Investigating the role of reactor design to maximise the environmental benefit of algal oil for biodiesel

While initially thought to be promising, crop based biofuels are an inadequate alternative to fossilenergy due to the unrealistic space requirement, competition with food crops for land use and greenhouse gas release on clearing for crop land several times greater than biofuels provide throughdisplacing fossil fuels, a factor inadequately accounted for in past studies. In contrast, biodiesel frommicroalgae is of interest due to the lower spatial requirements, much higher oil productivity, no requirement for arable land and rapid growth and harvesting cycles. To ensure the oversights of cropbased biofuels are not repeated, there is a need to explore the sustainability of an algal biorefinery in the context of biodiesel production in this early phase of process development. An integratedbiorefinery approach for the production of multiple products has been seen to improve the overallefficiency of biomass utilization in biofuel systems, contributing to both economic success and environmental sustainability and is of interest for microalgal biodiesel production

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Centre for Bioprocess Engineering Research

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Richardson, Christine

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Harrison, STL

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5409

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5409