Author:

Abstract:

Nowadays the first generation of biofuels, produced from oilseed crops like rapeseed and maïs, looses his popularity. The major limitations are the competition with natural habitats and food production, the extensive area needed for oilseed crops... . In this respect there is a renewed intrest in micro organisms cumulating bio-oils, the so called Single Cell Oils (SCO). These algal and fungal oils have been studied for several decades, but most of these studies were intrested at the higher value applications. This project aims to implement on an economic scale the production and valorisation of SCO’s from algae and yeasts. A high valorisation potential is expected: - use of high value oil fraction (EPA, GLA, DHA, …) in food applications, - lower value fraction in biodiesel production and - as chemical building blocks. An other target is the valorisation of side streams in order to further increase economics (cell mass, CO2, organic waste...). Project goal and targets are: - optimization of oil producing algae: productivity, illumination..., - optimization of oil producing yeasts: productivity, cheap carbon-source…, - an optimized ‘similar’ down stream processing for both cycles, - an optimized valorisation approach for algae oil and yeast oil, - reuse of side streams: process waters, cell mass, minerals and CO2 and - check on the benefits of a combined system by linking both cycles ('Bi-Cycle')