Page 17 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

10 Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

other purposes, which thus eliminates potential opportunity costs
(Ziolkowska and Simon, 2014).
(d) High oil contents in algae biomass make it suitable to produce 10–100
times more oil per acre than traditional oil crops (such as oil palm)
(e) Fast growing rate as algae can grow 20–30 times faster than food crops
(Ziolkowska and Simon, 2014).
(f ) High fuel diversity as algae biomass can be converted into a multitude of
fuel types, such as diesel, petrol, and jet fuel (see also Jones and
Mayfield, 2012).
(g) High nutritional diversity of the feedstock as it can be processed both
through sugar and oil processing procedures to extract sugars/oils for
biofuels production.
(h) High compatibility with traditional gasoline engines (thus eliminating
the need of automobile engine adjustments) due to the same biochem-
ical characteristics and composition (energy density, number of carbon
atoms per molecule) as present in gasoline (Solazyme, 2012).
Despite the many advantages of algae biomass and algae-based fuels, its eco-
nomic feasibility has been questioned and challenged many times (Doshi
et al., 2016; Vassilev and Vassileva, 2016). Also, economic and policy issues
have been pointed out as possible determinants of future developments
(Doshi et al., 2016). In 2008, the price for algae-based fuels amounted to
approximately $8/gal (US DOE, 2008), while there is no uniform market
estimate as the final price is determined by each producing company subject
to the applied technology and production factors. For many decades, the
industry has struggled with bringing down the production cost and thus
the final price of algae-based fuels through reducing costs of systems infra-
structure and integration, algae biomass production process, harvesting and
dewatering techniques, extraction and fractionation, and finally biofuels
conversion process (US DOE, 2010). Sustainable or market competitive
solutions have not been found to date to make algae-based fuel a viable
and desirable fuel due to the high fuel unit costs.

2.2.3 Future technology (fourth generation biofuels)
The fourth generation biofuels are in the development and experimental
stages, thus they combine a diversity of different (potential) applications both
on the technology, processing, and feedstock level.
The main feedstock for the fourth generation biofuels production is
genetically engineered, highly yielding biomass with low lignin and cellu-
lose contents (thus eliminating the issues present in the second generation