Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

This proposal describes the development plan for a photobioreactor architecture that enables biofuel-producing cyanobacteria to be both packed tightly within the reactor and excited optimally, removing the main limitations of current photobioreactors and enabling sustainable operation in Canada. The architecture is enabled by the novel concept of exciting bacteria using the evanescent light wave confined to the surface of waveguides, such as common optical fibers. Although the photosynthetic process provides the ultimate model of sustainable energy, harnessing photosynthesis in an efficient manner remains a challenge. Direct conversion of CO2 to biofuel using cyanobacteria shows promise, however, current photobioreactor technologies require prohibitively large facilities to house a very small volume fraction of biofuel-producing bacteria. In addition, maintaining large distributed facilities at productive temperatures (> 20C) is impractical in Canada. The approach here is to incorporate waveguides or fiber optics into the reactor that: (a) more efficiently couple the light into bacteria using evanescent light at the waveguide surface, and (b) serve as a backbone to distribute solar radiation throughout the reactor. The combined impact is a projected three-orders-of-magnitude increase in operational output per unit volume as compared to the state of the art. The ultra-compact nature of the photobioreactor also makes thermal management of the reactor practical in cold climates. The proposed work is focused exclusively on the evanescent light-based approach that makes this work unique, and specifically the reactor engineering and microbial engineering required to demonstrate efficacy. Towards this end, the project brings together an engineering team (Dr. Sinton, Canada Research Chair in Integrated Microfluidics and Nanofluidics), a biology team (Dr. Martin, Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Engineering), and a biofuel industry leader (Canadian Bioenergy Corp.). This project will train highly qualified personnel with the experience and skills to develop next generation bioenergy generation technologies in Canada.