International Solar Biofuels Consortium

In 2006, Associate Professor Ben Hankamer, who works on biofuel production from microalgae at the University of Queensland, set up the International Solar Bio-fuels Consortium together with Professor Olaf Kruse from the University of Bielefeld in Germany, through IMBcom, the University of Queensland’s commercialisation company for the Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

The consortium currently includes eight international teams running parallel research streams with member institutions including the Universities of Sydney, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Münster and Imperial College London. The Consortium also has an extensive network of partnerships, scientific and industrial collaborations, and commercial links.

Read about Hankamer's latest research into algal biofuels and the future of renewable energy.

“Within the Consortium we basically do everything from economics analysis, biological optimisation through to engineering,” Hankamer says. The consortium and their industry partners therefore offer a breadth of skills required to develop viable microalgal production systems.

“On the biology side, we are isolating native algae and screening them to work out optimal growth conditions for a particular species or genetic strain. There are a lot of possible combinations of factors and we have had to develop statistical models and robotics to do these screens.

“Solid data on exactly how much biomass can be produced from a given algae per unit area are then fed back into established economic models to refine process development. All these data are provided to our engineers in Germany to use in designing bioreactors for growing the algae in different places back here in Queensland, followed by more modelling, costing and optimising.”

The next step then is to test the Consortium’s prototype reactors at the pilot plant level to see which factors require adjustment and whether lab experiments scale effectively to industrial processes. Once they reach that point, the teams can together start to hone in on the best algae, bioreactors and conditions for a given location and application whether it be making oil for biodiesel, methane or hydrogen, for water treatment processes, making high-value nutraceuticals, or a combination of the above.