Large-scale open pond algae biomass yield analysis in India: a case study

Abstract

Global warming, depletion of fossil fuel and increasing demand for energy have led to the substantial interest in developing alternate energy sources, especially biodiesel. First generation biofuels produced from food crops and oil seeds are limited to achieve targets for biodiesel production. Second generation biofuel produced from non-food feed stock such as microalgae provides various potential advantages for biofuel production when compared with first generation biofuels. This paper investigates the possible use of microalgae for biofuel production on the selected potential sites in the country. Algal biomass and oil yield for the selected sites are predicted using the analytical method.

Keywords:

• micro-algae
• biofuels
• India
• photosynthetic efficiency
• biomass yield
• open pond

5. Conclusion

The analytical method presented here based on photosynthetic light efficiency can yield a rough estimates of the algae biomass potential in India under the ambient condition. The biomass and oil yield in the Indian condition was found to be 74 g/m²/day and 105,200 l/ha/year, respectively. The estimates obtained from the study confirm its realistic potential and will serve the biofuel industry to achieve this target and reduce the losses occurring in the large-scale open pond cultivation system. However, this upper limit of biomass and oil yield can never be improved upon very much in the open pond cultivation system irrespective of the optimum design of the pond and genetic improvements to algal strains. Therefore, the outdoor algae pond should be designed and operated efficiently to maximise algal product yield. It can be concluded from the results that there is a huge potential of algae biodiesel in India.