(Speaking of Exxon) MSU partners with ExxonMobil to advance biofuel research
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2015/msu-partners-with-exxonmobil-to-advance-biofuel-research/[font face=Serif]Published: Sept. 30, 2015
[font size=5]MSU partners with ExxonMobil to advance biofuel research[/font]
[font size=3]A new $1 million relationship between Michigan State University and ExxonMobil will expand research designed to progress the fundamental science required to advance algae-based fuels.
David Kramer, MSUs John Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics at the MSU-DOE Plant and Research Laboratory, says that the overall goal of the partnership is to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in microalgae to produce biofuels and bioproducts.
The project will take advantage of these natural variations as well as a suite of new technologies developed by the Kramer lab at PRL that allow rapid, high-throughput testing of photosynthetic efficiency of many algal lines under simulated growth conditions. One of these technologies, developed through a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program) is a matrix of specialized chambers, called the
environmental PhotoBioReactor, that allow algae to be studied in detail under simulated production environments.
The second Kramer lab technology, developed with support from the Photosynthetic Systems and Physical Biosciences programs at the DOE (Basic Energy Sciences program), is called
PhotosynQ and is a network of portable sensors called MultispeQ that are being used by many researchers around the world to probe photosynthesis. These sensors allow the Kramer lab to measure the photosynthetic processes in many algal cultures at the same time under different conditions to learn why some strains are more efficient than others.
[/font][/font]