양지원 교수님 연구실에서 내일(21일, 금) 아래와 같이 초청세미나를 개최합니다.

관심 있는 분들의 많은 참여 바랍니다.

- 일시: 12월 21일(금) 오후 5시-6시

- 장소: 1층 영상강의실

- 연사: 인하대학교 이철균 교수

Blue Ocean for Blue Biotechnology – Marine Bioenergy Production

Choul-Gyun LEE

Department of Biotechnology, Inha University, Incheon 402-751, Korea

Korea National Consortium on Marine Bioenergy Research

Algal biotechnology is drawing increasing interest due to its potential as a source of sustainable clean liquid energy. Microalgal biotechnology has also shown enormous potentials in valuable pharmaceuticals, pigments, carbohydrates, and other fine chemicals. Its application has been extended to the areas of wastewater treatment and agriculture. Recent development in various algal biotechnology found microalgal mass culture can be a useful solution in treatment of wastewater, fixation of carbon dioxide and production of biofuel. However, despite all these advantages of microalgal biofuels, there are quite a number of challenges to overcome before economic production of microalgal biofuel can be achieved: (i) finding/constructing algae strain(s) suitable for mass culture and for wide range of climate; (ii) maximizing solar conversion efficiency in mass culture; (iii) achieving both high oil content and high productivity in mass culture; (iv) designing and engineering of cost effective sustainable mass culture systems; (v) harvesting microalgae and extracting microalgal oils with minimal use of energy; (vi) finding cheap (and renewable) sources for methanol and nutrients (such as phosphate and nitrate). Most of the culture systems and bioprocesses available today would be suitable for the products that cost over $20 USD/kg. Bioenergy must be produced much cheaper than most of the biologically-driven products. One of the possible solutions for some of these challenges is mass culturing microalgal in large ocean area. All the opportunities and challenges of microalgal biofuels will be discussed. Possible ranges for different biofuels will be estimated using the maximum energy conversion efficiency from Sun to biomass and/or biofuels. Then, the feasibility of various bioenergy production technologies will be compared by economic analysis.

[Keywords] marine microalgae, ocean culture, photobioreactor, microalgal biodiesel