著者

渡邉 信

出版者

一般社団法人日本エネルギー学会

雑誌

日本エネルギー学会誌 (ISSN:09168753)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.92, no.11, pp.1083-1088, 2013-11-20

---

Although many investigations have been carried out on utilization of microalgae for food, energy, and water treatment in past, microalgae have been receiving much more attention since 2007 from the world because of their high productivity of oil, little competitiveness for food production, and growth capacity in both freshwater and marine environments. Over the years, many technologies have been investigated for achieving sustainable biofuel production using oleaginous microalgae; however, existing techniques of algal fuel production are suitable mainly for small-scale procedures or for the recovery or removal of high-value products. The situation strongly influences life cycle assessment (LCA) studies for algal fuel production, and published LCA show different and discrepant results-reliable data on inputs and outputs from industrialscale experiments are needed for solving these problems. The estimate cost of algae fuel production by life cycle cost analysis is still high compared with that of fossil crude oils. The utilizations of waste water, fluegas, and waste heat are indispensable for improving the economy of future algal fuels. Political concerns made by USA government for algal fuel production are very important for accelerating R&D of a future commercialization of algal fuels and innovation of algal fuel technology and would thereby influence on Japan. Japan has several disadvantages for algal biomass productions such as its narrow land, low annual sun irradiance, and long low-temperature period. A coupled hybrid production system comprising of phototrophic and heterotrophic algae has tremendous potential for overcoming these disadvantages.