Minutes for meeting 8

Posted by Stella Kin

Thursday 2 December

Present: Stella Kin, Bryan McCulloch, Rachel Nichol, Christopher Sanderson

Apologies: Louise Anton

Next meeting: Friday 3 December, 12pm, King's College 

 

1. Walk through presentation slides

Rachel's slides added to the presentation. Stella's slides are generally complete, but the script needs to be rearranged to reflect the changes in the slides. It also needs to be cut down severely and find the right balance of brevity and detail. 

Discussion around Chris's slides: 

• 'Challenges ahead' will be preceded by an 'advantages of algae' slide to hammer home why we have chosen this option, given the limited yield information available. 
• 'Challenges' should have a positive spin, with solutions if possible. Given that there is no guarantee of success, the venture is one of high risk. However if we are successful, the potential to partner with a private company provides significant rewards. Bryan has a paper on upscaling that quantifies the costs. Chris has done research on the obstacles faced in genetic engineering. Chris will provide a rough script or bullet-points for tomorrow.
• 'Competitors' will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of 1st, 2nd and 4th gen. We can also make a comparison to open pond 'raceways' which are currently the only efficient source of algal biodiesel (on the small scale). Stella will comb through the weblog to look for other comparisons we can make. 

Bryan highlighted the importance of selecting algae that produced not only high yields of oil, but high quality oil, i.e. consideration needs to be given to the type of polysaturates that are being produced. This may allow us to narrow down the strains that need to be looked at and suggest some examples in the weblog. (At what point should we mention this in the presentation? At the start in Stella's slides?)

Bryan will continue the research into relevant costs for the business plan, with slides and a script for the next meeting. A rough timescale was drafted. The plan is for the GM outsourcing to be an ongoing project which can continuously be improved, while the startup tests each batch of algae for oil yield and quality. 

Rachel will write and present the summary once each section is complete.

Louise will complete the script and slides for the next meeting.

Following meeting will include a rehearsal of the presentation. Possible plans to meet on Saturday and a final rehearsal on Monday mornirng.