Anaerobic digestion of microalgae as a necessary step to make microalgal biodiesel sustainable.
By Bruno Sialve, N. Bernet, Olivier Bernard. Biotechnology Advances, 2009
1,213 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The potential of microalgae as a source of biofuels and as a technological solution for CO2 fixation is subject to intense academic and industrial research. In the perspective of setting up massive cultures, the management of large quantities of residual biomass and the high amounts of fertilizers must be considered. Anaerobic digestion is a key process that can solve this waste issue as well as the economical and energetic balance of such a promising technology. Indeed, the conversion of algal biomass after lipid extraction into methane is a process that can recover more energy than the energy from the cell lipids. Three main bottlenecks are identified to digest microalgae. First, the biodegradability of microalgae can be low depending on both the biochemical composition and the nature of the cell wall. Then, the high cellular protein content results in ammonia release which can lead to potential toxicity. Finally, the presence of sodium for marine species can also affect the digester performance. Physico-chemical pretreatment, co-digestion, or control of gross composition are strategies that can significantly and efficiently increase the conversion yield of the algal organic matter into methane. When the cell lipid content does not exceed 40%, anaerobic digestion of the whole biomass appears to be the optimal strategy on an energy balance basis, for the energetic recovery of cell biomass. Lastly, the ability of these CO2 consuming microalgae to purify biogas and concentrate methane is discussed.
Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e0d21705700a98c820e5d5658354ad2e1ca0bbea
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Citations in the corpus
- Biochemical methane potential of microalgae biomass after lipid extraction (2014, background): “Among the different existing pretreatments, those used to hydrolyze the cellulose in microalgae, to access to their lipid material or other specific-prod-uct may be useful to increase the BMP of microalgae [4].”
- Potential of the micro and macro algae for biofuel production: a brief review. (2013, background): “For this purpose, anaerobic digestion is an initial process that can solve the waste biomass issue as well as the energetic and economical balance of such a successful technology for algal biofuel production (Sialve et al. 2009).”
- Biodiesel from microalgae: A critical evaluation from laboratory to large scale production (2013, background): “Microalgae are estimated to require 6–8 tons of nitrates per hectare per year, 55–111 times the requirement of field crops [36].”
- A review on microalgae, a versatile source for sustainable energy and materials (2011, background): “During the process of biodiesel production from microalgae, biomass residues will be generated at different stages, which may contain some commercially valuable substances [70].”
- Algae as promising feedstocks for fermentative biohydrogen production according to a biorefinery approach: A comprehensive review (2015, background): “In this light, 3rd generation biofuels derived from algae could be considered as another viable alternative energy source that is devoid of the major drawbacks associated with the first and second-generation biofuels [3,11–13].”
- A critical review of biochemical conversion, sustainability and life cycle assessment of algal biofuels (2011, neutral): “[48]).”