https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00854465/file/2009_Sialve_Anaerobic_Digestion_Microalgae_SIALVE_Biotech_Adv.pdf

Anaerobic digestion of microalgae as a necessary step to make microalgal biodiesel sustainable.

Microalgae have recently attracted considerable interest worldwide, due to their extensive application potential in the renewable energy, biopharmaceutical, and nutraceutical industries. Microalgae are renewable, sustainable, and economical sources of biofuels, bioactive medicinal products, and food ingredients. Several microalgae species have been investigated for their potential as value-added products with remarkable pharmacological and biological qualities. As biofuels, they are a perfect substitute to liquid fossil fuels with respect to cost, renewability, and environmental concerns. Microalgae have a significant ability to convert atmospheric CO2 to useful products such as carbohydrates, lipids, and other bioactive metabolites. Although microalgae are feasible sources for bioenergy and biopharmaceuticals in general, some limitations and challenges remain, which must be overcome to upgrade the technology from pilot-phase to industrial level. The most challenging and crucial issues are enhancing microalgae growth rate and product synthesis, dewatering algae culture for biomass production, pretreating biomass, and optimizing the fermentation process in case of algal bioethanol production. The present review describes the advantages of microalgae for the production of biofuels and various bioactive compounds and discusses culturing parameters.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12934-018-0879-x.pdf

The promising future of microalgae: current status, challenges, and optimization of a sustainable and renewable industry for biofuels, feed, and other products

Algae are an attractive source of biomass energy since they do not compete with food crops and have higher energy yields per area than terrestrial crops. In spite of these advantages, algae cultivation has not yet been compared with conventional crops from a life cycle perspective. In this work, the impacts associated with algae production were determined using a stochastic life cycle model and compared with switchgrass, canola, and corn farming. The results indicate that these conventional crops have lower environmental impacts than algae in energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water regardless of cultivation location. Only in total land use and eutrophication potential do algae perform favorably. The large environmental footprint of algae cultivation is driven predominantly by upstream impacts, such as the demand for CO2 and fertilizer. To reduce these impacts, flue gas and, to a greater extent, wastewater could be used to offset most of the environmental burdens associated with algae. To demonstra...

Environmental Life Cycle Comparison of Algae to Other Bioenergy Feedstocks

Wastewater treatment high rate algal ponds for biofuel production.

Dual role of microalgae: Phycoremediation of domestic wastewater and biomass production for sustainable biofuels production

Modeling the effects of light and temperature on algae growth: State of the art and critical assessment for productivity prediction during outdoor cultivation

http://tur-www1.massey.ac.nz/~ychisti/WatRes09.pdf

Towards a luxury uptake process via microalgae--defining the polyphosphate dynamics.

Phosphorus removal in waste stabilization ponds (WSP) is highly variable, but the reasons for this are not well understood. Luxury uptake of phosphorus by microalgae has been studied in natural systems such as lakes but not under the conditions found in WSP. This work reports on the effects of phosphate concentration, light intensity, and temperature on luxury uptake of phosphorus by WSP microalgae in continuous culture bioreactors. Increasing temperature had a statistically significant "positive effect" on intracellular acid-insoluble polyphosphate concentration. It is likely that elevated temperature increased the rate of polyphosphate accumulation, but because the biomass was not starved of phosphate, the stored acid-insoluble polyphosphate was not utilized. Increasing light intensity had no effect on acid-insoluble polyphosphate but had a "negative effect" on the acid-soluble polyphosphate. A possible explanation for this is that the faster growth rate at high light intensity results in this form of polyphosphate being utilized by the cells for synthesis of cellular constituents at a rate that exceeds replenishment. The variability in the phosphorus content of the microalgal biomass shows that with this new understanding ofthe luxury uptake mechanism there is the potential to optimize WSP for biological phosphorus removal.

/pdf/factors-influencing-luxury-uptake-of-phosphorus-by-d9sekvvzm3.pdf

Factors Influencing Luxury Uptake of Phosphorus by Microalgae in Waste Stabilization Ponds

https://www.massey.ac.nz/~rhaverka/ShiltonWR2006.pdf

Andy Shilton

Papers

Wastewater treatment high rate algal ponds for biofuel production.

Modeling the effects of light and temperature on algae growth: State of the art and critical assessment for productivity prediction during outdoor cultivation

Towards a luxury uptake process via microalgae--defining the polyphosphate dynamics.

Factors Influencing Luxury Uptake of Phosphorus by Microalgae in Waste Stabilization Ponds

Phosphorus removal by an 'active' slag filter-a decade of full scale experience