Bio-fuel production

  With the rising prices of fossil fuels added to their environmental impact, a demand for alternate renewable fuel sources has paved the way for research into the feasibility of biodiesel production from bacteria, which is currently unable to commercially compete with fossil fuels. The lack of a microsystem available to test various methods for biodiesel production requires an increase in cost, time, and space to do so. This limitation has motivated us to develop a microfluidic microsystem capable of continuous synthesis and in-situ monitoring of cyanobacterial biodiesel production. With the ability to test the effects of different chemicals, extractions methods, or bacteria strains on biodiesel yield per experiment, this microsystem is able to compare different techniques leading to the discovery of an optimal procedure, in a time and cost effective manner, to create the highest biodiesel yield at a low cost when produced on an industrial scale. In this work, the effectiveness of this microfluidic microsystem for biodiesel production is analyzed.