Eseiwi Aifuwa ’19
Chemical and Biological Engineering
Promoting Algae Growith with Photoreactors
I worked on speeding up the process of algae growth in order to promote — and make feasible — further studies in the possible use of algae to produce biofuels. I built a set of photoreactors in order to determine the wavelengths of light that best promote algae photosynthesis. I took daily optical densities in order to track algae growth in the reactors. We found that red light is more effective than green light, but we had issues with controlling contamination. We also worked on thermoelastic substances to possibly reflect the light inside of the reactors. We also considered different agar formulas and discovered that washed — a repeated process of cleaning that takes roughly a week — bacto agar is the most effective type of agar for algae to grow in. Now that we have some results, I am continuing work in the the lab in order to understand why these experiments occurred the way they did.
2017
Alternative Energy
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University
José Avalos, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment