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CO2 Sequestration Through Algal Biomass Production

  • Chapter
Algal Biorefinery: An Integrated Approach

Abstract

The world is facing the threat of global warming. This is associated with the modernization and increasing dependency of human beings on the fossil fuel. Fossil fuel are necessary for providing the increasing demand on energy. However, their combustion produces greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, NOx, water vapour etc. (Kumar K et al., Bioresour Technol 102(8):4945–4953, 2011). CO2 is also continuously being added into the earth’s atmosphere through several natural sources such as volcanic eruptions, combustion of organic matters, autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration (Kumar K, Das D, Carbon dioxide sequestration by biological processes. In: Bhanage BM, Arai M (eds) Transformation and utilization of carbon dioxide. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 303–334, 2014; Sharma A et al., Enzyme Microb Technol 48:416–426, 2011). However, robust natural mechanisms of CO2 capture could maintain the balance of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. Global carbon cycle is disturbed mainly due to anthropogenic emissions of CO2 because of human activity (Kumar K, Das D, Carbon dioxide sequestration by biological processes. In: Bhanage BM, Arai M (eds) Transformation and utilization of carbon dioxide. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 303–334, 2014). Coal is the major contributor of CO2, which is in the range of 14–17 % depending upon its quality. Therefore, coal-based industries such as cement, steel and thermal power plants pollute the earth’s environment to a greater extent.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Advanced Biomass R&D Center (ABC) of Korea Grant funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (ABC-2010-0029728) and the New & Renewable Energy of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) Grant funded by the Korea government Ministry of Knowledge Economy (2012T100201665).

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  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, KAIST, 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-701, Republic of Korea

    Kanhaiya Kumar, Sanjiv Kumar Mishra, Gang-Guk Choi & Ji-Won Yang

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  1. Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

    Debabrata Das

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Kumar, K., Mishra, S.K., Choi, GG., Yang, JW. (2015). CO2 Sequestration Through Algal Biomass Production. In: Das, D. (eds) Algal Biorefinery: An Integrated Approach. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22813-6_2

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