Microalgae: The Basis of Mankind Sustainability

Francisco G. Acien-Fernandez, Jose M. Fernandez-Sevilla and Emilio Molina Grima

A chapter in Case Study of Innovative Projects - Successful Real Cases from IntechOpen

Abstract: Microalgae were the basis of life into the planet, but only recently these microorganisms are exploited at a commercial scale. Thus, the production of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, feed, and foods from microalgae is today a commercial reality increasing year by year. Additionally, microalgae have been proposed to be used to enhance the sustainability of existing industrial activities, as wastewater treatment and biofuel production. In this way, the utilization of microalgae at a large scale is considered a green revolution in the sustainability of mankind. This chapter is focused on reviewing the real contribution of microalgae to human activities. The last improvements of technologies and its uses, in addition to still existing bottlenecks for the massive exploitation of these microorganisms, are reviewed.

Keywords: microalgae; sustainability; food production; biomass; bioenergy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/54819 (text/html)

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:ito:pchaps:112913

DOI: 10.5772/67930

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from IntechOpen
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Slobodan Momcilovic ().