Aquaculture America 2024

February 18 - 21, 2024

San Antonio, Texas

THE MARINE ALGAE INDUSTRIALIZATION CONSORTIUM (MAGIC): DEVELOPMENT OF MARINE MICROALGAE FOR THE SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF FOOD, FEED, AND FUEL

Zackary Johnson

Duke University

135 Duke Marine Lab Rd.

Beaufort NC 28516 USA

zij@duke.edu

 



 The Marine Algae Industrialization Consortium (MAGIC) was  originally formed to address pressing challenges in the commercialization of microalgae as a source of biofuel with the major goal to  (1) Model the sustainable supply of 1 million metric tonnes ash free dry weight (AFDW) cultivated algal biomass and (2) Demonstrate valuable co-products produced along with biofuel intermediates to increase value of algal biomass by 30%.  To achieve these goals, the project demonstrated and validated high-value co-products to drive down the cost of biofuel by increasing the value of algae “co-products” towards increasing the selling price of total algae biomass as one of the key drivers of economics and adoption. This was accomplished through five core, interdependent tasks including: (1) strain selection to identify and deliver strains for mass culture, (2) mass culture using a hybrid cultivation system and following key operating parameters for downstream applications to provide algae feedstock, (3) recovery and conversion to evaluate two alternative methods to separate dry algae biomass into oil and residuals for downstream testing, (4) product assessment to determine biofuel, aquafeed or poultry feed product efficacy using algae biomass fractions as well as to provide critical performance data for valuation and (5) commercialization to use technoeconomic and life cycle assessments (TEA/LCA) as iterative design and assessment tools including consideration of target markets, competitors, and distribution channels to guide product assessment, development and valuation.   Here we provide a summary of this multi-institutional, multi-year, multi-disciplinary project that  successfully demonstrated all of the components of an end-to-end process from mass microalgae cultivation and dewatering, to recovery and conversion of algae biomass components, to final product demonstration and process valuation; the combined results provide  essential data and a  framework for future commercialization of algae based bioproducts.