Karne de Boer and Parisa A. Bahri

Abstract Microalgae biofuels have been under development for the last 40 years; however, in the last 6 years, this development has intensified due to higher oil prices and wider acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. Despite the excellent potential of algal biofuels, they are not yet commercially viable. The reason for this lack of progress is examined in this chapter by firstly reviewing the range of different technology options for biofuels from microalgae. Secondly, an analysis of the available techno-economic and energy assessments is performed highlighting the effect that each system element has on the overall viability.

17.1 Introduction

Microalgae are a feedstock of great interest for the production of energy, fuels, food, high-value nutritional supplements and specialty chemicals. Microalgae attract this attention because they have high photosynthetic efficiency, can be grown at massive scale on non-arable land, grow rapidly, can thrive in salt or brackish water and naturally produce a range of compounds with commercial value (Borowitzka and Moheimani 2010). Due to the high potential of fuel production from microalgae, research and investment into microalgae development typically occur in earnest after oil price spikes, e. g. the aquatic species program in the USA after the 1970s oil embargo (Sheehan et al. 1998) and the rush of new algae companies and research after the rapidly increasing oil prices between 2007 and 2012 (Ribeiro and da Silva 2012).

Despite these promising characteristics, no one has been able to commercially cultivate and process microalgae at scale for the purpose of producing fuels. The central reason for this slow progress is that it is not economically viable

K. de Boer (H) • P. A. Bahri

School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University,

Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia

e-mail: karne@regenerateindustries. com © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

N. R. Moheimani et al. (eds.), Biomass and Biofuels from Microalgae,

Biofuel and Biorefinery Technologies 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16640-7_17 (ANL et al. 2012; Benemann et al. 2012; DOE 2014). That is, it costs more to grow and convert the algae into fuel than the fuel is worth (Stephens et al. 2010).

This chapter reviews the existing techno-economic models and life cycle anal­yses (with a focus on energy consumption) that have been published on the large — scale production of algal biofuels. The purpose of this review is to provide readers with a clear grasp on future trends in microalgae economics and opportunities for improvement. This review is focused on the economic and energetic feasibility of the biofuel production process as these are the barriers to large-scale commercial deployment.