Civil and environmental engineering professor awarded grant for work on bioenergy

Wayne State University's Yongli Zhang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been awarded a 2015-16 University Research Grant for her work on the sustainable development of renewable bioenergy. The funds will directly support her ongoing research project, Creation of a Spatially and Temporally Explicit Life Cycle Assessment Tool: Understanding the Realistic Potential of Algae Biofuel.

Zhang's work is one of the many faculty projects in the College of Engineering that include student researchers. Javad Roostaei, Ph.D. student, and Anvesha Dogra, a master's student, are gaining valuable hands-on experience working with Zhang on this project.

Algae fuel is an alternative to traditional energy sources like fossil fuels in that it uses algae as its source of natural deposits. This process is possible because, like fossil fuel, algae fuel releases CO2 when burnt, but algae fuel only releases CO2 recently removed from the atmosphere.

"The ultimate goal of my research is to enable sustainable production of algae biofuels to address the challenges associated with conventional fossil fuels such as source depletion and environmental pollution," explains Zhang.

These sustainability efforts are enacted by integrating algae biofuel production with water remediation and climate change mitigation, the latter via the removal of emerging contaminants (e.g., pharmaceuticals and personal care products) and carbon sequestration by algae cultivation.

"Water and energy are two critical resources inextricably and reciprocally linked," says Zhang. "The generation of energy requires large amounts of water, and the treatment and distribution of water are dependent on reliable and low-cost energy."

The overall objective of this research is to develop a spatially and temporally explicit life cycle methodology (STEL) by using algae biofuel production in the United States as a case study. This new and dynamic life cycle modeling will result in transformational advances in the methodology of life cycle assessment (LCA) by providing the ability to forecast potential impacts of emerging technical, environmental and socioeconomic factors on this rapidly developing technology. The success of her research has the potential to improve quality of life by providing cost-competitive algae biofuels with environmental benefits including reduction of carbon emission, removal of emerging contaminants and improvement of water quality.

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Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students. For more information about engineering at Wayne State University, visit engineering.wayne.edu.