A mini Review on algae biofuel in Korea

Abstract

Recently, very productive photosynthetic algae are highlighted in the presence of renewable natural biomass. The carbon-captured algae can be processed into both biofuels and valuable co-products. In Korea, algae biofuel research was initiated in the early 1990s. The research activities were unfortunately stopped due to limited governmental budget and low petroleum prices. Interest on algal biofuels in Korea has been growing recently after 2000 due to an increased oil prices, energy security, greenhouse gas emissions, and the potential for other biofuel feedstock to compete for limited agricultural resources. Despite various efforts and techniques have been reported to produce biofuels from various feedstock, numerous technical bottlenecks have still remained to be economically feasible. Only few reports seemed to meet the economic feasibility although numerous results have been reported to date. We developed a high-pressure liquefying conversion process under semi-supercritical conditions, to directly convert the cellulose to glucose of macroalgae without uses of acid and/or alkali treatments and expensive cellulases. Therefore, the extracts through this process yielded 15&#8211 20% (v/v) of alcohol concentrations by the yeast, compared to 8&#8211 10% (v/v) of alcohol using conventional treatments. For biodiesel production, some microalgae have been cultivated in different culture systems to obtain biomass with hited in the early 1990s. The research activities were unfortunately stopped due to limited governmental budget and low petroleum prices. Interest on algal biofuels in Korea has been growing recently after 2000 due to an increased oil prices, energy security, greenhouse gas emissions, and the potential for other biofuel feedstock to compete for limited agricultural resources. Despite various efforts and techniques have been reported to produce biofuels from various feedstock, numerous technical bottlenecks have still remained to be economically feasible. Only few reports seemed to meet the economic feasibility although numerous results have been reported to date. We developed a high-pressure liquefying conversion process under semi-supercritical conditions, to directly convert the cellulose to glucose of macroalgae without uses of acid and/or alkali treatments and expensive cellulases. Therefore, the extracts through this process yielded 15&#8211 20% (v/v) of alcohol concentrations by the yeast, compared to 8&#8211 10% (v/v) of alcohol using conventional treatments. For biodiesel production, some microalgae have been cultivated in different culture systems to obtain biomass with hi