Insights into the microalgae cultivation technology and harvesting process for biofuel production: A review

Suparmaniam, Uganeeswary; Lam, Man Kee; Uemura, Yoshimitsu; Lee, Keat Teong; Shuit, Siew Hoong

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2019.109361

Cited by 259 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Focusing on high efficiency and large-scale microalgal cultivation, tubular photobioreactors (PBRs) are considered one of the most suitable culture systems. However, their weak mass transfer, wall growth, photoinhibition, and photolimitations have limited their development [7]. Several tube-based photobioreactors (PBRs) have been designed for microalgal cultivation, but the experimental characterization of the flow field in PBR is difficult and costly [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of a Novel Tubular Microalgae Photobioreactor with Aerated Tangent Inner Tubes: Improvements in Mixing Performance and Flashing-Light Effects

Cui

Yang

Feng

et al. 2020

Archaea

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At present, large-scale and high-efficiency microalgal cultivation is the key to realizing the technology for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bioresource recovery. Meanwhile, tubular photobioreactors (PBRs) have great potential for microalgal cultivation due to their high productivity. To improve the mixing performance and flashing-light effect, a novel tube PBR with the inner tube tangential to the outer tube was developed, whose radial aeration pores are situated along the length of the inner tube. The direction of aeration, aeration rate, light/dark cycle period (L/D), light-time ratio, average turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), and degree of synergy between the velocity and direction of the light field in the PBR were optimized by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and field synergy theory. The results show that a downwards aeration direction of 30° and an aeration rate of 0.7 vvm are the most conducive to reducing the dead zone and improving the light/dark cycle frequency. Compared to the concentric double-tube PBR, the light/dark cycle frequency and light time of the tangent double-tube PBR increased by 78.2% and 36.2% to 1.8 Hz and 47.8%, respectively, and the TKE was enhanced by 48.1% from 54 to 80 cm2·s−2. Meanwhile, field synergy theory can be extended and applied to the design of tubular microalgae PBRs, and the average synergy of the light and velocity gradients across the cross-section increased by 38% to 0.69. The tangential inner tube aeration structure generated symmetrical vertical vortices between the light and dark areas in the PBR, which significantly improved the mixing performance and flashing-light effect. This novel design can provide a more suitable microenvironment for microalgal cultivation and is promising for bioresource recovery applications and improving the yield of microalgae.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of a Novel Tubular Microalgae Photobioreactor with Aerated Tangent Inner Tubes: Improvements in Mixing Performance and Flashing-Light Effects

Cui

Yang

Feng

et al. 2020

Archaea

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“…Also, all of the main steps in the algae process (cultivation, extraction, transportation and combustion) have been identified as potential energy bottlenecks of algae biofuels. [7][8][9] The present literature review focuses on work that presents data applicable to the modelling of HTL of microalgae and macroalgae feedstocks. The reader is referred to a previous paper 4 for further information about the biodiesel process used as reference process in the present assessment.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The energy and environmental impacts of nutrient must be decreased, making use of, for example, waste streams or areas with risk for eutrophication. Also, all of the main steps in the algae process (cultivation, extraction, transportation and combustion) have been identified as potential energy bottlenecks of algae biofuels 7‐9 …”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integration of algae‐based biofuel production with an oil refinery: Energy and carbon footprint assessment

et al. 2020

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Summary Biofuel production from algae feedstock has become a topic of interest in the recent decades since algae biomass cultivation is feasible in aquaculture and does therefore not compete with use of arable land. In the present work, hydrothermal liquefaction of both microalgae and macroalgae is evaluated for biofuel production and compared with transesterifying lipids extracted from microalgae as a benchmark process. The focus of the evaluation is on both the energy and carbon footprint performance of the processes. In addition, integration of the processes with an oil refinery has been assessed with regard to heat and material integration. It is shown that there are several potential benefits of co‐locating an algae‐based biorefinery at an oil refinery site and that the use of macroalgae as feedstock is more beneficial than the use of microalgae from a system energy performance perspective. Macroalgae‐based hydrothermal liquefaction achieves the highest system energy efficiency of 38.6%, but has the lowest yield of liquid fuel (22.5 MJ per 100 MJalgae) with a substantial amount of solid biochar produced (28.0 MJ per 100 MJalgae). Microalgae‐based hydrothermal liquefaction achieves the highest liquid biofuel yield (54.1 MJ per 100 MJalgae), achieving a system efficiency of 30.6%. Macro‐algae‐based hydrothermal liquefaction achieves the highest CO2 reduction potential, leading to savings of 24.5 resp 92 kt CO2eq/year for the two future energy market scenarios considered, assuming a constant feedstock supply rate of 100 MW algae, generating 184.5, 177.1 and 229.6 GWhbiochar/year, respectively. Heat integration with the oil refinery is only possible to a limited extent for the hydrothermal liquefaction process routes, whereas the lipid extraction process can benefit to a larger extent from heat integration due to the lower temperature level of the process heat demand.

