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Integration of microalgae cultivation with industrial waste remediation for biofuel and bioenergy production: opportunities and limitations

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An Erratum to this article was published on 09 April 2011

Abstract

There is currently a renewed interest in developing microalgae as a source of renewable energy and fuel. Microalgae hold great potential as a source of biomass for the production of energy and fungible liquid transportation fuels. However, the technologies required for large-scale cultivation, processing, and conversion of microalgal biomass to energy products are underdeveloped. Microalgae offer several advantages over traditional ‘first-generation’ biofuels crops like corn: these include superior biomass productivity, the ability to grow on poor-quality land unsuitable for agriculture, and the potential for sustainable growth by extracting macro- and micronutrients from wastewater and industrial flue-stack emissions. Integrating microalgal cultivation with municipal wastewater treatment and industrial CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants is a potential strategy to produce large quantities of biomass, and represents an opportunity to develop, test, and optimize the necessary technologies to make microalgal biofuels more cost-effective and efficient. However, many constraints on the eventual deployment of this technology must be taken into consideration and mitigating strategies developed before large scale microalgal cultivation can become a reality. As a strategy for CO2 biomitigation from industrial point source emitters, microalgal cultivation can be limited by the availability of land, light, and other nutrients like N and P. Effective removal of N and P from municipal wastewater is limited by the processing capacity of available microalgal cultivation systems. Strategies to mitigate against the constraints are discussed.

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  1. Institute for Marine Biosciences, National Research Council of Canada, 1411 Oxford St, Halifax, NS, B3H 3Z1, Canada

    Patrick J. McGinn, Kathryn E. Dickinson, Shabana Bhatti & Stephen J. B. O’Leary

  2. Biotechnology Research Institute, National Research Council of Canada, 6100 Royalmount Avenue, Montreal, QC, H4P 2R2, Canada

    Jean-Claude Frigon & Serge R. Guiot

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  1. Patrick J. McGinn
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  2. Kathryn E. Dickinson
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  3. Shabana Bhatti
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Correspondence to Patrick J. McGinn.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11120-011-9649-x

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McGinn, P.J., Dickinson, K.E., Bhatti, S. et al. Integration of microalgae cultivation with industrial waste remediation for biofuel and bioenergy production: opportunities and limitations. Photosynth Res 109, 231–247 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-011-9638-0

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