Principal Investigator Rachel D VanCott
Project Website http://seagrant.mit.edu/marine_algae_biofuels.php
MIT Sea Grant Algae Biofuels program will introduce high school students to the principles of environmental stewardship and climate change through hands-on involvement in the extraction and conversion of algae oil into biodiesel. The program covers material from high-school level biology, chemistry, and physics.
The educational program will be developed in two complimentary but distinct formats:
Benchtop Biofuels -- An interdisciplinary, small-scale classroom project that enables high school teachers to demonstrate and have students participate in the process of growing algae, extracting oil from that algae, and converting the oil into biodiesel.
Biofuels@MIT -- An intermediate-scale production project that culminates in a field trip to an MIT biodiesel processing lab. For this version of the program, students will participate by first growing algae in their classrooms. After the growing phase, the students will travel to the MIT campus to see how oil is extracted from the algae, and how that oil is converted into a biodiesel fuel.