be due to insufficient nutrient supply. © 2018 GHGT 2018 - 14th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies. All rights reserved.

Publication
GHGT 2018 - 14th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies