Microalgal biomass production offers a number of advantages over conventional biomass production including, higher productivities, use of otherwise non productive land, reuse and recovery of waste nutrients, use of saline or brackish waters, and reuse of CO 2 from power-plant flue-gas or similar sources. Microalgal biomass production and utilization offers potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) avoidance by providing biofuel replacement of fossil fuels and carbon-neutral animal feeds. This paper presents an initial analysis of the potential for GHG avoidance using a proposed algal biomass production system coupled to recovery of flue-gas CO 2 combined with waste sludge and/or animal manure utilization. A model is constructed around a 50 megawatt (MW) natural gas fired electrical generation plant operating at 50% capacity as a semi base-load facility. This facility is projected to produce 216 million kWh/240-day season while releasing 30.3 million kg-C/season of GHG-CO 2. An algal system designed to capture 70% of flue-gas CO 2 would produce 42,400 metric tons (dry wt.) of algal biomass/season, and require 880 ha of high-rate algal ponds operating at a productivity of 20 g-dry-wt/m 2-day. This algal biomass is assumed to be fractionated into 20% extractable algal oil, useful for biodiesel, with the 50% protein content providing animal feed replacement, and 30% residual algal biomass digested to produce methane gas, providing gross GHG avoidances of 20%, 8.5% and 7.8% respectively. The total gross GHG avoidance potential of 36.3% results in a net GHG avoidance of 26.3% after accounting for 10% parasitic energy costs. Parasitic energy is required to deliver CO 2 to
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