Dec 2012 - Jun 2017
Direct bioethanol from microalgae
The DEMA consortium aimed to develop and demonstrate a complete economically competitive technology for the direct production of bioethanol from microalgae with low-cost scalable photobioreactors by 2016. The DEMA Project carried out research and development on the complete biofuel-production process at two levels. In the first level, the performance of cyanobacteria were substantially enhanced by a series of metabolic engineering strategies to directly transform CO2, H2O, and sunlight into Bioethanol. In the second level, the bioethanol was continuously extracted from the culture media via a membrane technology process exploiting existing EU expertise and technologies.
Microalgae species: Synechocystis sp., Synechococcus sp.
Program
FP7
Budget
6.4 M€
Duration
54 months
Partners
University of Limerick (Coordinator), Ireland
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
University of Cambridge, UK
Imperial College of London, UK
Portuguese National Institution for Energy and Geology, Portugal
Tereos Océan Indien- eRcane, France
Photanol BV, Netherlands
Pervatech BV, Netherlands
A4F Role
A4F was responsible for the production of the modified bioethanol-producing Synechocystis strain in photobioreactors, at a pilot scale, and for the development of the Masterplan for the Demo Plant.