Developing an Efficient Cyanobacteria Sugar Production Platform

Abstract

The purpose of the CRADA between Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and HelioBioSys, Inc. (HBS) was to generate a resilient cyanobacterial community for the purpose of low cost polysaccharide production from outdoor cultivation. Sandia conducted algae culturing at benchscale and in pilot scale open raceways at the Algae Testbed facility in the Sandia-California (SNL-CA) Open Campus in Livermore with monitoring of changes in the cyanobaceterial community structure based on variation in growth conditions. LBNL provided capabilities for separating sugars that are excreted from the cyanobacterial cells on-site in Livermore, and performed bench scale conversion testing at the LBNL Advanced Biofuels Process Development Unit (ABPDU). The combination of pilot scale algae culturing at Sandia and conversion testing at the state-of-the-art ABPDU facility provided HelioBioSys, Inc. with initial data for de-risking deployment of outdoor production.