Fuel, Biofuel and the Microalgae

Energy is the next burning issue in the upcoming year when every country requires a huge amount to sustain their economical progress. As the world is rapidly motorized by engines it requires a huge amount of oil to pump it and the oil price is continuously increasing for last few years. Due the intense consumption of natural energy resources and a statement of OPEC to  increased the oil price can intensively affect the economy of a developing country. Now all are looking for an efficient alternative energy source like solar, hydropower, nuclear, tidal, geothermal, wind, and biomass, which can completely replace this black gold dependency.

It has widely studied that Biomass produces by plants can be a good alternatives but the major and most important issue is that we need land to grow the food which feeds the stomach of peoples, we cant grow the energy crop on these lands. This is an important political and social issue in front of scientific community. Researchers looks at the Pandora box of nature and found the solutions for the condition. Microalgae, which are one of the most abundant organisms in the world, got final attention because of its highest capacity to produce biofuel in per acre as compared to other power crops. These tiny organisms does not require big lands or farmhouses, they can be grow in open ponds, plastic bags, glass vessels or Bioreactors. The oil extracted by these microalgae proven to be utilizes to ignite the engines of road vehicles and jets. There are thousands of species belongs to microalgae out of 300 have reported to produce enough quantity of hydrocarbons contents for forming the fuel. (A detailed report available by aquatic species program of US energy department.)

Botryococcus braunii

Botryococcus braunii is a green colonial microalgae found worldwide in freshwater and brackish lakes, reservoirs and ponds. This algae gained a great interest in scientific and commercial world because if its ability to synthesize and accumulate huge amount of various lipids. These lipids are speculated as solutions for the increasing oil-price as these lipids can be converted in to the Biodiesel, Jet-fuel, Gasoline and other important chemicals. It evidenced by the analysis of crude petroleum and earth sediments that Botryococcus is the major biological partner to form the crude petroleum million years ago.

These algae produce various types of hydrocarbons out of which botryococcnes are the most important as it produced in highest quantity and have many properties similar to the various contents of crude oil. So, intensive research are being undergone to maximize the hydrocarbon contents in these algae by altering the genetic and environmental conditions, also to isolate the strain which can produce maximum amount of hydrocarbons.

Metabolomics of Botryococcus braunii

Metabolomics is well established to study the metabolism of various organisms under different environmental and genetic conditions. We want to investigate the active metabolism of these algae in a time series experiments under various nutrients depletions conditions.

Biochemistry of Botryococcenes

Botryococcenes, specific hydrocarbons of B.braunii race B, are triterpenoids synthesized by the isoprenoid pathway and this race efficiently produce isopentyl diphosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP), the fundamental precursors by non-mevalonate pathway. Isoprenoid are the most diverse group of compound found in nature consisting about 50,000 compounds and having great commercial and biological importance.  The gentical and metabolic mechanism behind the  high  production of these precursors  have great  importance  in synthetic biology applications.

Pyrolysis GCMS analysis of Botryococcus braunii

We analyzed the race A and B with pyrolysis GCMS to detect the component related to hydrocarbons. By using the AMDIS post process analysis we can estimate the content of hydrocarbons in a particular sample.

 Pyrolysis GCMS analysis of Botrycoccus braunii. Figure shows a screen shot of AMDIS.
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