Chlorella

U.T. researchers breaking new ground in biofuels

General Algae News , , , , ,

With the price of gas still putting a serious dent in your pocketbook, the search for alternatives to fossil fuel is a priority for researchers.

Scientists at the University of Texas are making breakthroughs which could turn a common species of green algae named Chlorella into the newest source of diesel fuel for cars and trucks. The process is called “lysing.”

“It’s been well-studied,” Dr. Rhykka Connelly with the U.T. Center for Electromechanics said. “It’s known to produce significant amounts of oil under stress conditions.”

As promising as algae may be, there are still a number of obstacles keeping it from being an economically viable alternative.

The process to extract the oil from the algae is the first challenge faced by researchers. The team at U.T. say they have developed a new cost-effective way to pull the oil from the Chlorella with a new device.

“Before (the procedure), they look nice and round, they look like little tennis balls. Afterwards, their cell walls are stripped off,” Connelly said. “The pulse width is very short, making the power consumption very low, making this a very cost-effective way to bust open the algae.”

Next, researchers are faced with the challenge to separate the oil from the organic matter without using poisonous solvents. The U.T. team says they’ve figured that out as well.

“There’s absolutely no contact with the solvents that are used to remove the algae oil,” Connelly said.

The last hurdle is to grow enough algae to be able to scale up the process. A company involved in the project called AlgEternal designed what they call an “algae reactor”.

“At peak capacity, we’ll be able to offer the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics approximately five thousand gallons a day,” Michael Jochum with AlgEternal said.

All of the equipment used by the U.T. team to turn the algae into oil is compact enough to fit inside of a trailer.

“We can go to any location, back up to that pond and pump in green pond water,” Mike Werst with U.T. said. “We go through the electromechanical lysing. Then we have an oil separation unit where we literally have oil dripping out the other end.”

The end product is similar to vegetable oil and still needs to be refined, but thanks to the work here at UT, algae-based biofuels may soon be a viable replacement for fossil fuels.

Source: http://austin.ynn.com/content/top_stories/280583/u-t–researchers-breaking-new-ground-in-biofuels

Solazyme-Roquette’s algal flour promises exciting future for delicious, low-fat food

General Algae News , , , , , , 0 Comment

Algal flour may provide a one-step solution to the challenges of fat-reduction in foods, with low-fat cookies, crackers, and salad dressings possible new arrivals on supermarket shelves, according to Solazyme-Roquette Nutritionals.

Low fat cookies and shortbread... you wouldn't know!

Low fat cookies and shortbread… you wouldn’t know!

Consumer demand for healthy products is growing, but fat reduction in foods is complicated as fats play many roles in food, including adding texture, structure and flavor.

The imminent arrival on the market of Solazyme–Roquette Nutritionals’s high-lipid algal flour may solve many of these problems, however: “If you’d have told me we can make low-fat foods that taste like this, I would have said no way,” Leslie Norris, food applications development for Solazyme, told FoodNavigator-USA.com during a recent visit to the company’s HQ in South San Francisco.

During the visit, your correspondent sampled a range of algal flour products, including chocolate milk and honey mustard dressing, with a taste and mouth-feel as good, if not better, than their full-fat versions, but boasting reductions in fat by as much as 70 percent.

Olive oil-esque

The company’s algal flour does contain lipid (50 percent of the flour is lipid), but the composition is similar to olive oil, explained Norris. It also contains 20 percent soluble fiber and 8 percent insoluble fiber. The ingredient is self-affirmed GRAS (generally recognized as safe).

Ken Plasse, senior director, sales and marketing for Solazyme Nutritionals, explained that the new algal flour is for use as a “primary ingredient alternative to make mainstream processed foods healthier without compromising on taste”.

Chocolate milk formulated with 4.5 percent algal flour not only tasted like the real thing, but contained 16 percent fewer calories, 66 percent less saturated fat, and 71 percent less cholesterol than the full-fat chocolate milk sitting beside it.

Shortbread cookies formulated with 7 percent algal flour and one-third the butter used in normal shortbread came with a label noting a 50 percent reduction in fat and a 57 percent reduction in saturated fat.

Other product prototypes presented included honey mustard dressing boasting 74 percent fewer calories and an 85 percent reduction in fat, compared to full-fat dressing, and a frozen dessert containing 38 percent fewer calories, and a 70 percent reduction in saturated fat, compared with a Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. And the algal dessert tasted creamier.

Solazyme-Roquette Nutritionals is gearing up for a soft launch of its new algal flour this summer, with an official launch scheduled for the latter end of 2011. The JV’s first plant should be on-line by Q4 of 2011, said the company, and products are expected on shelves between the middle of 2012 and early 2013.

JV

Solazyme announced a team-up with France’s Roquette in November 2010, and the joint venture named Solazyme-Roquette Nutritionals was launched.

Unlike other algae initiatives, the joint venture is not targeting individual molecules like DHA omega-3, but “at foods for everyday, microalgal ingredients that give taste, health and functionality, but are also affordable and sustainable”, said Roquette’s Philippe Caillat at the time of the announcement .

What next for algae?

Solazyme’s Plasse noted that more can be expected from algae: “Algae has an ability to naturally create new novel multifunctional ingredients that can provide significant health and functional advantages not available in other products on the market today. It also hits many of today’s top trends including vegan, gluten free, and sustainable production.”

Plasse added that the supplement market already has established algae-derived ingredient, like omega-3, chlorella, and spirulina. “Mainstream food ingredients are up and coming – Algal oils, protein and fibers, or unique combinations of each (like Algal Flour) show the most potential,” he added.

Source: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Product-Categories/Fats-oils/Solazyme-Roquette-s-algal-flour-promises-exciting-future-for-delicious-low-fat-food

Optimum Choices – Offering Healthy Choices for People and Pets

Bioproducts Sites and Shops , , , , , , 0 Comment

Optimum Choices is a trusted (founded 2002) resource for people and pets offering valuable holistic health information. They are offering many products based on algae such asbio algae concentrates. Bio-algae concentrates (BAC) is a generic name used by Dr. Michael Kiriac to denote any blend of nurtured algae (such as blue-green algae, Spirulina, chlorella, etc.). Dr. Kiriac researched over 1,000 different algae and actually used over 65 algae species in many different bio-algae concentrates (BAC), in over 25 years of animal research in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Kiriac experimented on over 20 different species of animals trying to address cancer in animals. Dr. Kiriac finally invented a specific bio-algae concentrate,pigs dead from cancer containing the four microalgae Spirulina pacifica, Spirulina platensis, Dunaliella salina and astaxanthin from Haematococcus pluvialis, that did stop the ongoing epidemic of cancer in controlled trials in their chickens, mink, pigs and cows. Dr. Kiriac has since immigrated to Canada and his company, BioNutrition, manufactures two bio-algae concentrate products called BioSuperfood and BioPreparation.

Source and Shop URL: http://www.optimumchoices.com/

Discover the radiation protective benefits of Spirulina and Chlorella

General Algae News , , , 0 Comment

radiation

Protecting yourself in the event of a serious radiation event involves much more than simply loading up on potassium iodide and various other iodine supplements. While high levels of iodine do protect the thyroid and glandular systems from radiation poisoning, they do not necessarily protect the rest of your body from the devastating and deadly effects of nuclear radiation. However, two amazing superfoods — Spirulina and Chlorella — offer substantiated protection against harmful radiation. They also help to detoxify the body of harmful radiation after exposure, effectively protecting organs and other areas not protected by iodine.

Spirulina, the incredible medical food used to treat child victims of Chernobyl

The numerous curative and health-promoting properties of Spirulina are truly amazing. This blue-green algae superfood is rich in vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and antioxidants, all of which make it highly beneficial as an anti-aging, anti-cancer, and super-detoxifying miracle food (http://www.naturalnews.com/spirulin…).

But little known is the incredible radioprotective power of Spirulina. Numerous studies have found that Spirulina protects the body against — and even heals it from — the damaging effects of harmful radiation.

