Microalgae Versus Land Crops as Feedstock for Biodiesel: Productivity, Quality, and Standard Compliance

Abstract

Despite certain environmental advantages over fossil diesel, land crop-derived biodiesels may not satisfy the increasing worldwide demand for transportation fuels. As an abundant photosynthesizer, algae could be an adequate surrogate for biodiesel production. Nevertheless, high production costs, scarce selected species, and inaccurate assumptions about production yields represent industrial uncertainties. In this study, a reliable approach to analyzing algal biodiesel production has been developed based on species-to-species variations in oil productivity and quality. This approach compares biodiesels from Chlorophyta strains with land crop feedstock according to (i) potential yields, (ii) oil quality, and (iii) compliance with biodiesel quality standards. Algal yields were assessed by (i) extrapolating the strain-specific laboratory results to commercial-scale growth systems; (ii) converting volumetric to areal biomass productivity; and (iii) estimating oil yields for each strain, as the product of their projected areal biomass productivity for each growth system, and the oil percentage in biomass as determined in the laboratory. Biodiesel fuel properties were estimated by using fatty acid methyl ester profile predictive models. The Chlorophyta strains in this study provided annual oil yields that were generally higher than those of land crops by one order of magnitude. Six strains yielding more than 40 mg oil l −1 day −1 were identified as adequate for sustaining biodiesel production. Trebouxiophyceae algae were the most productive. Critical biodiesel parameters from both feedstock types suggest that most microalgae-derived biodiesels meet international fuel quality standards with better values than those of land crops. Because some of the highly productive feedstock does not simultaneously meet all the standards for a high quality biodiesel, optimization solutions are discussed.

Botryococcus , what to do with it? Effect of nutrient concentration on biorefinery potential

“…This result shows the suitability of Botryococcus oil to biodiesel production. Similar results were achieved in previous works with B. terribilis and B. braunii IBL [6,24,25].…”

“…Previous research papers showed that microalgae can accumulate most of its lipids in the form of FA [8]. Furthermore, the FA profile determines the biodiesel quality parameters [24,25,27]. The authors acknowledge the disadvantages of Botryococcus in comparison with other microalgae strains.…”

“…The autochthonous Botryococcus braunii (IBL-C116) and Botryococcus terribilis (IBL-C117) came from the Microalgae Bank of the Marine Biology Laboratory (LABIOMAR/UFBA/BR) [24,29]. These strains were isolated from a natural lagoon, more information about the location of natural occurrence of the strains can be found at [20].…”

Digestibility and pricing of Chlorella sorokiniana meal for use in tilapia feeds

“…The farming of microalgae as potential raw material for the production of biodiesel has thus expanded rather quickly in recent decades. However, production of biodiesel from microalgae was never shown economically competitive because of high costs associated with agglutination, centrifugation, drying and lysis of cells for extraction of lipids (Demirbas and Demirbas, 2011;Nascimento et al, 2014). In this scenario, research on the use of microalgae by the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, human and animal nutrition has gained grounds in recent years.…”

Lipid profiling and corresponding biodiesel quality of Mortierella isabellina using different drying and extraction methods

“…Our previous studies indicated that fungi have advantages of simultaneously utilizing multiple carbon sources (glucose and xylose) as well as better tolerance to inhibitors (furfural, hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), and aromatic compounds) in lignocellulosic hydrolysates (Ruan et al, 2012(Ruan et al, , 2013. The lipid content in oleaginous fungi ranges from 21% to 74%, which is also comparable to most oleaginous yeasts and microalgae (Nascimento et al, 2014;Ruan et al, 2012). Therefore, the exploitation of fungal lipid is important for the development of microbial biodiesel production on lignocellulosic feedstocks.…”