Sustainable Biorefinery Design for Algal Biofuel Production

Algae are the most promising biomass resources for biofuel production when compared with rst and second generations of biomass resources. In recent years, algae have been widely studied for biofuel production such as biodiesel, biogas, bioethanol, biohydrogen, and biochar because of their promising advantages. Although the rst algal studies were carried out on biodiesel production from algal oil, energy demand results in the production of dierent algal fuels such as bioethanol and biogas. At the same time, technological developments are continued for algal biodiesel production with high productivity by using novel cultivation and harvesting methods and in situ biodiesel production. In addition to these traditional products, recent trends on utilizing biomass for biohydrogen production are also implemented for algae, which can be used as substrate or microorganism that performs photolysis process for biohydrogen production, even though biohydrogen production from various biomass sources is still a need forContentsmore innovations; algal biohydrogen production comes into prominence due to their advantages and physiological properties. In addition to direct usage of algae for biofuel production, the remains of algae, which are obtained aer various biofuel production processes, can be utilized for dierent purposes such as fertilizer and animal feed. It is clear that the implementation of algal biomass for dierent fuel production is promising, but how to fully use this biomass in industrial level and how to reduce waste and costs need more investigation. In this chapter, the detailed process of liquid, gas, and solid fuels from algae will be mentioned with their pros and cons, and most importantly, algal biorenery concept through production process will be introduced for the purpose of eective usage of algal biomass as a feedstock for biofuel production.