Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Catalytic gasification of algae in supercritical water for biofuel production and carbon capture

Source: Energy and Environmental Science, vol.2 (2009)
"There has been growing concern about the way cultivating biomass for the production of agro-biofuels competes with food production. To avoid this competition biomass production for biofuels will, in the long term, have to be completely decoupled from food production. This is where microalgae have enormous potential. Here we propose a novel process based on microalgae cultivation using dilute fossil CO2 emissions and the conversion of the algal biomass through a catalytic hydrothermal process."