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What if you could take something that
is of little value or no value to society
and transform it into something that
would have high value to society, In fact,
could be useful to everyone?
My name is Ron Sims and I'm the head
of the Department of Biological engineering at Utah State
University.
I want to show you what our students
in biological engineering are doing to transform waste
into bio-energy chemicals and other bio-products
in order to improve national security
and global sustainability.
We do this in a three step process.
First we produce biomass from waste chemicals,
then we harvest the biomass, then
we use the harvested biomass to transform
into bioenergy and other bio-products.
And so I invite you to take a look at what
our students in biological engineering
are doing to create the future for transforming wastes
into bio-products for society.
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I grew up on a farm, so I think farmers
were the original biological engineers.
And I was always interested in biology
and how it's harnessed and used to help and benefit people.
My name is Maureen Kesaano, a PhD student
in the biological engineering department.
When I was learning more about the program here at USU,
I realized that biology could be harnessed in other ways
to help produce food, but also in the fields of medicine,
and environmental cleanup, and energy production as well,
and those things really interested me.
At USU here, the program was top notch and great,
so it was it was a perfect fit for me.
I am interested in cleaning waste water, and just water
quality in general, because we all depend on clean water.
And so if we clean up, we're helping not only us,
but the environment and the aquatic life in it.
And so I think this is a good thing.
I'm working on the bioremediation project,
where we are using algal biofilms to clean up
waste water.
The first part is to grow algae in wastewater
to clean the wastewater.
And that, in this situation with wastewater,
happens naturally, almost, because there's
nutrients in the wastewater and we have sunlight.
In certain situations, under certain conditions,
algae will grow as a biofilm, so a sticky slime that's
attached to a surface.
And what I did was learn about materials that the algae will
stick to and grow as a biofilm, and I designed a rotating
algal biofilm reactor, and that's
what these are behind me here.
What I'm doing, I'm trying to optimize
the growth of the biofilm so that we
can be able to remove as much nutrients, that is phosphorus
and nitrogen, from the waste water, but at the same time
produce enough biomass to make other valuable byproducts.
I have two reactors currently running.
The one [INAUDIBLE] one has suspended algae,
and the other one has the biofilm growing on the rotating
algal bioreactors.
And what I'm doing, I'm trying to compare the growth rate,
and also compare the performance of each bioreactor.
These reactors are submerged in the wastewater partway.
And as they rotate, you treat the water, get the nutrients
from the water, and then also the algae
in the biofilm when they're up can take CO2 and also get
the sunlight that they need to grow.
And the beneficial part of this design
is when it comes time to harvest, because it's already
a thick biofilm slime, you take the rope that the biofilm is
growing on and unthreatened, unspool it, scrape off
the biofilm.
There's your biomass, your algae,
and then you can reload the reactor,
rewind the rope on, and start again, continue
treating the wastewater and growing
more algae to be used for energy production
while the water is being treated as well.
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My research deals with the harvesting side
of the biofuel production.
We're able to take wastewater and get
something useful out of it.
Take this product that has no value at all,
that has negative value, and we can get something out of it
that's worth money.
We have a number of issues getting the algae out.
It's very small, we're talking scale
of millionths of a meter in diameter,
these individual cells.
It's relatively dilute.
The water looks green, but there's not
a whole lot of algae in there, relatively speaking.
And this algae is negatively charged,
so you can imagine two negative ends of magnets
bouncing against each other, they
are going to repel each other.
What we need to do is get these algae cells to attract
to each other, come together, so we can remove them more easily.
So in order to do that, we use one method that I'm looking at,
is this device called a dissolved air flotation
unit, also known as DAF, a d a f unit.
It works on a couple of just really simple principles.
We have our wastewater flow in, flow
into two large mixing tanks where
we can add in some low amounts of chemicals.
That starts this process of bringing the algae cells
together so they don't repel each other.
After we have 15 or 20 minutes of a mixing time,
that pumps into what we call our flotation tank.
While the mixing is going on, we have--
some of this wastewater is pressurized with air--
and then when that re-enters the flotation tank,
we have lots of bubbles.
And those bubbles are able to lift up our algae.
By this point, is already formed larger clumps
that we call flocks.
Those are then able to race to the surface
and collect on the top, and then we
have a scraper that runs on a conveyor belt system
that we're able to scrape the algae off the top
of the flotation tank.
So in addition to this, what we call pilot scale DAF
unit, which can handle 60 or 65 gallons per minute,
I'm also running a small scale, what
we call a bench top unit, which mimics the DAF operation.
And on that unit I have six one liter jars where I can vary,
easily, different chemical dosing, different recycle rays,
I can vary different parameters of a DAF
and do it all very quickly with different jars.
And it allows me just to run it quick,
clean it out, run it again, I can run that three to four,
five times a day, whereas with this large unit
there's a startup, there's a cool down.
So I'm trying to optimize it and do a more natural and a more
efficient way of getting our algae out of waste water.
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The algae, when they're growing, they'll take the sunlight
and they'll take the carbon from CO2.
And under the right conditions they'll
store that in the form of lipids.
So what we do is then harvest the algae
at the optimal point in time, and extract those lipids
and use them as a feedstock for a biodiesel product.
We take algae, extract the oil from algae,
and have this drip drop in replacement fuel
that can then go out onto our existing fuel infrastructure.
America has this insatiable appetite
for liquid transportation fuels.
A long time in the future, we might
be able to just use electric vehicles on an electric grid
or with batteries, but for now we need liquid fuels.
And biodiesel from algae is a very promising solution
to that issue.
We use algae biomass to generate biogas, industrial solvents,
and bioplastics.
So the biogas is basically produced
using a series of microbial anaerobic processes, where
certain microorganisms break down the algae biomass that
can then be used by the methanogens, which actually
generate methane gas, to then produce the gas, which can then
be used subsequently to run steam turbine
generators to generate electricity.
We can also generate industrial solvents.
So we use anaerobic microbes that
can degrade the algae biomass to generate these solvents.
And we're doing this currently at a laboratory scale,
but the idea is to optimize this degradation of algae biomass
to industrial solvents.
And once that's achieved, we'll move
to pilot scale and then industrial scale
to produce these solvents.
So in addition, we're also trying
to screen different algae that are present in the wastewater
treatment facility that produce different types of biopolymers
which can be converted into bioplastics.
And these bioplastics can replace, essentially,
all the plastics that are used throughout, for example shampoo
bottles, water bottles, et cetera.
You name it, we can replace those plastics
with bioplastics, which are naturally
degradable and substantially better for the environment.
Well my research is cyanobacterial biofilms
growing in produce water.
And produce water is wastewater that's
generated from the oil and gas industry.
We get our produce water from the Uinta Basin
and currently it's the limiting factor in oil and gas
production down there.
And we're trying to bioremediate that because the cost
of treating that by evaporation ponds can cost up to $0.80 per
barrel.
And worldwide, there is currently
about over 77 billion barrels of produce water produced
every year.
They are trying to look into growing
these cyanobacterial biofilms to bioremediate the produce water
as well as generate many of bioproducts,
like pharmaceutical products and medical industry products.
And then after you extract those,
you can also use the lipids left over for biofuels generation.
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My experience as an undergraduate researcher
has really defined my experience here at USU.
Working in a lab as an undergraduate
is really important, it's stressed here at Utah State.
I hadn't even taken the orientation for Utah State
University and I was already out here doing research,
helping with research.
One of the reasons I decided to come to Utah State
was because they offered this undergraduate research
experience.
I was just amazed that I hadn't even graduated from high school
yet and they were still wanting me to come and work.
I've been able to learn procedures
that a lot of other students won't
have in my major, which is going to put me ahead of them.
Where usually you don't get involved in research
until you're a junior or senior in college,
but I wasn't even a freshman yet.
So this has been able to really get me out in the field
here at the Logan Lagoons, actually
seeing what's going on.
This gave me the opportunity as an undergraduate
to experience what research is like, what
my major of biological engineering is really like.
And I wouldn't have gotten that experience anywhere else.
Biological engineering is working with the city of Logan
down here at this wastewater treatment plant,
and it's a fantastic opportunity for us.
It allows us to take our research out of the laboratory.
And the idea with the city is that we
solve their nutrient management problems
by using the algae growth systems,
and then we create these products
that can add a stream of revenue for this whole project.
There's enough algae in the lagoons
that we can easily power all of the city trucks, all
of the garbage, all the recycling, all the
pick up trucks that drive around.
We have that ability.
And we'll use the biodiesel generated from the algae
to run those trucks.
This project-- it's applicable, not only to a local level,
but is also applicable to the national level.
Wastewater treatment plants like this--
there are more than 7,000 in the country.
So the type of processes we're doing here
can be used in those lagoons as well.
So as a nation, we can really see this
as a way to cut back on our fossil fuel usage.
That has political ramifications,
because then we're not buying oil from countries
that are unstable.
We're making a domestic source of bioenergy that's renewable.
There's wastewater treatment plants all around the world.
There's always wastewater that needs to be treated.
And growing algae and treating the wastewater with algae
is a win-win situation because it's
low cost for treating the wastewater.
And the energy production on the side
can further reduce those costs and help
us learn how to scale up the process for algae energy
production.
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As you have seen, the biological engineering department
at Utah State University involved students
at every level of their education
in working on developing solutions
to problems that are important both nationally and globally.
Our students graduate with unique skills
for transforming waste into bioproducts
that make them very valuable to the hiring
industry in this area, and leaders
in the area of transforming waste to bioproducts.
The integration of wastewater treatment
and bioenergy production represents a game change
strategy for both waste management
and sustainable energy development that's
being pioneered in the biological engineering
department at Utah State University.
In addition to the cost savings to both industries,
bioproducts from wastes helps to stimulate local and regional
economic development through the creation of new engineering
jobs, companies, and services.
So now you know how our biological engineers design,
build, and test new integrated solutions to transform waste
into bioproducts.
So I invite you to be a biological engineer at USU
and be the future.
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