Carbon dioxide neutral, integrated biofuel facility

E.E. Powell and G.A. Hill

Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 12, 4582-4586

Abstract: Algae are efficient biocatalysts for both capture and conversion of carbon dioxide in the environment. In earlier work, we have optimized the ability of Chlorella vulgaris to rapidly capture CO2 from man-made emission sources by varying environmental growth conditions and bioreactor design. Here we demonstrate that a coupled biodiesel-bioethanol facility, using yeast to produce ethanol and photosynthetic algae to produce biodiesel, can result in an integrated, economical, large-scale process for biofuel production. Each bioreactor acts as an electrode for a coupled complete microbial fuel cell system; the integrated cultures produce electricity that is consumed as an energy source within the process. Finally, both the produced yeast and spent algae biomass can be used as added value byproducts in the feed or food industries. Using cost and revenue estimations, an IRR of up to 25% is calculated using a 5 year project lifespan.

Keywords: Bioethanol; Photosynthetic; Microbial fuel cell; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544210000836
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:35:y:2010:i:12:p:4582-4586

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.02.029

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().