Technical insights into carbon dioxide sequestration by microalgae: A biorefinery approach towards sustainable environment

The escalating level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere poses a severe environmental issue. Vital steps have to be taken to ensure that this emission of gases is reduced to acceptable levels. One such way is CO2 sequestration using microalgae. Microalgae is a simple photosynthetic microorganism that could be a group of unicellular or simple multicellular forms that can fix this atmospheric CO2 or from many other sources such as exhaust gases to minimize the amount released to the air. This review deals with different designs of microalgae photobioreactors and the production of valuable biomass, which may help in the study of implementing a better, larger, and economically sustainable system to sequester a much amount of CO2 and the wide range of value-added products with harvested biomass. In addition, physicochemical factors' influence on photobioreactor configurations for improvement of biomass productivity and CO2 sequestration are also discussed. Moreover, algal bio-refinery idea is introducing a variety of industrial applications and makes this more economic feasibility of CO2 sequestration.

Automated summary

This article discusses the use of microalgae for CO2 sequestration, including different designs of photobioreactors and biomass production. It also examines the influence of physicochemical factors on reactor configurations and introduces the concept of algal bio-refinery and its industrial applications.