Microalgae Culture Case Study

2. Why Choose Microalgae culture or Microalgae as an Ideal biomass? Or Microalgae: advantages and disadvantages
The microalgae culture have the infinite potential to be used as primary producers of biomass in coming years, eventually they will turn out to be as most significant energy source. They can act as feedstock for several types of renewable fuels such as ethanol, methanol, biodiesel, methane and hydrogen. Table 1 represents certain feedstocks used for biofuel production (Chisti 2007; Dominguez-Faus et al., 2009; Mata et al., 2010; Singh et al., 2011; Ziolkowska et al., 2014; Milano et al., 2016). After analysing the table it seems such that microalgae have the potential to completely replace the other feedstocks from first and second
f) The actual biodiesel yield per hectare of microalgae culture is almost 80% of the yield that of crop oil plants. The microalgae have the potential to produce more than 80% of oil content by weight of dry mass. The selection of potentially high oil producing species will be beneficial as the oil productivity of microalgae culture greatly exceeds the oil productivity of the crop plants.
g) The use of microalgae culture to produce biofuel will not hinder the production and use of food, fodder and other value-added products derived from crop oil plants.
h) The microalga farming has proved to be most cost effective as compared to conventional farming. They can be practically grown and harvested all year round, thus improving the production of biomass and eliminating problems linked with storage.
i) Value-added biological derivatives with lots of commercial applications in number of areas including biofuels, therapeutics (pharmaceuticals), food additives, cosmetics, pollution prevention etc. The biogas produced by anaerobic digestion can be burnt to supply all the electric power needed for production and separation of microalgal
Harvesting of dilute suspensions of microalgae culture is not energy efficient. Methodologies need to be developed for recycling water, nutrients and energy using environmental footprint. The enhancement of microalgae culture proves to be very important prospective source for potential future renewable energy. The higher content of water in the microalgal cells requires more energy for harvesting and drying, thereby increasing the energy and cost of total production. The higher capital cost and intensive care required by microalgal farming compared to conventional agricultural farming hampers the commercial application of the microalga for biofuels production. The economics of producing microalgal biofuel needs to be enriched extensively inorder to compete with petroleum based products. However all these disadvantages can be overcome and diminished by utilizing microbial metabolic and genetical engineering coupled with biochemistry understanding of microalgae culture which can lead to production of fourth generation of biofuels (Kaur et al., 2011).