FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Students at the University of Arkansas are designing a sustainable future using algae from local streams.

Heather Sandefur Operating backhoe

Heather Sandefur shaping berm for Algal Turf Scrubber

Justin Wright carbon footprint analysis for U of A

Marty Matlock showing Heather Sandefur backhoe controls

William Parker in Hestekin lab

A multidisciplinary group of faculty from the University of Arkansas, funded by the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Program, brought students to campus for the summer for research projects with a common theme – managing and designing ecological services in a sustainable way to increase human prosperity. The group is working with Native American tribes from across the United States to explore sustainability ethics across many cultural traditions.

“It’s a new way of looking at ecosystem management – the way we live on the land,” said Marty Matlock, associate professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering in the Division of Agriculture and principal investigator for the grant.

The initial year of this three-year project involves faculty from many disciplines working with nine students to initiate the four projects. Each project related to the other through the common thread of sustainable ecosystem design and management. Student participants were from many cultural and ethnic backgrounds; five of them are undergraduates at the University of Arkansas.

For Heather Sandefur, a student in the program and a rising junior in the biological and agricultural engineering department, the summer program has been an opportunity to work with others on a real-world problem.

She and four of her fellow students designed and built a 300-foot-long, 1-foot-wide artificial stream designed to grow algae for use as a biofuel. This project, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, is an experiment to determine if such algal production systems can produce high yields year-round in Arkansas.

They worked with the city of Springdale to build the system near the wastewater treatment plant. They are taking water from a source that has adequate nutrients – phosphorus and nitrogen – and using that water to grow a community of wild algae for cellulosic and biodiesel conversion. Promoting the right algal community growth requires a “surger” – a wave machine that pulses water down the artificial stream and provides ideal habitat for the high biomass algae to grow.

This meant that in addition to using math and science to calculate water flow and model maximum algae growth, the students learned to use a backhoe and spent a lot of time moving earth outdoors.

“It was good getting out of the office and doing field work,” Sandefur said. “Solving problems like this is the direction I want to take when I graduate.”

Growing the algae is just part of the equation; the three other projects round out the research experience for other undergraduate student teams. Summer Wilke, a member of the Cherokee Nation and sophomore in civil engineering, worked with Michelle Evans-White, an assistant professor of biological sciences, to explore the factors that control how stream ecosystems function – nutrients, flow, algae and macroinvertebrates. Understanding how algal growth is affected by these variables is key to making algae a viable biofuel.

Once the Smithsonian Institute system is completed and growing algae, assistant professor Jamie Hestekin from chemical engineering will be working on ways to create fuel from the plant material.

“Jamie’s project will develop more effective methods to use algal feedstocks to make biofuels, especially butanol,” Matlock said.

The fourth project, led by geosciences professor Steve Boss and Jennie Popp from agricultural economics and agribusiness, investigated the greenhouse gas footprint of University of Arkansas faculty and staff who travel in a given year. This project provides context for the others, Matlock said, because they can use the information to calculate how much biofuel would need to be generated to offset the carbon footprint of university travel.

The team of researchers includes Matlock and Tom Costello from biological and agricultural engineering; Kim Smith, Evans-White and Cindy Sagers from biological sciences; Popp from agricultural economics and agribusiness; Boss and Ralph Davis from geosciences; and Hestekin from chemical engineering. 

This project includes faculty in three colleges, including the College of Engineering, the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences, as well as the Division of Agriculture.