A STUDY ON DEVELOPMENT OF ALGAL BIOFUEL AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN KOREA

Abstract

Algae, which live in salt and brackish water as well as freshwater, grow by photosynthesis using sunlight, carbon dioxide, water, and inorganic nutrients. Algae can be used to remove nutrients from wastewaters and carbon dioxide (CO2) from flue gas. In large-scale open pond systems, above 99% of CO2 in media-enriched water can be converted to oxygen and biomass. Algae also store energy from sunlight, holding 9% of chemical energy in their biomass under ideal growth conditions. Algal mass culture for oil production represents an excellent alternative to food crops based biofuels which require the use of agricultural lands. Algae farming can be done on low value and/or unused lands using wastewater with other renewable energies without creating a disagreement between food and fuel for consumers in the world. However there several technical bottlenecks have still remained to be economically feasible even much efforts has been made to produce biofuel (bioethanol and biodiesel) from various resources such as food crops, cellulosic plants and many macro-/microalgae. Major bottleneck for producing bioethanol is to break down efficiently the cellulose and hemicellulose with using expensive enzymes. And major bottleneck for producing biodiesel is to maintain good quality of lipids and high extraction yield from plants and algae. However, only few results seemed to meet the economic feasibility even though numerous data have been reported so far. The purpose of this project is to develop low-cost, high-efficiency renewable biofuel from marine biomass using new technologies. The main focuses of this project include the following: investigation of appropriate marine biomass resources including macroalgae and microalgae; identification of ideal growth conditions and improved methods of genetic analysis and production; application of new enzymes and microbes to increase an efficiency of ethanol production; optimization of scale-up processes for microalgae mass culturing; and