Biorefinery of algae: Technical and economic considerations

Abstract

Microalgae accumulate a variety of compounds. A cascading biorefinery approach aims at recovering multiple algae compounds to valorize the complete biomass and to improve the economics of the values chain. Different aspects of cascading biorefinery approaches are discussed, including (1) the impact of multiple compound recovery in a cascading approach on extraction technologies compared to single compounds approaches, (2) biorefinery concepts, (3) examples of biorefinery concepts that were evaluated on a lab scale, (4) economic aspects, and (5) future needs. Although theoretical algal biorefinery concepts have been reported frequently, publications describing experimental data supporting the feasibility of the concepts are rather poor and mostly related to small-scale experiments. There is a need for more experimental data, up-scaling, demonstration of potentially viable value chains, and production of larger quantities of algae-based products for application tests aiming at downstream market development.