A 1989 study put forth by researchers from Zhongkai Agriculture and Technology College in China found in tests that Spirulina significantly reduces the gamma radiation-induced micronucleus frequencies in the bone marrow of affected mice. Bone marrow, of course, is responsible for producing new blood cells and maintaining the lymphatic system (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

A 1993 report published by the Research Institute of Radiation Medicine in Belarus confirmed previous research conducted in 1990-91 which found that Spirulina effectively decreases the radioactive load received by the body when consuming radiation-contaminated food. After just 20 days, children fed five-gram doses of Spirulina every day experienced an average 50 percent reduction in urine radioactivity levels (http://www.iimsam.org/publications_…).

In a study released by Mechnikov Odessa State University in Ukraine in 2000, Spirulina proved effective at increasing phosphate, pyruvate, and antioxidant levels in rats with lesions caused by 5 gray units (Gy) of high-energy radiation. Full-body exposure to 5 Gy or more typically leads to death within 14 days, but Spirulina helped to prevent this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

A 2001 study conducted by researchers from the Medical and Pharmaceutical Academe of Yangzhou University in China found that Spirulina extracts effectively protect against both the damage caused by chemotherapy drugs and the damaging effects of gamma radiation exposure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

Those negatively affected by high levels of radiation after working on cleanup efforts following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster experienced improvements in the autoregulatory functionality of their bodily organs and other systems, as well as long-term remission from overall radiation damage, after being treated with a regimen that included Spirulina (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

Spirulina works so well at mitigating the damage caused by radiation that it was actually awarded a Russian patent in 1995 for improving the immunity of children affected by radiation from the Chernobyl disaster. Many exposed children became stricken with chronic radiation sickness and elevated Immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels, and they also tested positive for high allergy sensitivity. But upon consuming roughly five milligrams (mg) of Spirulina a day for 45 days, the children’s IgE levels and allergic sensitivities were restored back to normal.

Conclusively, Spirulina offers remarkable radioprotective benefits in addition to its many other health-promoting benefits. Regular consumption of Spirulina not only helps to boost immune function and normalize the systems in the body that regulate and maintain overall health, but the superfood also offers a surefire way to mitigate the damaging effects of harmful radiation (http://jpronline.info/article/viewF…).

Chlorella, the detoxifying superfood with amazing radioprotective benefits

Much like Spirulina, Chlorella is loaded with an astounding array vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that help detoxify the body of heavy metals and other contaminants. The single-cell algae also helps to prevent and repair DNA damage, balance the body’s pH levels, fight inflammation, improve digestive health, and boost immune function (http://www.naturalnews.com/027894_c…).

And as far as harmful radiation is concerned, Chlorella is a powerful weapon to both prevent radioactive damage and heal it once it has occurred.

A 1989 study put forth by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences demonstrated that Chlorella effectively increases production of bone marrow and spleen stem cells. And in tests, Chlorella greatly helped improve survival rates among mice irradiated with a lethal dose of radioactive gamma rays (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

In 1993, researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India also found that Chlorella is effective at protecting against and mitigating the damage caused by both acute and chronic radioactive damage (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

A 1995 study published in the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology found that when administered before or upon exposure to sub-lethal radioactive gamma rays, Chlorella helps to boost levels of colony-forming spleen cells. Such cells exist within the bone marrow and are essential for the production of vital blood elements and immune factors (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/…).

Ultimately, the incredible detoxifying power of Chlorella is not limited to toxins like mercury, aluminum, and fluoride. Just like it does to toxic heavy metals, Chlorella binds to radioactive particles and literally flushes them out of the body. In complete synergy with its many other health-promoting functions, Chlorella is a vital superfood nutrient that numerous scientific studies have proven helps to guard the body against radioactive damage (http://www.naturalnews.com/027361_c…).

Both Spirulina and Chlorella are absolutely essential weapons in any natural radioprotective arsenal. Together, these powerful sea-based nutrients help to rid the body of radiation and the many other toxins that cause both acute and chronic damage to the body.