August 12, 2010, AlgaeIndustryMagazine.com

 LakeMaster Corporation, a clean energy technology company headquartered in Rochester, New York, is engaged in the development and commercialization of a proprietary algal to biofuel system that captures carbon dioxide.The company recently filed for a patent on their photo-bioreactor (patent pending) to grow algae as a feedstock to produce biofuel using CO2. The system will be used for carbon capture at coal-fired power plants (CFPP) for the electric power industry. LakeMaster expects to install its first pilot project in 2011 and a full-scale operating system the following year.

The Company’s post-combustion CO2 capture technology, called Capture-It™, can be applied to existing and proposed coal-fired power plants (CFPP) to capture CO2. The captured CO2 feeds the growth of algae, which is then turned into useful products.

Figure 1: LakeMaster Algae System

Figure 2: Northern Biodiesel, Inc. Biodiesel Refinery Module.

Oil extracted from the algae will be piped as feedstock to an on-site refinery module supplied by Northern Biodiesel, Inc., Ontario, NY. LakeMaster and NBI are partnered to produce biofuel in an integrated algal to biofuel system. NBI currently processes biodiesel fuel from grease and animal fat and will process all of LakeMaster’s lipid oil from algae at power plant sites. The current NBI biodiesel plant has the capacity to produce up to 20 million gallons of biodiesel fuel annually.

Figure 3: LakeMaster Photo-Bioreactor (patent pending).

The heart of the LakeMaster Capture-It technology is its new photo-bioreactor design. The LakeMaster bioreactor takes in huge amounts of CO2 from the CFPP flue gas. The bioreactor also feeds the algae nutrients and provides the optimum amount of light, both natural and artificial, to produce the highest oil content in the shortest amount of time.

Algae respond to a certain spectrum of light. Fortunately, LED’s come in red and blue, colors of light in the spectrum that algae respond to most favorably for growth. Growing algae commercially to produce lipid oil and other products in the Northeast is a challenge. Controlling all aspects of the process including temperature, pH, and light intensity are critical. However, lipid oil can be as much as fifty percent of the algae biomass.

The entire system is designed in modules from the bioreactors to the refinery module. This makes for easy installation, maintenance and replacement when necessary.

“LakeMaster is attempting to grow algae continuously under controlled conditions to remediate a serious greenhouse gas problem,” said William Alexander, company president. Alexander added, “Our system will draw on green energy for lighting to grow the algae, and to run production equipment to produce biofuels in large quantity. We are in the prototype stage and we expect to build an on-site pilot project at a power plant in 2011 and then scale up the process for other CO2 producing sites,” he said.

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