(512d) Photosynthetic Biohydrogen: A Case Study Integrating Sustainability into the Student Design Experience

There is no more pressing problem for future generations in the third, developing, and industrialized worlds than securing a sustainable, abundant energy supply. Hydrogen has emerged as a potential energy carrier, but a sustainable and efficient method of producing it needs to be identified. Photosynthetic algae can be made to produce molecular hydrogen under the proper conditions. Several research studies from the mid 1990's through today have cited the potential of providing a sustainable, low-impact fuel in the form of hydrogen generated from cultures of photosynthetic algae.

These studies motivated a proposal to the US EPAs P3 program to fund a student design study to determine the feasibility of using algae to produce hydrogen by designing a biohydrogen facility to produce sufficient transportation fuel for a city of 100,000 people. The proposal was funded and a student team formed to conduct the design study as part of the senior design experience at the University of Tennessee. In addition to the paper design study, the students conducted experimental studies in a small scale photobioreactor system to demonstrate the concept and test project assumptions.

The result of this study was to determine the cost and materials and land use requirements for a facility to produce approximately 46 million kilograms of hydrogen annually. This paper follows our experience with the multi-disciplinary team of undergraduate chemical engineering and biochemistry students that completed the study from the proposal to the final competition of the P3 program on the National Mall in Washington, DC.