Minutes for meeting 5

Posted by Stella 
 

Wednesday 24 November

Present: Stella Kin, Louise Anton, Bryan McCulloch, Christopher Sanderson
Apologies: Rachel Nichol 

Next meeting:  Friday 26 November 

1. Discussion of research so far

Louise reiterated that the environmental and societal implications of algal biofuels were limited. Carbon off-setting can be applied through attaching bioreactors to powerstations to use as a source of CO2, using wastewater, and using the remaining biomass as fuel or to sell.

Bryan said from his research, GM looked promising for the future but there isn't anything viable at the moment. Discussion moved to other ways of maximising biomass output and oil output by reducing nitrogen input and light input.

Stella detailed the photobioreactor designs currently available. The most promising are the tubular design and vertical column bubble reactors. There was some concern whether a solar dependent bioreactor would be effective in Scotland, or whether an LED powered bioreactor would be prohibitively expensive. Once the algae type was settled on, comparative yields could be calculated.

2. Decision on photobioreactor design

The choices are narrowed down to tubular structure and vertical column bubble reactors. Team will continue to research these two before making a final decision on Friday.

3. Decision on GM

GM options are to be placed on hold for the moment.

4. Decision on algae

There was no consensus on which was best. By discounting GM as an option, the team should research and choose the algae with the highest yield and best suited to the conditions

5. Any other business

Possibilty of a Saturday or Sunday meeting so that we can stay on schedule for presentation rehearsal start on Monday. Louise gave her apologies as she will not be able to make a weekend meeting or the Monday one.

Chris suggested summarising some of our information and where we are up to on the weblog.

Louise and Bryan had problems logging in to the weblog. Stella suggested in future in the event of weblog failure, to email the information to her to try to post.

Mamen also stated that it would be acceptable to invest all of the money into research if an avenue looked viable. She also suggested writing a summary of the information we have accumulated so far for our own reference.

Action

1. Stella to reorganise some of the pbr research so that it is more user friendly as soon as possible.

2. Team to research tubular photobioreactors and vertical column bubble reactors, using the weblog as a starting point.

3. Team to look at most suitable algae type to use. Some of this information is embedded in the links in the weblog so Stella will dig it out and repost it.

4. Team to distill their research notes into short bullet points ready to paste into the presentation slides.

5. Chris to post a short summary of our work so far on the weblog.

6. Any other research still to go on the weblog should be posted as soon as possible.