Development of a Novel Biorefinery Concept for Acceleration of Algal Biofuel Commercialization

High costs for algal cultivation and harvesting places significant challenges on the development of commercializable processes solely based on biofuel production.  This is exacerbated still further by the need for high lipid biomass used in the “classical” algal biofuel process involving lipid extraction and upgrading.   Although much effort is being devoted to improving algal productivity and designing novel cultivation and harvesting systems as a means to drive down costs, the economic hurdles for algal biofuel production remain high and the need for short term revenues has caused algae companies to move away from a biofuel focus towards high value products as a commercial strategy.   NREL is working to mitigate this challenge through the development of a novel biorefinery concept based on multiple high volume products taking advantage of the unique composition of algal biomass.  This presentation will provide examples of  biofuels and bioproducts, summarize our progress in process development, and provide results of our techno-economic analysis, indicating the potential of this approach.