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Biomass and Biofuels from Microalgae pp 289–310Cite as

Harvesting and Downstream Processing—and Their Economics

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Part of the book series: Biofuel and Biorefinery Technologies ((BBT,volume 2))

Abstract

Harvesting of dilute cultures of algae from large volumes of culture needed for production of biofuels and bioproducts is a substantial hurdle to the economic viability of algal biofuels. While centrifugation and sedimentation are already scaled to volumes that would allow direct application to algal biofuel production, their economics to the production of biofuel are not favorable. The industry has reevaluated the existing technologies and continues to innovate around the harvesting of microalgae for biofuels and bioproducts. This review discusses the historical approaches and recent advances while comparing and contrasting the different methods. An engineering estimate of comparative costs is also provided.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the US DOE CCS Program (Grant No. DE-FE0001888 to Phycal) that funded research presented for filtration of microalgae in this review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BrioBiotech LLC, P.O. Box 26, Glenelg, MD, 21737, USA

    F.C. Thomas Allnutt

  2. Phycal Inc, 51 Alpha Park, Highland Heights, OH, 44143, USA

    Ben A. Kessler

Authors
  1. F.C. Thomas Allnutt
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  2. Ben A. Kessler
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Correspondence to F.C. Thomas Allnutt .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Algae R&D Centre, Murdoch University, Murdoch, West Australia, Australia

    Navid R. Moheimani

  2. School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Murdoch, West Australia, Australia

    Mark P. McHenry

  3. School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Murdoch, West Australia, Australia

    Karne de Boer

  4. School of Engineering and Information Technology, Murdoch University, Murdoch, West Australia, Australia

    Parisa A. Bahri

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Allnutt, F.T., Kessler, B.A. (2015). Harvesting and Downstream Processing—and Their Economics. In: Moheimani, N., McHenry, M., de Boer, K., Bahri, P. (eds) Biomass and Biofuels from Microalgae. Biofuel and Biorefinery Technologies, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16640-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16640-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16639-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16640-7

  • eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)

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