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Owing to the declining reserve of fossil resources as well as more concerns on climate change, and essential energy security, and especially the broad consensus on carbon neutralization, it is significantly critical to develop renewable and sustainable energy and chemicals. Algae as alternative resources can be applied to produce biofuels and biochemicals. Among them, algae-derived natural pigments exhibit high market value due to their uses in pharmaceutical and food industries. As a result of the developments of engineering tools, it is feasible to scale up algal processing and applications. Prior to the industrial implementation, life cycle assessment is required to ensure the environmental feasibility of algae-based biofuels and biochemicals. In this article, recent advances in processing algae for liquid, gas, and solid fuels are reviewed. New approaches for enhancing the natural pigment accumulation are also discussed. Recent studies on life cycle assessment of algae-based biofuels and biochemicals, as well as the main challenges faced by the algal biorefinery, are discussed in this manuscript.

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Codensification of agroforestry residue with bio-oil can improve the pellet quality with reduced energy consumption and expand the utilization of bio-oil. This study comprehensively evaluates the effect of bio-oil addition on the storage, transportation, and combustion characteristics of the pellets. The results confirm that under a low pressure of 63.69 MPa bio-oils are more efficient in improving the pellet durability than selected solid additives due to the high viscosity which generated strong adhesion force during densification and enabled stronger particle interlocking of the feedstock. In addition, the hydrophobicity of the apple tree branches pyrolysis oil (APO) added pellets were enhanced, due to the introduction of hydrophobic groups and the improvements in the surface morphology. Besides, APO improved the energy density and fuel characteristics of the pellets via the change of chemical compositions. Above all, addition of the APO additive enhanced the quality of the fuel pellets. Moreover, by achieving high durability under lower pressure, the bio-oil addition could reduce the energy consumption of the densification process.