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“…The commercialisation of biofuels, which are promising and sustainable substitutes for fossilbased fuels, has been severely restricted to current feedstock technologies which largely rely upon the use of traditional food-based or lignocellulosic biomass [1][2][3][4]. The on-going search for sustainable and renewable feedstock alternatives has led to the recognition of microalgae as a promising long-term feedstock (known as third-generation) capable of meeting global biofuel demands [1,3,[5][6][7]. The potential of microalgae is highlighted by the typical fast growth rate of many strains, leading to high biomass production, and the ability to accumulate carbohydrate (mainly in the form of starch) and lipids, precursor molecules for sugar-based and oil-based biofuels [8,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The strain was grown mixotrophically in Tris-Acetate-Phosphate (TAP) medium[29]: 2.42 g of tris-base, 25 mL of TAP salts (15 g L -1NH4Cl, 4 g L -1 MgSO4.7H2O, 2 g L -1 CaCl2.2H2O), 0.387 mL of phosphate buffer 2.7 M (288 g L -1 K2HPO4, 144 g L -1 KH2PO4), 1 mL of trace components[50], and 1 mL of acetic acid, brought to 1 L with deionised water. For nutrient-dependent experiments a microalgal inoculum was propagated in 150 mL of TAP medium until the late stationary phase (5-7 days), reaching a cell dry weight of 0.001 g mL -1 (5.47x106 cells mL -1 ). The inoculum was placed in an orbital shaker at 150 rpm, 25 °C, and illuminated from above (125 μmol m -2 s -1 ) in a light/dark photoperiod of 16/8 h. Nutrient-dependent cultures: Mixotrophic growth dynamics co-limited by nitrogen and phosphorus were evaluated by growing microalgal cultures under different initial nitrogen (N0), phosphorus (P0), and acetic acid (A0) concentrations with respect to standard [TAP] medium (Error!…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimising microalgal cultivation for biofuels production: the biorefinery paradigm

Figueroa-Torres

Pittman

Theodoropoulos

2020

Preprint

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Background: Microalgae are regarded as a viable biorefinery platform for the sustainable and cost-effective production of biofuels and other value-added chemicals. However, to allow this promising biomass to compete with existing biofuel feedstock technologies, it is necessary to exploit multi-product platforms and to identify optimal microalgal cultivation strategies maximising the microalgal metabolites from which biofuels are obtained: starch and lipids. Whilst nutrient limitation is widely known for increasing starch and lipid formation, this cultivation strategy can greatly reduce microalgal growth. This work presents an optimisation framework combining predictive modelling and experimental methodologies to simulate microalgal growth dynamics and identify optimal cultivation strategies.Results: Microalgal cultivation strategies for maximised starch and lipid formation were successfully established by developing a multi-parametric kinetic model suitable for the prediction of mixotrophic microalgal growth dynamics co-limited by nitrogen and phosphorus. The model’s high predictive capacity was experimentally validated against various datasets obtained from laboratory-scale cultures of Chlamydomonas reinhardtti CCAP 11/32C subject to different initial nutrient regimes. The identified model-based optimal cultivation strategies were further validated experimentally and yielded significant increases in starch (+270 %) and lipid (+74 %) production against a non-optimised strategy.Conclusions: The optimised microalgal cultivation scenarios for maximised starch and lipids, as identified by the kinetic model presented here, highlight the benefits of exploiting modelling frameworks as optimisation tools that facilitate the development and commercialisation of microalgae-to-fuel technologies.

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Insights into the microalgae cultivation technology and harvesting process for biofuel production: A review

Cited by 259 publications

References 92 publications

Simulation of a Novel Tubular Microalgae Photobioreactor with Aerated Tangent Inner Tubes: Improvements in Mixing Performance and Flashing-Light Effects

Simulation of a Novel Tubular Microalgae Photobioreactor with Aerated Tangent Inner Tubes: Improvements in Mixing Performance and Flashing-Light Effects

Integration of algae‐based biofuel production with an oil refinery: Energy and carbon footprint assessment

Optimising microalgal cultivation for biofuels production: the biorefinery paradigm

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