Integrated Algae Cultivation for Municipal Wastewater Treatment and Biofuels Production in Industrial Clusters

Paper in proceeding, 2012

This paper presents a case study on biofuels production from microalgae cultivated in municipal wastewater in Gothenburg, Sweden. A) Combined biodiesel and biogas production and B) only biogas production, are compared in terms of product outputs, impact on global CO2 emissions reduction and economic performance. Land-use efficiency of biofuels from microalgae was compared with other biofuel production routes. The biofuel production process is assumed to be integrated with a wastewater treatment plant and an industrial cluster, providing the opportunity to reduce the CO2 emissions of the process compared to stand-alone operation. The results show that case A is advantageous in terms of all the studied factors. A higher area efficiency of algae biofuels production routes compared to other biofuel production routes was shown. Nutrient availability in municipal wastewater is shown to be the limiting factor regarding product output. The competitive advantage of co-location with a wastewater treatment plant is clearly shown.