National Alliance For Advanced Biofuels and Bio-Products (NAABB) products

Our work focuses on the development of strains of algae that have high biomass and lipid production performance and can be safely deployed. To do this we are increasing the overall productivity of algal biomass accumulation and lipid/hydrocarbon content by mining the natural diversity of algal strains, and performing mutagenesis for increased lipid production. Our systems biology approaches for lipid production include knowledge gathered through genomics, proteomics, and transcriptomics of developmental and production algal strains. The NAABB crop protection projects involve adaptive evolution and genetic modification of algae for environmental traits.

The development of scalable practices in various environments is part of the NAABB concept. Our partners are addressing cultivation in arid, semi-arid, wet, and marine environments. We have tools to measure productivities under climate conditions that simulate variations in light, air and pond temperatures for seasonal variations in different regions of the country and are able to feed this information into robust models. This work will increase overall productivity by optimizing sustainable cultivation and production systems. Furthermore, NAABB is addressing methods for optimization of photobioreactors and open cultivation.

It is well accepted that the development of cost-effective and energy efficient harvesting and lipid extraction technologies will make a major impact to this industry. Therefore, NAABB is investing in the development of harvesting technologies using innovative acoustic focusing, hybrid capacitive deionization/electro deionization systems and new materials concepts for traditional membranes and flocculants type systems. Our lipid extraction technologies involve innovations in acoustics, mesoporous nanomaterials, and amphiphilic solvents.

The NAABB Coproduct development program will add profitability and flexibility to the overall changes in the biofuels markets. We are developing coproducts inlarge scale marketable livestock and mariculture feed, through the production of lipid-extracted micro and macro-algae (LEA), testing nutritional content of LEA, live animal and mariculture studies, and the development of processes that will lead to certification of feeds. Similarly, our industrial Coproducts program involves the development of synthetic natural gas production, thermal energy from LEA, bioplastics from proteins and lipids and feedstocks for the nitrogen chemical industry.