Sustainable production of energy from microalgae: Review of culturing systems, economics, and modelling

The first generation biofuels primarily produced from crops compete with other food crops for arable land and are recently susceptible as safe and reliable renewable energy resources. The second generation biofuels produced from non-food feedstocks, mainly being microalgae, have been paid increasing attention to. Compared to the first generation biofuels, there are some advantages for microalgae such as high productivity, less land use, low requirement of water quality, environmental use (for wastewater treatment and carbon dioxide (CO2) biomitigation), etc. This paper reviews the current status of the use of microalgae for sustainable production of biofuels and specifically addresses issues to do with culturing systems, processes, economics, and modelling. Open ponds and a variation of closed photobioreactor culturing systems were described in detail. The culture processes are introduced briefly. Techno-economic analyses and analyses of environmental effect mainly due to CO2 biomitigation are performed. Life cycle assessments and the model studies of microalgae production are also reviewed comprehensively in addition. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.