Algae biorefinery : an experimental study on liquid fuels production and nutrients recycling

Mankind needs renewable resources to cover for the growing energy demand in a sustainable manner and thereby alleviate the environmental/socio/political issues driven by the use of fossil fuels. Biomass, a renewable source, is one of the sustainable alternatives that can contribute to both the production of energy carriers and chemicals. The use of microalgae has been investigated in this thesis for the production of energy in the form of liquid biofuels. The versatility and fast production rates of these microorganisms together with the possibilities of farming them without using valuable arable land, highlights their potential compared to other biomass sources. In the context of algae to fuels, significant efforts have been made in the field of biology/biotechnology to find the most optimal cultivation system for efficient and cheap production of algae. Less has been done on evaluating the performance of the subsequent processes required to convert the algae into fuels. In many cases, little is known about their technical and economic feasibility. Therefore, with the work described in this thesis, we aimed to contribute on that and generate knowledge to scale-up operations in the field of algae processing. Several processes and concepts were evaluated for their potential to be integrated in a biorefinery setting.