As time continues to move forward, global climate change is becoming an ever-growing issue. In order to mitigate the effects of global warming, we as a society need to change our ways of living. Due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, there is an increased amount of pollutants emitted into the atmosphere that are slowly damaging the earth. In today’s world, most of the energy production is coming from fossil fuel burning, which is the key source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere. Energy demand will continue to increase and as of right now, fossil fuels still contribute to 82% of the global demand. The figure below displays gas emissions from various modes of transportation.
Source: bbc.com
An article written in 2020, by Ashokkumar Veeramuthu and team, describes the potential use of microalgae to produce biodiesel. You may be asking, what are microalgae and what the heck is biodiesel? Let’s jump straight into it.
What is Biodiesel?
Biodiesel is made from materials such as plant oils. It’s an alternative to petroleum diesel and emits much less harmful substances into the atmosphere. Since we are slowly killing our planet, replacing our non-renewable energy sources with green alternative sources doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
Why use Microalgae?
You may be wondering, what is so special about microalgae? Why can’t we use some type of terrestrial plant like corn to produce biodiesel? Studies show that the use of microalgae is the best option for the production of a renewable and sustainable source of energy. Microalgae are photosynthetic organisms living in wet environments that can convert sunlight, water and CO2 into biofuel. There has been a shift of attention towards microalgae to produce biodiesel because microalgae provide many advantages over terrestrial plants. The benefits of microalgae include high lipid concentrations (which can easily be converted to biodiesel through a process called transesterification), rapid growth and minimal nutrient requirements. The table below compares values of the biodiesel productivity of microalgae and other plants.
Biodiesel productivity of different feedstocks. Source: intechopen.com
Microalgae also tend to grow 10x more rapidly than terrestrial plants and less than 10% of the land is required to produce the same amount of biomass. Additionally, microalgae don’t require large amounts of fertilizers to grow, unlike terrestrial plants. The cultivation of microalgae can be carried out by using wastewater, since it is rich in key nutrients. Furthermore, the use of wastewater decreases costs greatly and makes biodiesel production commercially viable.
This video showcases the general process of biodiesel production in a nutshell:
Source: David T. Kearns (YouTube)
In today’s world, there’s a shift of attention to deal with the issue of climate change. From Elon Musk creating fully electric vehicles to Joe Biden rejoining the Paris climate accord within hours into presidency, we as humans are finally taking initiative to save our planet. The future of creating fuels from microalgae sounds promising and having a range of renewable sources of green energy will be beneficial to us in the coming time.
– Parwaz Gill
