Technoeconomic Evaluation of Microalgae Oil Production: Effect of Cell Disruption Method

Abstract

Microalgae have a high capacity to capture CO2. Additionally, biomass contains lipids that can be used to produce biofuels, biolubricants, and other compounds of commercial interest. This study analyzed various scenarios for microalgae lipid production by simulation. These scenarios include cultivation in raceway ponds, primary harvest with three flocculants, secondary harvest with pressure filter (and drying if necessary), and three different technologies for the cell disruption step, which facilitates lipid extraction. The impact on energy consumption and production cost was analyzed. Both energy consumption and operating cost are higher in the scenarios that consider bead milling (8.79–8.88 kWh/kg and USD 41.06–41.41/kg), followed by those that consider high-pressure homogenization (HPH, 5.39–5.46 kWh/kg and USD 34.26–34.71/kg). For the scenarios that consider pressing, the energy consumption is 5.80–5.88 kWh/kg and the operating cost is USD 27.27–27.88/kg. The consumption of CO2 in scenarios that consider pressing have a greater capture (11.23 kg of CO2/kg of lipids). Meanwhile, scenarios that consider HPH are the lowest consumers of fresh water (5.3 m3 of water/kg of lipids). This study allowed us to develop a base of multiple comparative scenarios, evaluate different aspects involved in Chlorella vulgaris lipid production, and determine the impact of various technologies in the cell disruption stage.

Simulation and Economic Analysis of the Biotechnological Potential of Biomass Production from a Microalgal Consortium

“…This stage represents only 0.5% of the total operating costs of the process, of which 1.6% is due to the consumption of fresh water for washing the biomass, 0.8% is due to energy consumption, 6.1% is for labor, and 91.5% is associated with the costs associated with the facilities, such as equipment maintenance, among others. This technology has been compared in the literature with centrifugation (a widely used technique), and it has been shown that filtration has lower operating costs and lower energy consumption, saving 25-90% of energy [36,37]. Finally, in the extraction stage, the wet biomass is mixed with the solvent and then the chlorophyll is separated using evaporation.…”

Research progress and prospect of low-carbon biological technology for nitrate removal in wastewater treatment

“…Thus, simultaneous CO 2 capture of industrial flue gas and wastewater treatment via microalgae recently have attracted increasing attention (Zhang et al, 2023b). CO 2 capture efficiency of 102.13 t/a was achieved through the cultivation of microalgae Chlorella vulgaris in a raceway pond (Valdovinos-García et al, 2020). In addition, the sulfur oxides (SO x ) and nitrogen oxide (NO x ) in the flue gas can be also removed by microalgae.…”

The High-Value Product, Bio-Waste, and Eco-Friendly Energy as the Tripod of the Microalgae Biorefinery: Connecting the Dots

“…Life cycle inventory (LCI) data were obtained from the literature [22][23][24][25][26][27]. The input and output flow for each step of the process scope are shown in Table 1.…”